B. F. Skinner and T. N. Whitehead: a brief encounter, research similarities, hawthorne revisited, what next?

B. F. Skinner and T. N. Whitehead recalled a personal interaction in 1934, with differing memories of the event. No evidence of other subsequent interactions or mutual citations has been found. Although they went their separate ways, three similarities in their research strategies have been found and are discussed. Elements of Whitehead's Hawthorne study and Skinner's concurrent, parallel work reveal that they both (a) introduced the cumulative curve to report data, (b) used a small number of subjects studied over time, and (c) used highly accurate recording devices. A few "afterwords" are offered on their lives and writings, and again, on the Hawthorne effect. A suggestion is made that a Skinner-Whitehead research approach might be useful in studying gambling behavior.     

Perceived partner support in pregnancy predicts lower maternal and infant distress

Maternal postpartum emotional distress is quite common and can pose significant risk to mothers and infants. The current study investigated mothers' relationships with their partners during pregnancy and tested the hypotheses that perception of prenatal partner support is a significant predictor of changes in maternal emotional distress from midpregnancy to postpartum, and contributes to maternal ratings of infant distress to novelty. Using a prospective longitudinal design, 272 adult pregnant women were interviewed regarding their partner support, relationship satisfaction, and interpersonal security (attachment style and willingness to seek out support), and they completed standardized measures of prenatal symptoms of depression and anxiety (distress). At 6 to 8 weeks' postpartum, mothers reported these symptoms again and completed measures of their infants' temperament. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test direct and indirect contributions of partner support, relationship satisfaction, and interpersonal security to maternal and infant postpartum distress. Mothers who perceived stronger social support from their partners midpregnancy had lower emotional distress postpartum after controlling for their distress in early pregnancy, and their infants were reported to be less distressed in response to novelty. Partner support mediated the effects of mothers' interpersonal security and relationship satisfaction on maternal and infant outcomes. A high-quality, supportive partner relationship during pregnancy may contribute to improved maternal and infant well-being postpartum, indicating a potential role for partner relationships in mental health interventions, with possible benefits for infants as well.     

A factor analysis of mental abilities and personality traits

The relationship between measures of verbal fluency and certain personality traits is examined by factor techniques. From a matrix of eight factor scores derived from mental tests plus five personality scores, six factors were obtained. An oblique solution lends limited support to the hypothesized relationship between the two domains.This study was supported by a grant from the Research Foundation of the University of Utah.Currently on leave of absence with the National Research Council.     

Perceptual enhancement of tumor targets in chest X-ray images

Under tachistoscopic viewing conditions, precuing the location of potential lung tumorlargets in chest X-ray images was less effective than precuing followed by bounding the region of interest (ROI) with a circle directly on the image. Detection performance increased as the image was systematically masked so that its size approximated that of the circled ROI. When viewing time was extended to allow shifts in eye position, circling the ROI was found to restrict the dispersion of fixations and increase the accuracy of fixating the target tumor. When targets were placed outside the ROI, the circle inhibited their detection relative to detection of targets inside the circled region. These findings suggest that cuing by circling restricts target detection to the ROI, and by doing so reduces the interfering effects of outside distractors that compete with the target for attention.     

Defensive burying of aversive fluids in rats: The possible role of odor

Defensive burying of flavored fluids paired with lithium chloride injections was examined. Rats showed little inclination to bury conditioned saccharin or salt solutions (Experiments 1 and 2). However, they buried tabasco sauce or dilute milk solutions readily (Experiment 3). It was hypothesized that the amount of olfactory stimulation provided by a solution may determine whether a rat engages in burying. This hypothesis received support in a final experiment which demonstrated that rats readily buried an arbitrarily selected odorous solution which was previously paired with lithium chloride. Thus the present experiments begin the process of identifying the circumstances under which burying does and does not occur.     

Eye movements of prereaders to pseudowords containing letters of high and low confusability

Children were required to make same-different judgments about matched and unmatched pseudoword pairs containing middle letters of either high confusability (e.g.. ZPR.W or low confusability (e.g., EROI). Differential eye-movement patterns were observed between matched and unmatched low-confusion pairs. This finding would be predicted from a features analysis of the visual characteristics of the letters of the pseudowords. Low-confusion pseudowords contain more different visual features than high-confusion pseudowords. Therefore, in making a matching judgment. low-confusion pairs should require more eye movements; however, detection of a mismatch should be facilitated due to the greater availability of distinctive features.     

A measure of pronunciability of CVC trigrams

All 2100 CVC trigrams were scaled for pronunciability by measuring pronunciation latency (PLat). The resulting distribution of PLat scores was extremely leptokurtic and positively skewed. Scores ranged from a minimum of .531 sec to a maximum of 1.726 sec. Average PLat was .81 sec. The relationship of PLat to Archer meaningfulness was linear; however, the degree of relationship was slight (r=?.37). This finding is interpreted as indicating that PLat is relatively free of bias from such other stimulus attributes as meaningfulness. As such, P Lat is viewed as reflecting a basic processing time for such stimulus materials.