Affect availability, tolerance, complexity, and modulation in psychoanalysis: followup of a longitudinal, prospective study

Evaluation of 22 patients in supervised psychoanalysis showed that affect availability and tolerance changed in a positive direction during the course of psychoanalysis. In this study, we have defined criteria of change that can be clinically observed. The changes observed were present one year following the completion of psychoanalysis. Ratings of analysts' and patients' interviews, and ratings of psychological tests all revealed that patients had derived "therapeutic benefit" in relation to affect experience and management. Discriminations were made among changes in affect modulation, which reflected both loosening and tightening of controls, changes in affect availability, changes in experience of painful affects, and changes in experience of affect complexity. Analysts' interviews and psychological test data reflected notable changes in affect modulation in the direction of increased control, while patients' interviews more often reflected changes in the direction of increased expressiveness.     

Coping ability, stress, productive load, and symptoms.

A study of 450 college students demonstrated (a) the importance of a distinction between self-produced and externally produced stressors, (b) the usefulness of a construct of productive load, and (c) stronger relations of the Constructive Thinking Inventory than of the Hardiness Questionnaire with productive load and with mental and physical symptoms. Because a major path through which coping ability influences symptoms is negative emotions, the widely recommended practice of partialing self-reported negative affect out of relations among coping, stress, and symptoms is often inappropriate. However, as total daily stressors (e.g., hassles) consist largely of self-produced stressors, it is highly confounded with coping ability, and it is therefore important to partial coping ability out of relations between total stressors and other variables.     

Speed of information-processing in an inductive reasoning task and its relationship to psychometric intelligence

The relationship between psychometric intelligence (measured by means of Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices and two verbal subtests of the “Intelligenz-Struktur-Test-70”) and speed of information-processing in a newly developed computerized reaction time (RT) task called the Concept-Verification-Test (CVT) was investigated in a sample of 104 undergraduates. In this CVT, first, one of five possible conceptual rules is presented on a computer monitor. After reading the rule, the subject has to press a button and then one of 27 possible simple geometrical figures is presented, which either is an example of the concept or not. The subject has to press the true button if the presented figure is a positive instance of the rule or the false button if it is not. Two RTs were measured: The Comprehension Reaction Time (CRT) from the onset of the rule to the first button press and the Verification Reaction Time (VRT) from the onset of the figure until the response is given. The different complexity of the conceptual rules used also allowed us to examine the “complexity hypothesis” (i.e. correlations with intelligence should be higher for more complex RT tasks). As predicted, both CRTs and VRTs correlated negatively with intelligence, but we found no evidence for the validity of the complexity hypothesis.     

Identification with aggression vs. turning against the self: An empirical study of turn-of-the-century European Jewish humor

Self-directed demeaning ethnic humor is hypothesized to represent either a means of self-deprecation or a stance of disidentifying with one’s own group of origin. Compendia of published Yiddish humor were examined to empirically test competing conceptualizations of Jewish wit. Results are analyzed in the context of the social milieu of the publication samples.     

Sex differences in motor performance of young children: Fact or fiction?

Prepubescent boys and girls who had participated for one or more years in a coeducational physical education program were classified by grade (3, 4, and 5) and year (1977, 1978, and 1979). Scores from the AAHPER Youth Fitness Test were analyzed for differences. Results indicated that females at prepubescent ages may be expected to perform at similar levels to boys of the same age on most test items. While differences were not significant, girls in 1979 were actually better than boys of the same age from the two previous years.     

The shape of inhibitory fields in the human visual system

Five point sources of light were displayed sequentially in a horizontal line, with .45 in. of separation between each point, employing a computer-based cathode-ray tube display system. If a particular display order and appropriate display rate is employed, then the first two points being displayed will not be perceived. By systematically varying the spatial location of these two blanked points relative to the three unblanked points, a start is made towards mapping the shape of visual inhibitory fields in man, and this general technique is related to the work of Hartline and of Ratliff on lateral inhibition and to that of Hubel and Wiesel with receptive fields in the cat and monkey striate cortex.     

Visual information processing of sequentially presented inputs: II. Effects of list length and interstimulus interval values on subspan storage and retrieval mechanisms

A computer-based, cathode-ray tube display system was employed to study the effect of subspan list length, i.e., 2-, 3-, 4-, 5-, 6-, or 7-decimaldigits, at several interstimulus-interval (ISI) values, i.e., 60, 100, 140, 180, 220, 260, and 300 msec, on visual-information processing, storage, and retrieval mechanisms. Complicated interactions, found in an earlier study employing word strings, were found again in the present study between list length and ISI values, and two fundamental questions raised by these interactions still requiring answers were outlined.