Linguistic Phenomena and Language Selection in the REM Dreams of German-English Bilinguals

Sixteen German-English bilinguals were studied in a sleep laboratory for four nonconsecutive nights each. Half were native English speakers living in Zürich, and half native German speakers living in Atlanta. Presleep thought samples were solicited each evening and REM dream reports each night; subjects judged the waking appropriateness of their imagined speech and language phenomena, and also identified waking sources of their dream imagery, the following mornings. Incidences of dreaming and of speech therein generally were similar to those of monolinguals. Whether sessions were conducted in German (two nights) or English (two nights) did directly influence language selection in subjects' dreams. Judged appropriateness of language selection to imagined events was very high for thought samples, and high for REM dreams. Sources for thought samples were generally consonant with the language dominant at study site; for REM dreams this relationship was considerably weaker. Judged waking appropriateness to imagined situations was more strongly related to language selection than was the language reference of the supposed sources of those situations.     

Mental Arithmetic: A Componential Analysis of Speed-of-Processing Across Monolingual,Weak Bilingual,and Strong Bilingual Adults

Two experiments compared rates of solving simple and complex addition and multiplication problems in groups of speakers of French or English in Experiment 1 (n = 35) and Spanish or English in Experiment 2 (n = 84). Subjects were divided into groups of English unilinguals, weak bilinguals, and strong bilinguals according to their performance on a naming task. In both experiments, simple problems consisted of two single-digit numbers. At least three single-digit numbers were used for complex problems in Experiment 1 and double-digit numbers in Experiment 2. Mean solution times, particularly for complex problems, were lowest for the monolingual group, followed in turn by the weak bilingual and strong bilingual groups, but these differences were not statistically reliable in either experiment. In Experiment 2, however, componential analyses of solution times indicated that strong bilingual subjects were slower at executing the carry operation when solving complex problems, relative to the two remaining groups. Results were interpreted in terms of the relationship between bilingualism and the representation and processing of numerical information.     

A Coming-of-Age for Research on Interpersonal Perception

ABSTRACT Research on accuracy and consensus in interpersonal perception has become a major topic in the social sciences. Key methodological issues in this research are research design, statistical measures of agreement, unit of analysis, and data aggregation. I discuss the twelve articles devoted to these topics in this special issue in terms of moderators of agreement, the weighted average model of consensus and accuracy (Kenny, 1991), and methodological innovations.     

Sexual Attitudes of Males and Females as Predictors of Interpersonal Attraction and Marital Compatibility1

Two investigations examine the effect of similarity of sexual attitudes on (a) attraction to a stranger and (b) marital sexual satisfaction. In an experiment using undergraduates, manipulation of subject-stranger similarity in general affective orientation to sexuality affected attraction and other evaluative dependent variables. In the second investigation, married couples revealed sexual attitudes and sexual satisfaction. Husbands and wives were similar (r= 0.58, p < 0.001) in their affective orientations to sexuality. Discrepancy between the partners’ scores predicted sexual dissatisfaction in both partners. In addition, the wife's affective orientation to sexuality predicted more indices of sexual satisfaction and adjustment in both the wife and the husband than did the husband's affective orientation to sexuality. Finally, spouses with a positive affective orientation to sexuality were more accurate when judging their partner's sexual enjoyment, compared to spouses with a negative orientation. The findings have implications for the effects of similarity of attitudes on interpersonal attraction and on relationship quality.     

The Influence of Goal Orientation on Task Performance: A Substantively Meaningful Suppressor Variable1

The present study investigated the relationship between performance goal orientation and performance on a complex task. It was hypothesized that cognitive interference would mediate this relationship. In addition, it was hypothesized that cognitive ability would moderate the relationship between cognitive interference and task performance. A three-variable suppressor relationship indicated that, although the direct effect of performance goal orientation on performance was one that produced better performance, the indirect effect of performance goal orientation indicated that performance orientations were associated with increases in cognitive interference, and these increases in cognitive interference were associated with poorer performance. Thus, the beneficial aspect of performance goal orientation (i. e., the direct effect) was counterbalanced by the dysfunctional aspects of performance goal orientation (i. e., the associated increase in cognitive interference). Support was also found for the proposed moderation of ability on the cognitive interference-task performance relationship for final, but not initial performance. The results are interpreted in light of recent discussions regarding the influence of goal orientation on task performance and cognitive interference.     

Stressors, Stress Mediators, and Emotional Weil-Being Among Spouses of Soldiers Deployed to the Persian Gulf During Operation Desert Shield/Storm

The Family Factors Field Study of Operation Desert Shield/Storm (ODS) was designed to collect data on the impact of the Persian Gulf deployment on soldier/family well-being, and the effectiveness of Army and community resources in assisting and supporting families of deployed soldiers. In October 1990, a task force was assembled, and multi-agency research teams visited several Army installations. Informal individual and group interviews were conducted with spouses, unit family support leaders, unit rear detachment personnel, garrison leaders, and local Army program/service providers. The questions were aimed at identifying key stressors which spouses and children experienced in relation to the sudden deployment, as well a stress mediators such as social supports and personal coping skills. Anecdotal information collected during the site visits, combined with findings from previous research on Army families, was used to develop a questionnaire designed to quantify those variables which emerged as relevant to a study of stressors and stress mediators in the context of the ODS deployment.     

Proximal and Distal Predictors of Homophobia: Framing the Multivariate Roots of Outgroup Rejection1

A proximal-distal theoretical framework was developed to examine the multivariate roots of homophobia. Using data from a sample of 288 undergraduates who had participated in a computer-assisted panel study over a three-year period, the effects on homophobia of distal and proximal family factors (e. g., parental education and family environment), distal and proximal individual factors (e. g., personality constructs and current beliefs), and proximal individual-situational factors (e. g., acquaintance with homosexuals) were tested in regression analyses. Both analyses employing sets of variables varying in proximity to the homophobic attitude and hierarchical regression employing variables contributing significantly in each set supported the proposed framework. All sets predicted significantly when regressed separately on homophobia; the sets containing the distal factors contributed most weakly, and the sets containing the proximal factors contributed most strongly. In hierarchical regression analysis, this pattern maintained such that the incremental increase in r² decreased with the addition of each more distal set, with the most distal factors failing to contribute significantly to the prediction. The importance of study findings for attitude change efforts is discussed.     

Coming to terms with stress: Effects of stress location in sentence processing

The purpose of this research was to determine the role of syllabic stress in language processing during the early on-line processing of speech and later in the representation of a sentence in memory. Experiment 1 used a syllable monitoring task while Experiment 3 used a probe task in which subjects heard a sentence and then were asked to determine whether a probe syllable had occurred in the sentence. In the monitoring task, stressed syllables were detected more rapidly in word-initial position, but unstressed syllables were detected more rapidly in word-final position. Stress facilitation in initial syllables was strongly related to high relative F0, but not to changes in perceived vowel quality as assessed in Experiment 2. This pattern is interpreted as evidence that lexical stress is used on-line to guide lexical access and/or lexical segmentation. The probe task of Experiment 3 showed stress facilitation in both positions, indicating that stress is independently retained in the postperceptual representation of a sentence.The research reported in this paper was supported by grant 80-0416 to Harvard University (Peter C. Gordon, Principal Investigator) from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Life Sciences Directorate. We thank Chris Thurber for his extensive and competent assistance in testing subjects and making acoustic measurements, and Jay Rueckl for comments on an earlier version of this paper     

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.