Unusual cleaning behavior in the luteal phase.

18 undergraduate women recorded episodes of unusual cleaning, defined as excessive cleaning or cleaning of things not usually cleaned, and the dates of their menstruation over a 2-mo. period. Unusual cleaning was significantly more likely to occur during the luteal phase than at any other time in women not using oral contraceptives. Possible links between changes in progesterone levels and obsessive compulsive disorders are suggested.     

Exploring a Predictive Model

The purposes of this study were (a) to explore the utility of a model for predicting reporting of sexual harassment and (b) to collect data on the incidence of sexual harassment using the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire (SEQ; Fitzgerald et al., 1988). The sample included 214 tenuretrack faculty women and 276 women graduate students. The full model postulated that age, marital status, feminist ideology, and frequency of behavior would be directly related to perceived offensiveness at the behavior. In turn, perceived offensiveness, normative expectations for reporting, and perceived outcomes of reporting would directly influence reporting. As predicted, perceived offensiveness showed a direct influence on reporting, and feminist ideology and frequency of behavior were significant predictors of perceived offensiveness. Incidence data showed that the most frequently experienced situations involved gender harassment and seductive behaviors. Results suggest that educating women about the offensiveness of sexual harassment might increase frequency of reporting. Also, further exploration of the model seems warranted.     

Managing data entry of a large-scale interview project with optical scanning hardware and software

A hardware and software system for the cost-effective preparation of interview data is described. Scantron optical scanning hardware and DataBlocks software were used to prepare ASCII data files from structured interviews and questionnaires. These data were then edited for analysis with SPSS-X Data Entry software. Three different processes for preparing interview data were compared. Time, personnel, hardware, and software costs were projected for each process, as well as comparative risks to the integrity of data. A scanning procedure saves time and money, and it reduces the risk of errors.     

Computing interrater reliability on the Apple Macintosh computer

A program is described for computing interrater reliability by averaging, for each rater, the correlations between one rater’s ratings and every other rater’s ratings. For situations in which raters rate more than one ratee, raters’ reliabilities can be computed for either each item or each ratee. The program reads data from a text file and puts the reliability coefficients in a text file. The standard Macintosh interface is implemented. The Quick-BASIC program is distributed both as a listing and in compiled form; it can be run with advantage with math coprocessors.     

Developmental change in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder in boys: A four-year longitudinal study

One hundred six clinic-referred boys meeting criteria for DSM-III-R attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (mean age 9.4 years) were assessed annually for 4 years using structured interviews of multiple informants. Hyperactivity—impulsivity symptoms declined with increasing age, but inattention symptoms did not. Rather, inattention declined only from the first to the second assessment and remained stable thereafter in boys of all ages. The rate of decline in hyperactivity—impulsivity symptoms was independent of the amount and type of treatment received. Boys who still met criteria for ADHD in Years 3 and 4 were significantly younger, more hyperactive—impulsive, and more likely to exhibit conduct disorder in Year 1 than boys who no longer met criteria in Years 3 and 4.This study was supported by grant 1-R01-MH42529 from the National Insitute of Mental Health to Rolf Loeber and Benjamin B. Lahey.     

The suppression of visualization by reading

Four experiments are described which demonstrate a conflict between reading verbal messages and imagining the spatial relations described by those messages. Listening to the same messages did not produce comparable interference with visualization. The conflict between reading and visualizing was obtained even when the subject previously had seen the referent of the message. In contrast, when the subject was induced to treat the messages as rote strings of words instead of visualizing their referents, reading was a more effective means of presentation than was listening.

Two interpretations of these results were proposed. (a) Visualization and reading compete of the use of neural pathways specialized for visual perception. (b) The process of reading hinders the conversion of input material into any non-verabl form; that is, reading forces the subject to deal with information in a more exclusively verbal form than does listening. It was suggested that regardless of interpretation this method provides a means of investigating the internal processes underlying concrete verbal reference.     

Beyond family‐level adversities: Exploring the developmental timing of neighborhood disadvantage effects on the brain

A growing literature suggests that adversity is associated with later altered brain function, particularly within the corticolimbic system that supports emotion processing and salience detection (e.g., amygdala, prefrontal cortex [PFC]). Although neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage has been shown to predict maladaptive behavioral outcomes, particularly for boys, most of the research linking adversity to corticolimbic function has focused on family‐level adversities. Moreover, although animal models and studies of normative brain development suggest that there may be sensitive periods during which adversity exerts stronger effects on corticolimbic development, little prospective evidence exists in humans. Using two low‐income samples of boys (n = 167; n = 77), Census‐derived neighborhood disadvantage during early childhood, but not adolescence, was uniquely associated with greater amygdala, but not PFC, reactivity to ambiguous neutral faces in adolescence and young adulthood. These associations remained after accounting for several family‐level adversities (e.g., low family income, harsh parenting), highlighting the independent and developmentally specific neural effects of the neighborhood context. Furthermore, in both samples, indicators measuring income and poverty status of neighbors were predictive of amygdala function, suggesting that neighborhood economic resources may be critical to brain development.     

Examining changes in procedural justice and their influence on problem‐solving court outcomes

The number of problem‐solving courts has grown substantially since the mid‐1990s. Research consistently indicates that participation in these courts lowers recidivism, which is often attributed to defendants’ increased perceptions of procedural justice in these programs. Yet, prior studies are limited in their focus, often examining interactions with the judge in a single court or examining defendant perceptions and outcomes at a single time point. In the present study, we investigate defendant perceptions of procedural justice with judges and case managers across multiple problem‐solving courts over time. Findings indicate that procedural justice varies across court actors and over time. Procedural justice is lower among judges than among case managers; however, changes in perceptions of procedural justice with the judge are associated with improved court outcomes. We suggest that defendant perceptions are variable and complex but important in explaining variations in outcomes.     

From synonyms to homonyms: exploring the role of metarepresentation in language understanding

Doherty and Perner (Metalinguistic awareness and theory of mind: just two words for the same thing? Cognitive Development, 13 (1998), 279–305) report that children’s understanding of synonyms and false belief is dependent on an understanding of the representational mind. Experiment 1 extends this finding by examining children’s understanding of homonyms. Children aged 3 and 4 years were asked to judge whether a puppet correctly selected the second member of a homonym pair. Performance on this task was strongly associated with performance on the false belief task even after chronological and verbal mental age had been accounted for. Experiment 2 incorporated two new tasks: a synonyms task and an adjectives task. Understanding of synonyms and homonyms significantly predicted performance on the false belief task. However, once chronological age was accounted for, only performance on the homonyms task did so. The difficulty experienced on the homonyms task was not due to a reluctance to acknowledge that the puppet can point to a different picture when the the same word label is used twice. Children had no difficulty on the adjectives task when the puppet had to point to a different picture described using the same adjective. The suggestion that the understanding of synonyms, homonyms and false belief are related by a common insight into the representational mind is therefore not supported.