Adolescent Attachment,Identity, and Adjustment to College: Implications for the Continuity of Adaptation Hypothesis

We examined the concurrent relationship between late adolescent attachment to parents and peers and two broad indices of adolescent adaptation—personal and social identity and adjustment to college. Participants included 130 college freshmen and 123 upperclassmen. Although freshmen were disadvantaged relative to upperclassmen with respect to social and personal-emotional adjustment, there were no group differences on the attachment measures, on the measures of academic adjustment and goal commitment, and on the measure of social identity. Freshmen scored higher on personal identity than did upperclassmen. Women reported less alienation from peers, had more trust and better communication with peers, and had higher scores on personal and social idenitity than men. The attachment variables were significant predictors of personal and social identity. Pervasive relations were also found between attachment and adjustment to college, particularly for the upperclassmen sample.     

Relations between source amnesia and frontal lobe functioning in older adults

A study is reported in which the relations among normal aging, source amnesia, and frontal lobe functioning were explored. Twenty-four older adults (aged 60-84 years) were tested on their ability to remember where they had acquired new factual information; they were also given the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), a test of verbal fluency, and other psychometric tests. The degree of source amnesia in this normal sample correlated with age, verbal fluency, and some measures from the WCST. Source amnesia was not related to Performance IQ, however, or to a measure of fact recall. The implications for the relations among aging, memory, and frontal lobe functions are discussed.     

The Importance of Interpersonal Skills in Consultee-Centered Consultation: A Review

This review explores the empirical research on the importance of interpersonal communication skills in consultation. Studies have found consultants' facilitative characteristics, along with an appropriate use of verbal and nonverbal skills, to be important in the consultation process. Because of the state of the research literature, however, the need for more studies on verbal and nonverbal communication skills is suggested.     

Systematic 24-hr behavioral observations of sleep and wakefulness in a skilled-care nursing facility

Sleep patterns of aged, infirm, demented, chronically institutionalized residents of a skilled-care nursing facility were studied. The purpose of this naturalistic study was to describe sleep and wakefulness (S/W) within the limits afforded by brief behavioral observations and to examine homeostasis and diurnal rhythmicity of S/W as a function of psychoactive drug intake. Observers noted S/W every 15 min, 24 hr a day for 10 days in 24 Ss. Results indicated substantial individual variation in daytime hours. Daily and weekly variation within Ss was minimal. Sleep was least likely near sunset. Ss on psychoactive drugs showed dampened diurnal variation in S/W rhythms. In Ss not on such drugs, there was a suggestion of homeostasis of S/W between sleep during the morning and evening hours. Results are discussed methodologically (viability of approach), theoretically (age-related change in sleep), and practically (potential treatments).     

Relationship of personal-social variables to belief in paternalism in parent caregiving situations

Paternalism in family caregiving may jeopardize the older persons' autonomy; it needs to be better understood. Study objectives were to determine the relationship of belief in paternalism to personal-social characteristics and to determine the relative importance of these variables as predictors of belief in paternalism. Forty-six pairs of daughters (age 49.7) and mothers (age 77.7) were measured on belief in paternalism, dogmatism, attitude toward elders, affective feelings toward the other, and background and caregiving variables. Among both mothers and daughters, dogmatism and attitude toward elders were related to belief in paternalism; daughters' affective feelings was also related. Caregiving variables were unrelated, and demographic background was important only for daughters. Attitude toward elders was the strongest predictor. Results were interpreted in terms of a traditional family ideology.     

Information processing,neuropsychological function,and the inherited predisposition to alcoholism

Sons of male alcoholics are at particularly heightened risk for the development of alcoholism. This heightened risk frequently appears in association with increased incidence of conduct disorder or hyperactivity, with deficits in abstract thinking and poor school performance, with abnormalities in cued psychophysiological response, and with increased sensitivity to the putatively stress-response-dampening effects of alcohol intoxication. This risk and its associated features are discussed within the context of a neuropsychological theory, predicated on the notions (1) that deficits in cognitive functions theoretically dependent upon the intact functioning of the prefrontal cortex could underlie manifestation of the idiosyncracies commonly attributed to sons of male alcoholics, and (2) that acute alcohol intoxication could relieve the subjective discomfort associated with the consequences of such deficits.     

Correlates of age at first sexual intercourse in a national sample of young women

A subsample of 814 sexually experienced adolescent females from the 1979 U.S. National Survey of Young Women was analyzed to assess the correlates of age at 1st sexual intercourse. Multiple regression procedures were used to examine sets of variables sequentially. In the hierarchical regression model, the control variables (respondent's age, race, religion, and age at menarche), along with 3 independent variables (household income, ideal age at 1st marriage, and ideal age for 1st birth), predicted age at 1st intercourse. The control variables accounted for a major portion of the variance in the model. Of the controls, chronological age and age at menarche were highly significant across all models tested.     

BIOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

Abstract. The sciences may be conceptualized as a hierarchy ranked by level of organization (e.g., many-body physics ranks above particle physics). Each science serves as an antidiscipline for the science above it; that is, between each pair, tense but creative interplay is inevitable. Biology has advanced through such tension between its subdisciplines and now can serve as an antidiscipline for the social sciences—for anthropology, for example, by examining the connection between cultural and biological evolution; for psychology, by addressing the nature of learning and the structure of the unconscious; for economics, by examining economically irrational behavior and by comparing economic activity in humans and other species. Sociology, concerned mainly with advanced literate societies, is relatively remote from the genetic basis of human social behavior. However, moving between biological and social levels of organization generates richness and points to new and unexpected principles.     

Overt integrity tests versus personality-based measures of delinquency: An empirical comparis

Erratum

Overt integrity tests versus personality-based measures of delinquency: An empirical comparis