Race bias in diagnosis and treatment of juvenile offenders: Findings and suggestions

There is evidence that Black juvenile delinquents have received biased differential treatment in mental health care systems. Research shows that the White juvenile offender often is assessed as having a psychological problem while the Black juvenile offender is more often seen as exhibiting behavior characteristic of his culture and more often than not receives inadequate psychological counseling. This article integrates information on juvenile delinquency, interracial diagnosis, and cross-cultural understanding. It is hoped the information will aid the forensic psychological professional to better understand culturally different children and youth as well as examine his or her own cache of cultural baggage which may interfere with the appropriate assessment and treatment of Black juvenile offenders.     

Legitimizing the Leader: Endorsement by Male Versus Female Authority Figures

Subjects viewed a videotaped group discussion by a leader and four other group members and evaluated each of them for leadership competence. The leader, either a man or a woman, was either personally endorsed ("legitimized") or unendorsed by either a male or a female authority figure. Legitimation raised both leaders' performance evaluations. Legitimation by the female authority affected the leaders' evaluations, overall, as much as legitimation by a male authority. For the male leader, legitimation by the male and female authority figures produced equal impact. However, legitimation by the female authority figure produced significantly greater impact on evaluations of the female leader's performance than the same legitimation by a male authority figure. The data suggest that female authority figures can be effective legitimizers of both sexes, but male authority's endorsements of a female subordinate may be viewed as suspect.     

Visual persistence of spatially filtered images

Periodic stimuli such as sine-wave gratings and checkerboard patterns have been used in many studies of visual perception. It is well known that with such stimuli, visual persistence increases as spatial frequency increases and as contrast decreases. It is not clear, however, that similar relationships obtain for aperiodic stimuli such as natural images. Digitized images of objects (a face and a vase) were submitted to two-dimensional Fourier analysis. Four pairs of spatial frequency band-limited images were created for each image. Each pair consisted of a normal (NP) and a scrambled (SP) phase version, with the magnitude spectrum and space-averaged luminance the same within each pair. Filter bandwidths were one octave wide. Threshold persistence was measured for each spatially filtered image. Visual persistence for SP images increased significantly as spatial frequency increased, whereas no significant differences were found for NP images. This suggests that the temporal processing of complex, aperiodic visual images is influenced by the spatial frequency and contrast of local features within the image and cannot be predicted by space-averaged estimates of contrast and spatial frequency.     

Religiosity and psychological distress among blacks

The influence of religion on mental well-being has been the subject of controversy for a long while. Yet little is known about this relationship among black Americans. Using a probability-based sample of 451 urban black Americans, this study examines gender differences in religiosity and explores the ramifications for mental health. Findings indicate that females are more religious than males as evidenced by their greater participation in organizational forms of religious practice such as meetings and other gatherings. However, for both males and females, religiosity varied significantly by age and by marital and parental status. On the other hand, there were no differences in religiosity according to levels of education, income, and employment status for either males or females. With regard to mental health, greater religiosity was associated with fewer depressive symptoms for both males and females. Further, in the event of stressful circumstances, the influence of religion on mental well-being for females was direct, while religious involvement appeared to have an indirect or stress- buffering effect for males.     

Relationship between scores on developing cognitive abilities test and scores on medical college admissions test for nontraditional premedical students

The relationship of students' performance on the Developing Cognitive Abilities Test (DCAT), a test of scholastic aptitude, and their subsequent performance on the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) were examined for 122 nontraditional premedical students who participated in a medical educational preparatory program. A stepwise multiple regression analysis produced moderate, though significant multiple correlations among subscores on the two tests. While there were a few exceptions, for the most part all of the subscores on the Developing Cognitive Abilities Test made a significant contribution to the regression equation in the prediction of scores on MCAT subtests. Implications for the value of the Developing Cognitive Abilities Test as an admissions tool as well as providing direction for possible intervention are discussed.     

The effects of spatial phase on reaction time to spatially filtered images

Summary Many studies of visual perception have used periodic stimuli such as sine-wave gratings and checker-board patterns. It is well known that reaction time (RT) to such stimuli increases with increasing spatial frequency and decreasing contrast. While this is the case with periodic stimuli it is not clear that these relationships obtain for aperiodic stimuli such as natural scenes. A digitized image of an object (a vase) was submitted to two-dimensional Fourier analysis. Four pairs of spatial frequency band-limited images were created for each image. Each pair consisted of a normal-phase (NP) and a scrambled-phase (SP) version, with the magnitude spectrum and space-averaged luminance the same within each pair. Filter band-widths were 1 octave wide. Manual RT was measured for onset and offset of each spatially filtered image. Mean RT for SP images increased significantly with increasing spatial frequency, while no other significant differences were found with the NP images. This suggests that the temporal processing of complex, aperiodic images is influenced by the spatial frequency and contrast of local regions within the image, rather than by the space-averaged contrast of the entire image, and cannot be predicted by global estimates of contrast and spatial frequency.     

TV commercials as achievement scripts for women

This study suggests that sex stereotypes implicitly enacted, but never explicitly articulated, in TV commercials may inhibit women's achievement aspirations. Men and women (N=180) viewed locally produced replicas of four current, sex-stereotyped commercials, or four replicas that were identical except that the sex roles were reversed, or (control) named their favorite TV programs. All subjects then wrote an essay imagining their lives “10 years from now.” The essays were coded for achievement and homemaking themes. Women who viewed traditional commercials deemphasized achievement in favor of homemaking, compared to men and compared to women who had seen reversed role commercials. The reversed role commercials eliminated the sex difference in net achievement focus. Control subjects were indistinguishable from their same-sex counterparts in the traditional condition. The results identified some social changes needed to make “equality of opportunity” a social reality for women as well as men.     

Effects of induced mood on causal attributions for success and failure

The present research examined the influence of induced mood on causal perception and goal expectancies for an achievement-oriented activity. Prior to the administration of a laboratory task, positive and negative moods were experimentally induced in student volunteers. It was found that elated subjects were initially more confident of success than subjects temporarily made to feel depressed. Furthermore, following the receipt of bogus success/failure feedback, individuals in a positive mood perceived the causes of success as more stable than subjects in a negative mood. In addition, the judgments of elated subjects appear to have been biased in a self-enhancing direction following success, but outcome had no effect on the causal attributions of subjects temporarily induced to feel depressed. The findings indicate that prevailing affective state is an important determinant of causal perception, and suggest that mood may play a central role in the accurate or biased perception of valenced outcomes.The research reported in this article was supported by a Chancellor's Fellowship from UCLA to the author and by Grant #MH38014 to Bernard Weiner from the Public Health Service. I am grateful to Sandra Graham and Bernard Weiner for their many helpful suggestions, and to Anne Peplau and an anonymous reviewer for their perceptive comments on an earlier version of this paper. Appreciation is also expressed to the staff at the Center for Computer Based Research, UCLA, Gerald Shure, Director.     

The effect of reserpine, syrosingopine, and guanethidine on the retention of discriminated escape reversal: peripherally administered catecholamines cannot reverse the reserpine amnesia in this situation

In a series of experiments, the effects of reserpine, syrosingopine, and guanethidine on retention of a discriminated escape reversal training were investigated in mice. The peripherally and centrally acting reserpine produced amnesia while the primarily peripherally acting compounds, syrosingopine or guanethidine, did not produce amnesia even when given in high dosages or when training was given with low footshock. Unlike in the passive avoidance situation, peripherally administered norepinephrine or dopamine was not able to attenuate the reserpine-induced amnesia. The results were discussed in terms of the role of biogenic amines in memory formation.