Children's Adjustment to Parental Physical Illness

We review recent empirical literature examining the impact of parent physical illness on child functioning. We review studies of illness characteristics (n = 16), individual characteristics (n = 6), and family characteristics (n = 6). Although children's self-reports indicate heightened distress, parental reports do not suggest more problematic functioning. Child adjustment appears to be more closely related to perceptions of stressfulness rather than to objective illness severity indices. Adolescent girls seem to represent a group at heightened risk. Preliminary results suggest that family variables such as cohesion, conflict, and individual and family coping styles are important predictors of child adjustment.     

Paired associate and sequential probes in dichotic memory

Paired associate (PA) and sequential (SQ) probes were compared in two experiments in which lists of four (Experiment I) or five (Experiment II) pairs were presented dichotically. The SQ probe gave higher recall for early list items while the PA probe was superior for the last serial position. The effects of presentation rate and a nonredundant suffix were typical in the PA probe conditions but were not systematic in the SQ conditions. The data were discussed in terms of the sequential association hypothesis and the importance of considering the subject’s processing strategies in interpreting rate and interference effects in memory.     

After-effects of reinforcement magnitude: Dependence upon context

On a fixed-interval schedule with rat subjects the duration of the post-reinforcement pause was found to be an increasing function of the magnitude of the preceding reinforcer. This relationship was observed when two magnitudes were contrasted closely in time, but not when the subjects were trained on each magnitude until the establishment of stable responding. After the behaviour was stable, the effect of the magnitude of reinforcement re-emerged when 50% of the scheduled reinforcers were omitted. Thus, the positive relationship between the magnitude of reinforcement and the duration of the post-reinforcement pause depended on the context of presentation of a given magnitude.     

Temporal aspects of selective masking

In two experiments, rows of random letter sequences were presented for 100 ms and were patterned masked at varying delays after display offset. In Experiment I recall was probed by visual partial report cues, while auditory probes were employed in Experiment II. Compared to no-masking control conditions, the masking stimulus had a selective effect at the different positions of the rows. The masking stimulus produced the largest decrements in recall of letters from the centre positions of the displays but had a minimal effect on performance at either end of the rows. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that improvements in recall were limited to the centre positions of the rows at increased delays of mask. Subsidiary analyses revealed that processing of the end letters of the displays terminates shortly after display offset while processing of the centre letters continues for at least 500 ms. The results are consistent with the notion that processing of multi-letter arrays commences at the ends of the rows and that the selective masking effect reflects the order of processing of the contents of iconic memory. However, these results were evident only in Experiment II which employed auditory partial report cues. When the partial report cues were visual, there were no effects of masking and minimal increases in performance at increased delays of mask. The discrepant results of the two experiments are discussed in terms of process interruption caused by obligatory attention to the partial report cues.     

Development of sensitivity to static pictorial depth information

Sensitivity to the pictorial depth cues of shading, linear perspective, and position on the picture plane were investigated with children from 3 to 7 years of age as well as with adults. Using a discriminative learning method, all Ss were found to be sensitive to shading information for depth when the display was oriented vertically, but not when it was oriented horizontally. In addition, binocular view did not decrease sensitivity relative to monocular view. Linear perspective was found to be effective in controlling 3-year-olds’ size discriminations of equal-area figures, while position on the picture plane was ineffective in the absence of other information for depth.     

Effects of signal uncertainty on statistical decisions

The experimental task involved statistical judgements about parameters of a random sample of dots displayed sequentially from a ‘signal’ or ‘noise’ distribution. Signal uncertainty was introduced by presenting small signal subsets of dots within larger observation sequences. Observer detection performance was adversely affected by this kind of signal uncertainty, but in the same way and to similar extent as that expected on the basis of ‘ideal’ and ‘independent’ statistical decision strategies.     

The perception of eye contact

Ss made judgments of whether or not they were being looked in the eye as an E fixated several points on and off their faces.Distance between sender and receiver, sex, and whether the sender made a sequence of fixation sprior to the terminal fixation were variables of interest. The sender-receiver distance produced less effect than predicted from the hypothesis that receiver judgments were determined solely by the discrepancy between the sender’s iris/sclera configuration (ISC) during true eye contact and the current fixation point. There was no stable differencein accuracy as a function of whether the sender’s terminal fixation was preceded by other fixations or not. These findings cast doubt on the belief expressed in recent studies that the ISC can be used to accurately discriminate eye gazes from other gazes. The results also suggest that fixations on some portions of the face yield a judgment of eye contact which might be predicted on the basis of social experience.