PARENT EDUCATION PROJECT II. INCREASING STIMULATING INTERACTIONS OF DEVELOP MENTALLY HANDICAPPED MOTHERS

Two studies are reported on the assessment and training of parent-child interactional skills in developmentally handicapped mothers. Study 1 compared the interactions of eight developmentally handicapped versus eight nonhandicapped mothers during play with their young (6–25 months) children. Results showed that the former group generally interacted much less with their children and that they were less likely to praise appropriate child behavior and imitate child vocalizations. Study 2 attempted to remediate these deficits, using a training package consisting of discussion, modeling, feedback, social reinforcement, and self-recording. Results showed, first, that the training did increase the targeted skills to well within the range found for the nonhandicapped mothers. Second, training effects generalized from the group instructional setting to the mothers' own homes. Third, newly acquired skills were generally maintained at or above levels found for the nonhandicapped mothers over a 5- to 10-month follow-up period. Finally, all seven children showed increases in vocalizations concomitant with parent training. The results suggest that developmentally handicapped mothers can be taught to provide more effective and stimulating interactions to their young children.     

Addictive personality traits in bulimic patients

Forty-five female patients attending for treatment for bulimia nervosa completed the EPQ and an Impulsiveness Inventory (I₇). An Addiction score, derived from items on the EPQ, was obtained confirming that this group of bulimic patients score almost as high as drug addicts and certainly well above the normal range. On individual personality scales, the bulimic Ss scored higher than normals on N, P, Imp and Emp, but lower on E, Vent and Social Desirability.     

PERCEPTION OF SOCIALIZATION ROLES: A STUDY OF ISRAELI MOTHERS IN TOWN AND KIBBUTZ*

Variations in mothers' role perceptions were studied as a function of (a) the amount of time mothers spend with their children, and (b) the cultural ideology of childrearing that assigns to the mother either sole or shared responsibility for socialization. Four groups of Israeli mothers of toddlers were studied. Among nuclear family mothers 21 had children in nursery school, and 22 had children in fulltime daycare. Among kibbutz mothers 23 lived on Familial kibbutzim where children slept at home, and 22 lived on Communal kibbutzim where children slept apart from their parents. Questionnaires assessed mothers' perceptions of mother and caregiver influence and their use of disciplinary and nurturant techniques. Whereas amount of time did not contribute to variations in role perceptions, childrearing ideology (sole vs shared socialization responsibility) showed strong effects. In accord with nuclear family ideology, daycare mothers perceived mothers as more influential and as using more of all socializing techniques than caregivers. In accord with their ideology of shared responsibilities, kibbutz mothers perceived caregivers to be as influential as mothers. Further, as specified by kibbutz ideology, kibbutz mothers reported that they used nurturance more and disciplinary techniques less than caregivers. The importance of cultural ideology on parents' role perceptions is discussed.     

Language specificity in lexical organization: Evidence from deaf signers' lexical organization of American Sign Language and English

A sign decision task, in which deaf signers made a decision about the number of hands required to form a particular sign of American Sign Language (ASL), revealed significant facilitation by repetition among signs that share a base morpheme. A lexical decision task on English words revealed facilitation by repetition among words that share a base morpheme in both English and ASL, but not among those that share a base morpheme in ASL only. This outcome occurred for both deaf and hearing subjects. The results are interpreted as evidence that the morphological principles of lexical organization observed in ASL do not extend to the organization of English for skilled deaf readers.     

The inflected noun system in Serbo-Croatian: Lexical representation of morphological structure

Repetition priming is examined for alternating and nonalternating morphologically related inflected nouns. In Experiments I and 2, latencies to targets in nominative and dative/locative cases, respectively, were invariant over case of prime. In Experiment 3, latencies to nominative-case nouns were the same whether the nouns were primed by forms in which the spelling and pronunciation of the common stem were shared (nonalternating) or not (alternating) with the nominative form. Results are interpreted as reflecting lexical organization among the members of a noun system. In Experiments I and 2, the pattern of latencies to primes suggests a satellite organization in which nominative forms are more strongly linked to oblique forms than oblique forms are to each other. In Experiment 3, atypical cases of alternating forms showed a different pattern of prime latencies, suggesting that the organization within a noun system may differ for alternating and nonalternating forms.     

