The ecological context of family ministry: the cambridge model revisited

Family ministry in the local church occurs in an ecological context characterized by a diversity of family types. A viable ministry to families must be able to address this diversity at different levels within the social system: the types of nuclear and extended families within the congregation; the type of congregation itself considered as a family; and the minister's own family type. A comprehensive family typology is needed to conceptualize this notion. The Cambridge model of closed, open, and random families, created by David Kantor and William Lehr, is summarized and then applied to an understanding of the ecology of family ministry.     

Attentional Focus of Students with Hyperactivity During a Word-Search Task

Mirrors have been used to focus attention to aspects of the self (e.g., to known strategies, standards). We hypothesized that this could be important for students with hyperactivity/inattention, who typically direct attention outward to external novelty. In this study, we administered a partially solvable word puzzle to 43 middle school students, with and without hyperactivity/inattention, in the presence and absence of a mirror, counterbalanced for condition and form order. Differences between students with hyperactivity/inattention and comparisons in accuracy were found only in the no mirror condition. Furthermore, the beneficial effect of the mirror for children with hyperactivity/inattention was most pronounced for those who looked at the mirror. Findings were interpreted in terms of their potential to remedy the production deficits of these children.     

Effects of task instructions and oscillation frequency on bimanual coordination

Increases in the oscillation frequency of bimanual movements produce a switch from an anti-phase (180° relative phase) to an in-phase (0° relative phase) coordination pattern. This finding is observed when subjects are instructed not to intervene when they feel themselves slipping out of the anti-phase pattern. The question addressed in this study concerned how performance would be affected if subjects were instructed to try to maintain the pattern at all times. This issue was addressed using two separate groups of subjects: one group was given the do not intervene instructions, the other group was told to try to stay with the pattern at all times. Forearm rotations were tested in 15 s trials, paced by an auditory metronome set at 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, and 3.0 Hz. Frequency distributions of the point estimates of relative phase were analyzed. The Do not Intervene group replicated previous findings, as indicated by the development of a bimodal histogram of relative phase distributions with increases in oscillation frequency. However, a very different pattern of findings emerged with increases in oscillation frequency for the group told to stay with the anti-phase pattern. Rather than a bimodal distribution being developed, the data maintained 180° as its central tendency — no secondary distribution developed around 0° relative phase. These data suggest that volitional control can over-ride the inherent dynamical tendencies of the motor system.     

The “good manager”: Sex-typed,androgynous, or likable?

Recent studies have indicated that people describe a “good manager” in masculine terms. It was hypothesized that this could simply reflect cultural stereotypes, rather than people's perceptions of what combination of traits is desirable in a leader. In Experiments 1 and 2, subjects were presented managerial profiles ascribing all masculine, all feminine, or a combination of masculine and feminine traits (i.e., “androgynous” profiles) to hypothetical managers. Feminine-trait combinations were rated as significantly less desirable than either masculine or androgynous combinations, which were rated as equally desirable. Thus, while femininity per se was not seen as desirable in a leader, it was not viewed as a liability when combined with masculinity, a corroboration of much behavioral research on androgyny. Experiment 3 varied trait likableness and sex-role orientation. Experiments 1 and 2 were replicated for unlikable traits. Surprisingly, the opposite pattern was obtained for likable traits: the feminine combinations were rated as the most desirable, and the masculine combinations were rated as the least desirable. The results are discussed in the context of early research on impression formation and recent work on social cognition.     

Who we are: The political origins of the medical humanities

The medical humanities were organized, beginning in the late 1960s, by a small group of people who shared a critique of medical education and a commitment to vigorous action to change it. They proposed to create several demonstration programs in humanities education at American schools. Although the group began with a religious orientation, it soon acquired a broader, more secular mission. As a result of shrewd political organizing, the group attracted members from within medicine, and was awarded a grant to promote the medical humanities. This paper describes these events and sets them in the context of the social and medical history of the 1960s and early 1970s.     

Sensory modality and the word-frequency effect

Two experiments were conducted to examine whether the word-frequency effect in recognition memory is primarily a modality-dependent phenomenon. In the first experiment, the presentation modality of a target word was varied orthogonally during the input of the test phases. In the second, the subjects were forced to process each input word at the letter-byo letter level, thus minimizing the orthographical differences between the high- and low-frequency words. The word-frequency effect was found in every experimental condition and should be considered a modality-independent phenomenon. A semantically based interpretation of this effect was proposed.     

Young adults' perceptions of social sex roles across the life span

Fifty male and 50 female undergraduates rated 10 age-sex targets (Boy, Girl, Adolescent Boy, Adolescent Girl, Young Man, Young Woman, Middle-aged Man, Middle-Aged Woman, Old Man and Old Woman) on 12 semantic differential scales. Compared with female targets, male targets were rated higher on potency and activity scales and lower on evaluative scales. Semantic distance between male and female targets showed a curvilinear relationship with target age. Results suggested that young adult subjects perceive that sex-role differences first increase and then decrease across the life span.An earlier version of this article was presented at the convention of the Western Psychological Association in Los Angeles, California, April 1976.     

Developmental trends in distractibility: Is absolute or proportional decrement the appropriate measure of interference?

Since baseline performance varies with age, diminished interference effects found with increasing age do not provide evidence for a developmental trend in distractibility unless their relationship to baseline performance is known. In the present study, baseline difficulty was varied in two speeded classification experiments to investigate whether interference effects due to irrelevant information could best be characterized by absolute or proportional decrement models. In Experiment 1, first graders, third graders, and adults sorted cards on the basis of square size, both in the presence and absence of extraneous stimulus information. In Experiment 2, first graders and adults sorted cards on the basis of the density of a regular array of dots and two kinds of irrelevant information were used. Robust interference effects were found which declined with age. Manipulating discriminability of the relevant stimulus dimension resulted in large changes in sorting time, but interference effects did not vary with baseline difficulty. These results were interpreted as strongly supporting both an absolute decrement model and a developmental trend in distractibility.     

Dichotic sequence discrimination: The effect of continued practice

Summary Dichotic sequence discrimination was studied by means of a three-alternative forced-choice method. Two of the alternatives (same) consisted of a single pair of dichotic clicks with the stimulus at one ear preceding the stimulus at the other ear by a given temporal separation (e.g., R-t-L). One of the alternatives consisted of a single pair of clicks with the opposite sequence (e.g., L-t-R). The subjects' task was to discriminate between the different and the same dichotic pairs. The results indicate that discrimination is a nonmonotonic function of t, i.e., V- or U-shaped, with high levels at both short and long temporal separations (t=2 and 4 ms and t=64 and 96 ms) and with lower levels of discrimination for intermediate ts. A second experiment was performed to study the effect of continued practice by subjects trained in dichotic sequence discrimination for ts 4 and 64 ms (high discrimination levels) and for t=16 ms (low discrimination level). There was no systematic trend towards improvement over 8 blocks of 50 trials for each t. Discrimination levels of these ts did not differ between Experiments 1 and 2.Dr. Babkoff is spending the 1979–1981 academic year at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Department of Military Medical Psychophysiology, Forest Glen Annex, Building 189, Washington, D.C. 20012, USAThe experiments were conducted at the Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel. The authors would like to thank the Bar-Ilan Research Committee for making funds available to conduct the experimentsThis material has been reviewed by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, and there is no objection to its presentation and/or publication. The opinions or assertions contained herein are the private views of the authors and are not to be construed as official or as reflecting the views of the Department of the Army or the Department of Defense