Attitude accessibility as a moderator of the attitude-perception and attitude-behavior relations: an investigation of the 1984 presidential election

It was hypothesized that the extent to which individuals' attitudes guide their subsequent perceptions of and behavior toward the attitude object is a function of the accessibility of those attitudes from memory. A field investigation concerning the 1984 presidential election was conducted as a test of these hypotheses. Attitudes toward each of the two candidates, Reagan and Mondale, and the accessibility of those attitudes, as indicated by the latency of response to the attitudinal inquiry, were measured for a large sample of townspeople months before the election. Judgments of the performance of the candidates during the televised debates served as the measure of subsequent perceptions, and voting served as the measure of subsequent behavior. As predicted, both the attitude-perception and the attitude-behavior relations were moderated by attitude accessibility. The implications of these findings for theoretical models of the processes by which attitudes guide behavior, along with their practical implications for survey research, are discussed.     

Altruism and aggression: the heritability of individual differences

Five questionnaires measuring altruistic and aggressive tendencies were completed by 573 adult twin pairs of both sexes from the University of London Institute of Psychiatry Volunteer Twin Register. The questionnaires measured altruism, empathy, nurturance, aggressiveness, and assertiveness. The intraclass correlations for the five scales, respectively, were .53, .54, .49, .40, and .52 for 296 monozygotic pairs, and .25, .20, .14, .04, and .20 for 179 same-sex dizygotic pairs, resulting in broad heritability estimates of 56%, 68%, 70%, 72%, and 64%. Additional analyses, using maximum-likelihood model-fitting, revealed approximately 50% of the variance on each scale to be associated with genetic effects, virtually 0% with the twins' common environment, and the remaining 50% with each twins' specific environment and/or error associated with the test. Correcting for the unreliability in the tests raised the maximum-likelihood heritabilities to approximately 60%. Age and sex differences were also found: altruism increased over the age span from 19 to 60, whereas aggressiveness decreased, and, at each age, women had higher scores than men on altruism and lower scores on aggressiveness.     

Macrocosm to microcosm: Toward a systemic model of personality

This paper attempts to: (1) provide a paradigm through which to understand the human self and, (2) bring some order out of the variety of theories of personality and strategies of change used in clinical practice today. Drawing on modern physics and general systems theory, a multi-leveled, systemic model incorporating physical, psychological, and spiritual dimensions is proposed and then applied to a representative clinical case. Implications of this model for clinical work and for a spiritual understanding of personality are elaborated.     

Deprivation and satiation: The interrelations between food and wheel running

Two experiments were designed to assess whether depriving rats of food would increase the reinforcement effectiveness of wheel running (Experiment 1) and whether satiation for wheel running would decrease the reinforcement effectiveness of food (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, a progressive-ratio schedule was used to measure the reinforcement effectiveness of wheel running when rats were deprived or not deprived of food. Completion of a fixed number of lever presses released a brake on a running wheel for 60 s, and the response requirement was systematically increased until the rat stopped pressing or until 8 hr had elapsed. The ratio value reached (and the total number of lever presses) was an inverted-U function of food deprivation (percentage body weight). In Experiment 2, when wheel running preceded test sessions, fewer food-reinforced lever presses were maintained by the progressive-ratio schedule, and responding occurred at a lower rate on a variable-interval schedule. An interpretation of these results is that deprivation or satiation with respect to one event (such as food) alters the reinforcement effectiveness of a different event (such as access to wheel running).     

Visual dominance in the cross-modal kinesthetic to kinesthetic plus visual feedback condition

In previous studies subjects who have learned a positioning response with kinesthetic feedback tended to make greater errors when visual feedback was provided during later trials. These subjects have always performed with both kinesthetic and visual feedback available. This study determined whether subjects with only visual feedback would produce errors similar to those who received kinesthetic plus visual feedback. Blindfolded subjects learned to move a handle to a criterion location with knowledge of results following each trial. Subjects then were assigned to one of three experimental groups, with only kinesthetic feedback, with kinesthetic plus visual feedback, or with only visual feedback. Subjects had 9 trials without knowledge of results in these feedback conditions. When visual feedback was available, subjects tended to make longer response errors. This finding replicates previous studies. Also, the similarity of performances from the conditions with visual feedback indicated the dominance of visual information in the condition with kinesthetic plus visual feedback.     

Influence of age, sex, etiology, and hearing loss on balance performance by deaf children

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of age, sex, etiology, and degree of hearing loss on the static and dynamic balance performance of hearing impaired children and youth (N = 132), ages 3 to 14 yr. The subjects were individually assessed on Items 2 and 7 of Subtest 2 of the Short Form of the Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency. As expected, performance on both tasks improved with chronological age. In comparing the performance of subjects by etiology, only one significant difference emerged; those with genetic deafness were superior on static balance to those whose deafness was idiopathic. However, the mean scores for the genetic group were superior for both balance tasks. The sex of the child as well as extent of hearing loss did not affect performance in either task.     

Vision and academic performance of learning disabled children

The purpose of this study was to assess difference in academic performance among myopic, hyperopic, and emmetropic children who were learning disabled. More specifically, myopic children were expected to perform better on mathematical and spatial tasks than would hyperopic ones and that hyperopic and emmetropic children would perform better on verbal measures than would myopic ones. For 439 learning disabled students visual anomalies were determined via a Generated Retinal Reflex Image Screening System. Test data were obtained from school files. Partial support for the hypothesis was obtained. Myopic learning disabled children outperformed hyperopic and emmetropic children on the Key Math test. Myopic children scored better than hyperopic children on the WRAT Reading subtest and on the Durrell Analysis of Reading Difficulty Oral Reading Comprehension, Oral Rate, Flashword, and Spelling subtests, and on the Key Math Measurement and Total Scores. Severity of refractive error significantly affected the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children--Revised Full Scale, Performance Scale, Verbal Scale, and Digit Span scores but did not affect any academic test scores. Several other findings were also reported. Those with nonametropic problems scored higher than those without problems on the Key Math Time subtest. Implications supportive of the theories of Benbow and Benbow and Geschwind and Behan were stated.     

Relationship between specific disfluency variables and dichotic listening in stutterers

86 stutterers' disfluency patterns were examined in relation to their laterality preferences. Results suggest that young stutterers are a heterogeneous group and that specific disfluency variables were not related to ear preferences on a dichotic consonant-vowel listening task.     

6 years of electroconvulsive therapy with dexamethasone

The author reports on an improvement in ECT in which Dexamethasone is used to prevent cerebral edema. This improved technique has been used for 823 EC treatment since 1979. Since then, no post-paroxysmal passage syndromes have been observed in gerontopsychiatric patients even in cases where ECT is applied relatively frequently.