Supernatural beliefs,natural kinds,and conceptual structure

This article presents cross-cultural evidence in support of the notion that adults' natural kind concepts are theory based but may be informed by knowledge/belief systems other than the biological. Three groups of subjects from western Nigeria--rural, urban, and elite--participated in the study. Subjects heard stories describing alterations of appearance; that is, one natural kind was made to resemble another in both ritual and nonritual contexts. Subjects then were required to judge the identity of the altered item and to give an explanation for the category judgment. It was predicted that subjects would make more nonpreservation-of-identity category judgments supported by supernatural explanations in the ritual contexts and that subjects' use of supernatural explanations would reflect the extent of their engagement with the supernatural. The first prediction was borne out; the second prediction was only partially supported. Discussion of the results emphasizes the importance of exploring the role of sociocultural factors in conceptual structure.     

Memory for metaphor by nonfluent bilinguals

The purpose of this study was to investigate memory for metaphors by nonfluent bilinguals under different orientation conditions. In Experiment 1 beginning bilinguals were asked to either (1) translate into English the figurative meanings of metaphors in the second language (L2); (2) translate into English the literal meanings of these same metaphorical sentences; (3) translate these metaphorical sentences into English-no specific instructions as how to translate given; (4) translate into English a similar list of nonmetaphorical sentences; (5) copy in L2 the list of metaphorical sentences; or (6) copy in L2 the list of nonmetaphorical sentences. Subjects' memory for these sentences was measured on a cued recall test. In Experiment 2 monolingual subjects did language tasks similar to conditions 1, 5, and 6 in Experiment 1. In both experiments, recall was best in the first condition and worst in the fifth condition. In Experiment 1 recall was also poorer in the second condition than in the other translation conditions. The implication is that the task for this condition requires subjects to process materials in a counterintuitive manner.     

Residential and community treatment services utilized by a sample of youth with severe emotional disturbances

Analyzed case records to determine the costs and service usage patterns for a group of 25 youth randomly selected from the case load of a regional mental health agency. Study participants had extensive histories of publicly supported psychiatric hospitalizations. An average of 36.2 contacts per youth (905 total contacts) with human services providers were documented. Approximately 2 out of every 5 contacts resulted in out-of-home placements. The estimated cost of providing services to the 25 youth exceeded 3 million dollars. The types and costs of treatment services provided to study participants are discussed.     

Impairment of spontaneous alternation performance by an NMDA antagonist: attenuation with non-NMDA treatments.

N-Methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonists disrupt learning on a variety of tasks. Previous findings indicate that glucose, naloxone, and physostigmine ameliorate learning deficits produced by several treatments. The present experiment examines whether these agents also reverse the amnestic effects of NMDA receptor blockade. Mice were tested for spontaneous alternation performance in a Y-maze. The animals received either saline or the NMDA antagonist, NPC 12626 (35 mg/kg, IP), 50 min prior to testing and received an additional injection of saline, glucose, naloxone, or physostigmine 30 min prior to testing. NPC 12626 significantly decreased alternation scores. Glucose (250 mg/kg), physostigmine (0.01 mg/kg), and naloxone (1 mg/kg) reversed the effects of NPC 12626. Thus, impairments of learning after NMDA receptor blockade share with other amnestic conditions the susceptibility to attenuation by glucose, naloxone, and physostigmine.     

Book reviews and books received

Helping interventions John Heron: Helping the Client: a Creative Practical Guide. London: Sage, 1990. £9.95.

A person-centred perspective on school counselling John McGuiness: A Whole School Approach to Pastoral Care. London: Kogan Page, 1989. £8.95.

How to relate effectively Richard Nelson-Jones: Human Relationship Skills (2nd edition). London: Cassell, 1990. £11.95.

Ripe for research? Dave Mearns and Windy Dryden: Experiences of Counselling in Action. London: Sage, 1989. £9.95.

Issues in action Windy Dryden (ed.): Key Issues for Counselling in Action. London: Sage, 1989. £7.95.

The meaning of death Rosemary Dinnage: The Ruffian on the Stair: Reflections on Death. London: Viking, 1990. £14.99.

The empty cradle Irving G. Leon: When a Baby Dies: Psychotherapy for Pregnancy and Newborn Loss. London: Yale University Press, 1990. £20.

Children against themselves Israel Orbach: Children Who Don't Want to Live: Understanding and Treating the Suicidal Child. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1988. £17.95.     

ACTH 4-9 analog can retard spatial alternation learning in brain damaged and normal rats

Thirty adult male hooded rats (Long-Evans strain) were assigned randomly to one of three lesion groups (n = 10) and prepared with medial frontal, posterior parietal, or sham neocortical injuries. Following a recovery interval of 10-12 days, access to water was limited to 30 min per day and the rats were shaped to traverse a T-maze for a reward of sweetened water. After a pretraining criterion was attained, osmotic minipumps (Alzet 2002) were installed subcutaneously. The minipumps delivered chronically for the next 14 to 15 days either 0 or 1.2 micrograms of ACTH 4-9 dissolved in bacteriostatic saline per day while the rats were trained on a reinforced spatial alternation task. Analysis of the number of errors made to a criterion of at least 80% correct alternations in two consecutive training sessions, or a ceiling of 62 errors (attained by two rats with parietal lesions), revealed that learning was impaired in the rats with parietal injuries. Contrary to our hypothesis, animals receiving ACTH 4-9 committed more errors than their counterparts receiving only saline.     

Creating new memories that are quickly accessed and confidently held

In two experiments involving a total of 542 subjects, a series of slides depicting a burglary was shown. After the initial event, subjects were exposed to one or more narratives about the event that contained some misinformation or neutral information about four critical details. Finally, subjects were tested on their memories of what they saw, and their reaction times and confidence levels were measured. When subjects took a standard test in which the misinformation item was a possible response option, they responded very quickly and confidently when making this incorrect choice. Misled subjects responded as quickly and confidently to these "unreal" memories as they did to their genuine memories. It does not seem, then, that the misinformation effect arises from a large proportion of subjects who must resolve a conflict between two memories when they are tested, a conflict that would be expected to take time. When subjects took a modified test in which the misinformation item was not a possible response, misled subjects were as accurate as were controls, but they responded more slowly, regardless of whether they ultimately chose the right or wrong option. These findings indicate that misinformation does introduce some form of interference not detected by a simple test of accuracy.     

Reliability of job evaluation: Differences across sex-typed jobs

Recent work has questioned whether a single job evaluation instrument can reliably measure jobs from different job families. To test this, a generalizability study was done to determine the reliability of three job evaluation instruments: one for male-dominated jobs, MIMA-Shop, one for female-dominated jobs, MIMA-office and one which evaluated both types, FES. Initial results indicated that the latter instrument suffered no loss in reliability, and that all three instruments were equally highly reliable. A second analysis evaluated the reliability of the FES for male-dominated jobs separately from the reliability of the FES for female-dominated jobs. These results indicated no significant difference in reliability for male-dominated jobs and for female-dominated jobs. Implications of these findings were discussed.A previous version of this paper was presented at the 95th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association at New York City, August 1987.