Book reviews

Buckley, Key W. (1989). Mechanical man: John Broadeus Watson and the beginnings of Behaviorism. New York: Guilford Press. Pp. 293. ISBN 0-89862-744-3. $32.45/£18.00.

Colgan, P. (1989), Animal Motivation. New York and London: Chapman and Hall. Pp. 168. ISBN 0412-31850. £25.00 (hardback). ISBN 0412-31860, £10.95 (paperback).

Antinucci, F (Ed.) (1989). Cognitive structure and development in nonhuman prinates. Hillsdale, Nj: Laweence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Pp. 266. ISBN 0-8058-0544. £16.50 (Hardback).

Parker, S.T. & Gibson, K.R. (Eds.) (1990). “Language” and intelligence in monkeys and apes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 590. ISBN 0-521-38028-6. £40.00 (hardback).

Ley, Ronald (1990). A whisper of espionnage: Wolfgang Koehler and the apes of Tenerife. Garden City Park, NY: Avery Publoshing Corporation. Pp.264. ISBN 0-89529-432-x. $19.95.     

REVIEWS

Feminism and Addiction, Claudia Bepko (Ed.). New York.
Feminist Perspectives on Addictions, Nan Van Den Bergh (Ed.). New York.
Engendered Lives, Ellyn Kaschak. New York.
Seldom Seen, Rarely Heard: Women's Place in Psychology, Jams Bohan (Ed.).
Still Loved by the Sun: A Rape Survivor's Journal, Migael Scherer. New York.     

Potential for Suicide and Aggression in Delinquents at Juvenile Court in a Southern City

Because juvenile delinquents rarely communicate their wishes for suicide or homicide appropriately to busy caretakers, some means to identify those juveniles at greatest risk of acting out was sought. Psychological examiners in a Southern city individually questioned 263 Juvenile Court offenders about whether they wished to be dead, to kill themselves, or to kill others; and also about their existential experiences, thoughts and feelings. Taking the data associated with each wish, we used stepwise multiple logistic regression to pinpoint experiences, such as substance abuse, that were associated with a high likelihood of verbalizing a wish for destructive behavior. These results included sexual abuse as a risk factor and the presence of a mother or grandmother as a protective factor, and led to recommending education of caretakers and forming a screening test.     

Complexity Effects on Temporal Characteristics of Speech

In light of evidence that multiple-goal messages tend to be characterized by longer speech-onset latencies and higher pause-phonation ratios, Greene, McDaniel, Buksa, and Ravizza have suggested that it is not the pursuit of multiple goals, per se, that results in less fluent speech. Rather, these authors suggest that the slower speech production characteristic of such messages is the result of difficulties in assembling, or integrating, incompatible message features. Recent evidence, however, indicates that this account is incomplete and in need of revision. Toward this end, we advance a complexity account that suggests that there are increased processing-capacity and temporal demands associated with formulating and maintaining more complex message representations. The article then reports four experimental studies of this complexity account. Experiments 1 and 2 operationalize complexity as the amount of information to be communicated in a message. These studies indicate that complexity does affect pause-phonation ratio and average pause duration. Experiments 3 and 4 operationalize complexity as the coherence of the information to be conveyed in a message. The results of Experiment 4, but not Experiment 3, again indicated that complexity influences speech fluency. The results of these studies, then, are taken to provide considerable support for the complexity hypothesis.     

Somatic response to stress, physical symptoms and health service use: The role of current stress

The study examined physical symptoms and health service utilization of subjects high or low on a measure of the tendency to experience stress somatically and high or low on a measure of current stress. High somatic responders reported greater numbers of symptoms than low somatic responders regardless of stress level. However, high somatic responders who were experiencing high levels of current stress reported significantly more symptoms than high somatic responders who were experiencing low levels of stress. These findings indicate that somatic response to stress reflects both a general tendency to focus on physical symptoms, and a specific tendency to focus more on physical symptoms when under stress. Analysis of health service records indicated that high somatic responders had more visits prompted by symptoms than low somatic responders, but did not differ in frequency of health service visits designed to maintain health. The findings further clarify the relationship between somatic response to stress, physical symptoms and health service use.     

Experimental social innovation and client-centered job-seeking programs

The complexity of most social problems and a growing human services shortfall dictate that we reevaluate our approach to planned social change. Simplistic one-shot evaluations of social interventions are unlikely to yield the kind of information that will help us identify true social innovations, understand and refine their instrumental processes, and thereby optimize their effects. However, incremental progress in these areas is possible through the pursuit of ESI or other systematic and rigorous approaches to outcome research.