The effect of maternal depression on maternal ratings of child behavior

There have been continuing concerns about the extent to which maternal depression may influence maternal reports of child behavior. To examine this issue, a series of structural equation models of the relationships between maternal depression and errors in maternal reports of child behavior was proposed and tested. These models assumed that (a) maternal depression was unrelated to maternal reporting behavior; (b) maternal depression causally influenced maternal reporting accuracy; (c) maternal depression was correlated with reporting accuracy. These models were fitted to data on maternal depression and multipleinformant (mother, teacher, child) reports of conduct disorder and attention deficit behaviors for a birth cohort of 12 and 13yearold New Zealand children. The results of model fitting suggested the presence of small to moderate correlations (@#@ r=+.13 to+.40) between maternal depression and maternal reporting errors, indicating the presence of a tendency for increasing maternal depression to be associated with a tendency for mothers to overreport child behavior problems. However, independently of any effects of maternal depression on maternal reporting errors there was evidence of small but significant associations (r=.10 to .17; p<.05)between maternal depression and child conduct disorder and attention deficit behaviors.This research was funded by grants from the Health Research Council of New Zealand.     

The use of partial temporal information in dating personal events

Memory & Cognition - The use of different types of partial temporal information is shown to affect dating accuracy and the distribution of errors in event dating. Several different types of...     

Attitude change following persuasive communication: Integrating Social Judgment Theory and the Elaboration Likelihood Model

An experiment was conducted to examine the influence of the perceived extremity of a message and motivation to elaborate upon the process of persuasion. The first goal was to test a model of attitude change relating Social Judgment Theory to the Elaboration Likelihood Model. The second objective was to develop an instrument to measure attitude structure (latitudes of acceptance, non-commitment, and rejection) that allowed for a more refined assessment of the discrepancy between the position advocated in a message and the recipient's initial attitude. The main dependent variable was the attitude towards the use of automobiles in relation to environmental issues. Subjects were confronted with a message located in their own latitude of acceptance, rejection or non-commitment. Shortly after, a second measurement of attitude took place. The results showed that messages within the latitudes of non-commitment gave rise to the greatest attitude change. The data support the susceptibility hypothesis that subjects elaborate messages mainly in the latitude of non-commitment.     

Parts and wholes in face recognition

Are faces recognized using more holistic representations than other types of stimuli? Taking holistic representation to mean representation without an internal part structure, we interpret the available evidence on this issue and then design new empirical tests. Based on previous research, we reasoned that if a portion of an object corresponds to an explicitly represented part in a hierarchical visual representation, then when that portion is presented in isolation it will be identified relatively more easily than if it did not have the status of an explicitly represented part. The hypothesis that face recognition is holistic therefore predicts that a part of a face will be disproportionately more easily recognized in the whole face than as an isolated part, relative to recognition of the parts and wholes of other kinds of stimuli. This prediction was borne out in three experiments: subjects were more accurate at identifying the parts of faces, presented in the whole object, than they were at identifying the same part presented in isolation, even though both parts and wholes were tested in a forced-choice format and the whole faces differed only by one part. In contrast, three other types of stimuli--scrambled faces, inverted faces, and houses--did not show this advantage for part identification in whole object recognition.     

Women in advertisements in medical journals

To determine the images of women in picture advertisements, a stratified random sample of 32 medical journals, representing approximately 12% of medical journals published in the United States that are directed toward physicians in clinical practice, was subjected to content analysis. The sample consists of 209 different ads. The subjects of the ads included men, women, and children representing a variety of ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic groups. Notable, however, was the preponderance of Caucasian males pictured as physicians and the absence of women and people of color in this role. Women are pictured as 68.1% of consumers and men as 31.9%, a significant difference. Statistically significant differences also occur in the images of men and women as consumers. Most of the workers are men (68.2%), another significant difference. When women depicted are workers, they are secretaries and waitresses. Portrayals of women in medical advertisements continue to be stereotyped and outdated.     

Space-based visual attention models and object selection: Constraints,problems, and possible solutions

Summary One of the functions of visual attention is the selection of object information. This seems to be in line with an influential group of attentional models that assume that attentional selection is space based. These models assume that the selection of an object in vision is realized by selection of the location of that object. Whether this relatively simple idea of space-based attention and the corresponding, more elaborated space-based models are sufficient to handle selected constraints and problems of object selection is the main issue of this article. The first step toward an answer is to describe the common computational structure of space-based attentional models. Two model classes will be distinguished: capacity-limited models (e.g., Treisman, 1988; LaBerge & Brown, 1989) and models that do not assume a capacity limitation (e. g., Van der Heijden, 1992). Next, three kinds of task and data on object selection are introduced that are especially challenging for space-based models. The first type of data refers to experiments that require selection between overlapping objects. The second type of data concerns the influence of early perceptual grouping - a strong object-defining factor- on late response competition, and the third type consists of a selection task in which a high-level (semantic) attribute defines an object and controls selection. In all three cases, problems of space-based models are analyzed and possible solutions are sketched. Finally, a brief evaluative summary is given.     

Integrating information across eye fixations in reading: the role of letter and word units

Eye movements and eye fixations were recorded to study the integration of letter/word information across interword fixations in reading. Two hypotheses were examined. One hypothesis posits that readers obtain effective information from the beginning two or three letters of a parafoveal word. This information facilitates the recognition of the word when it is being fixated. The alternative posits that effective information is obtained from the complete parafoveal word. The results of the present study showed faster reading rates when parafoveal previews comprised complete words than when they comprised beginning letters alone. Furthermore, the usability of parafoveally available partial word information from beginning and ending letters was not affected by small variations in retinal eccentricity. Both findings were taken as evidence that readers gain useful information from all letters of the parafoveally available word and that whole word information, rather than specific letter information, is integrated across interword fixations in reading.