Toward competence: An eclectic approach

Recent developments in children's rights have led to increased criticism of the presumption of total incompetency until adulthood, a concept inconsistently defined by state law. Citing proposals from several disciplines, this article calls for increasing actual competency in decision-making through systematic education in conjunction with developmental levels and experience. The elements of informed consent are suggested as one mechanism for learning to make educated decisions in a variety of settings. The treatment of hyperkinetic children is discussed as a case example.     

The effects of semantic integration training on memory for pictograph sentences

The effectiveness of training a semantic integration strategy for recall of pictograph sequences, and the generalization of the strategy to a related oral sentence task were examined in 60 kindergarten prereaders. Semantic integration training consisted of three individual sessions in which the child was instructed to treat the sequence as a sentence and to act out the pictograph sentences using toys in order to facilitate recall. Repetition and no-practice control groups were included. Pictograph sentence memory post-tests immediately following and 2 weeks after training indicated that semantic integration training substantially improved recall for pictograph sequences, an improvement that was unrelated to the child's initial memory performance or subsequent post-training awareness of the strategy. In addition, the training resulted in better performance on a generalization test of oral sentence synthesis. These findings support a strategy-based conceptualization of individual differences in the semantic processing of written materials.     

Initial response to rape: The impact of factors within the rape situation

The relationship between specific aspects of the rape situation and immediate post-rape measures of depression, fear, anxiety, and social and interpersonal functioning in 50 recent victims of sexual assault was examined. The data failed to reveal any significant relationships between rape situation variables (e.g., stranger vs. known assailant, weapon vs. no weapon) and the nature or severity of the victims' psychological response. It is emphasized that this negative finding contradicts previous and current clinical lore, and has a number of implications for the assessment and treatment of rape victims.This research was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (MH#29692) to the first two authors.     

Semantic memory: Searching for attributes vs searching for names

The purpose of this experiment was to determine whether searching for a word that has a particular attribute (a fruit that is yellow) involves a different process than searching for a word whose name has a particular form (a fruit whose name begins with "p"). Ss saw category nouns paired with adjectives or letter restrictors presented on a series of blocked trials and a series of mixed trials. The Ss had to produce a word that fell in the space defined by the noun and the restricting adjective or letter. RT was fastest when trials were blocked and when a letter followed the presentation of the noun. This finding suggested the existence of two retrieval plans that can be executed when S has knowledge of the forthcoming type of item.     

Attribution of intention as a function of physiognomy

Ss agree in attributing character traits to strangers’ photographs, but there has been no explication of what such labels imply. Presumably. trait names either mediate or reflect Ss’ expectations of such strangers" likely social behaviors: but that remains undemonstrated, and we may be able to study such physiognomy-tied expectations directly. Sampling problems confront trait studies and intention studies alike, but the present research showed that Ss’ expectations of a person’s behavioral intentions, as measured by alternative interpretations of short “scenarios,” were reliably influenced by that person’s photograph.     

What is the “front” of a simple geometric form?

A total of 670 undergraduate Ss were tested in three studies conducted in an attempt to define a set of cues that minimally specify perceived “frontness” and “backness” of objects. In Experiment I, Ss were instructed to identify the “front” and “back” of printed squares to which no, one, or two circles were attached. In Experiment II, different Ss made the same kind of judgment to a wider range of geometric forms. In Experiment III, different Ss judged the direction of “imagined” movement of forms from Experiment I. The results indicated that the “front” and “back” are asymmetric opposite sides, with “front” the side most different from the rest and the side toward which the form is imagined to be moving.     

Need-Reinforcer Correspondence As a Predictor of Job Satisfaction

The “good fit” principle was applied to the prediction of job satisfaction, based on a proposition of the theory of work adjustment that satisfaction is a function of “correspondence” between individual needs and job reinforcers. Measures of needs, job reinforcers, and job satisfaction were administered to three groups of store employees. Five indices of need-reinforcer correspondence were calculated for each individual and applied as predictors of job satisfaction. For cashiers and sales clerks, correspondence measures correlated as high as .37 and .45, respectively, with job satisfaction; “hit rates” were as high as .68 and .73, respectively. Results for the checker-markers were not significant.     

Methylphenidate and cognitive therapy: A comparison of treatment approaches with hyperactive boys

This study of hyperactive boys evaluated the effects of three modes of treatment in relation to an untreated group. The treatments were administered over a 3-month period and included cognitive training, stimulant drug therapy (methylphenidate), and the two treatments combined. A follow-up assessment was conducted approximately 3 months after contact between the training staff and the child had ceased. Analyses of attentional deployment and cognitive style measures, tests of academic achievement, and behavioral ratings showed that only those children in the two medication treatment conditions demonstrated improvement in attentional deployment and behavioral ratings. In the cognitive therapy condition, there were changes only on measures of attentional deployment. The data did not provide evidence indicating that the combined medication and cognitive therapy condition was any more effective than that condition involving medication alone. Discussion provides future guidelines for evaluation of the relative effectiveness of stimulant drug therapy and other psychological treatment modalities.     

Impaired ranking of semantic attributes in dementia

The present work explored the loss of semantic attributes that is said to occur in dementia. In the first two experiments, subjects had to select attributes that went with concepts like airplane and church. The finding that demented subjects maintained high levels of accuracy when selecting attributes suggested that the semantic content of their concepts was relatively well preserved. The organization of the content was explored in a third experiment by having subjects order attributes according to their relative importance in defining concepts. While demented subjects performed better than chance, they did not rank attributes as well as healthy aged subjects, suggesting a disruption in organization whereby the importance of central attributes is reduced. The hypothesized disruption in organization is viewed in relation to the learning and memory deficit that is the hallmark of the dementias.