Social information processing and sociometric status: Sex,age, and situational effects

Theoretically based measures of social information-processing patterns in specific situations were developed and administered to popular, average, socially rejected, and socially neglected girls and boys in the first, third, and fifth grades (total n=95). Measures included interpretations of peers' intentions, quantity and quality of responses generated to problematic stimuli, evaluations of responses, and enactments of particular responses. Three kinds of situations were generated empirically as stimuli: being teased, being provoked ambiguously, and initiating entry into a peer group. Deviant children (rejected and neglected) were found to respond deficiently compared to average and popular children, but only in the situation in which they were teased. Older children performed more competently than younger children in all three situations. Interactions among gender, sociometric status, and age also were found. Findings were interpreted as evidence of the elusiveness and complexity of social information-processing defects among low sociometric status children.The authors wish to acknowledge the support of the staff of the Monroe County Community School Corporation in the conduct of this research. This research was supported by an Indiana University doctoral dissertation grant and an Indiana University Women's Studies Grant awarded to the first author, and by NIMH Grant 37062 awarded to the second author. The authors wish to thank Steven R. Asher and Kenneth H. Rubin for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper.     

Control of responding by the location of sound: role of binaural cues.

In auditory localization experiments, where the subject observes from a fixed position, both relative sound intensity and arrival time at the two ears determine the extent of localization performance. The present experiment investigated the role of binaural cues in a different context, the sound-position discrimination task, where the subject is free to move and interact with the sound source. The role of binaural cues was investigated in rats by producing an interaural imbalance through unilateral removal of the middle auditory ossicle (incus) prior to discrimination training. Discrete trial go-right/go-left sound-position discrimination of unilaterally incudectomised rats was then compared with that of normal rats and of rats with the incus of both sides removed. While bilateral incus removal affected binaural intensity and arrival times, the symmetry of sound input between the two ears was preserved. Percentage of correct responses and videotaped observations of sound approach and exploration showed that the unilateral rats failed to localize the sounding speaker. Rats with symmetrical binaural input (normal and bilaterally incudectomised rats) accurately discriminated sound position for the duration of the experiment. Previously reported monaural localization based upon following the intensity gradient to the sound source was not observed in the unilaterally incudectomised rats of the present experiment. It is concluded that sound-position discrimination depends upon the use of binaural cues.     

The impact of personality on the reporting of unfounded symptoms and illness.

This study examined the role of personality in the reporting of symptoms and illness not supported by underlying pathology. After assessment of the Big Five personality factors, 276 healthy volunteers were inoculated with a common cold virus. On each of the following 5 days, objective indicators of pathology, self-reported symptoms, and self-reported illness onset were assessed. Neuroticism was directly associated with reports of unfounded (without a physiological basis) symptoms in individuals at baseline and postinoculation in those with and without colds. Neuroticism was also indirectly associated with reports of unfounded illness through reports of more symptoms. Openness to Experience was associated with reporting unfounded symptoms in those with verifiable colds, whereas Conscientiousness was associated with reporting unfounded illness in those who were not ill.     

Culture, Society, and the Individual: Cross-Cultural Political Psychology in Japan

Studies of political behavior and attitudes in Japan have often looked to similarities and differences between the West, most notably the U.S., and Japan. This paper details two approaches concerned with examining Japanese social and political behavior within a cross-cultural context. The first—nihonjinron—works with cultural nationalism, which argues that Japanese values are unique and thus no social theory developed in the West can be applied to Japanese society. The second approach is characterized by field studies and tries to assess Japanese social behavior by comparing it to that of Americans and Europeans. There is a great deal of knowledge on political behavior in Western countries which scholars in Japan often refer to in order to evaluate the significance of their survey results. But there is still limited information on the Japanese situation, and any attempt to construct a general theory in either cultural or cross-cultural political psychology will have to refer also to human attitudes in this non-Western industrial society.