Distributional Information: A Powerful Cue for Acquiring Syntactic Categories

Many theorists have dismissed a priori the idea that distributional information could play a significant role in syntactic category acquisition. We demonstrate empirically that such information provides a powerful cue to syntactic category membership, which can be exploited by a variety of simple, psychologically plausible mechanisms. We present a range of results using a large corpus of child-directed speech and explore their psychological implications. While our results show that a considerable amount of information concerning the syntactic categories can be obtained from distributional information alone, we stress that many other sources of information may also be potential contributors to the identification of syntactic classes.     

Social Undermining, Support Satisfaction, and Affect: A Domain-Specific Lagged Effects Model

Using a latent variable structural equation modeling approach, relations among social undermining, support satisfaction, and affect were studied in a sample of 330 college students. Longitudinal analyses revealed lagged reciprocal relations over a 1-week interval between (1) social undermining and negative affect and (2) support satisfaction and positive affect. Cross-domain associations, by comparison, were nonsignificant; social undermining was unrelated to positive affect and social support was uncorrelated with negative affect. These results provide support for a domain-specific model of social relations and affect.     

Psychological skills and mindfulness training effects on the psychological wellbeing of undergraduate music students: An exploratory study

This study explored the efficacy of psychological skills and mindfulness training intervention on the psychological wellbeing of undergraduate music students. Participants were undergraduate music students (n = 36) from the Department of Music at a South African university, 21 of whom were elected to take the psychological skills and mindfulness training intervention. Data on their self-reported psychological wellbeing, psychological skills, mindfulness and performance anxiety levels were collected pre-and post-intervention. The analysis applied non-parametric procedures to determine changes in students’ psychological wellbeing after the seven-week intervention programme. Findings suggest improvements in psychological wellbeing, psychological skills, mindfulness and performance anxiety with training. Psychological skills and mindfulness training may have benefits to the psychological wellbeing of music students.     

Locus of control and achievement in child psychiatric inpatients

The relationship between the Nowicki-Strickland Locus of Control Scale for Children (Nowicki & Strickland, 1973) and academic achievement was examined in a sample of 66 child psychiatric inpatients. Previous studies had suggested that this measure correlated with achievement in normal samples (Nowicki & Strickland, 1973) but not in populations of male juvenile offenders (Little & Kendall, 1978). The product-moment correlation between the Nowicki-Strickland Scale and the Peabody Individual Achievement Test was significant. However, when the effect of IQ was controlled for in a partial correlation, there was no significant correlation. Discussion focuses on the relationship between these results and other findings in the area of locus of control, intelligence, and achievement.     

Relations among self-reported depressive symptoms in clinic-referred children versus adolescents.

Although there is consensus regarding the existence of childhood depression, disagreement remains as to whether symptoms are developmentally isomorphic. Previous studies focused on developmental differences in symptom levels; analyses of relations among symptoms may be more appropriate, however. Here both approaches were used to compare the Children's Depression Inventory responses from 1,030 clinic-referred children and adolescents. Four of nine symptom categories showed significant developmental differences in their correlations with total score. Externalizing behavior and guilt were more strongly related to depression in children than adolescents; affective symptoms and concerns about the future showed the reverse pattern. Results illustrate the importance of considering relations among symptoms as well as differences in symptom levels when evaluating theoretical claims about developmental differences in the nature of clinical syndromes.     

Sex-typed motor behaviors of “feminine” boys,conventionally masculine boys,and conventionally feminine girls

The purpose of this study was to determine whether, in four commonly observed childhood behaviors, the gross impression conveyed by “feminine” boys is distinctive from that of conventional boys, and in the direction of conventional girls. Three samples of children age 4–10 years were included in the study: boys with atypical sexual identity (N=12); age-matched conventionally sex-typed boys (N=8); and age-matched girls (N=7). The children were identically costumed to conceal gender and were videotaped while throwing a ball, walking, running, and telling a story. Videotaped segments of behaviors were randomly presented to four raters who judged the sex of the child on a five point scale which ranged from very likely male to very likely female. The analyses indicate that the sample to which the child belonged was the most important factor in explaining the rating the child received. The “feminine” boys occupied an intermediate position, one that was neither distinctly “feminine” nor distinctly “masculine.”     

The Mini-Mult with criminal psychiatric patients.

In order to determine the usefulness of the Mini-Mult with criminal psychiatric patients, 107 MMPI profiles were rescored for the Mini-Mult and compared with the standard MMPI. Correlations between the two test forms were high but eight of the eleven means of the scales on the Mini-Mult were significantly different from the MMPI. A modest correspondence between indexes of psychopathology and scale peaks was found. Results were interpreted as indicating that the use of the Mini-Mult is not justified with this population.     

Brief Rorschach records with children and adolescents

In order to determine the frequency with which children and adolescents give brief Rorschach (R less than 14) records and to test the hypothesis that brief records represent a resistance to testing, the psychological evaluations of 439 admissions to an inpatient unit were reviewed. Of the records reviewed, 16.6% were found to contain less than 14 responses. When the complete test protocol of those subjects who provided brief records were compared with those of a matched group, it was found that the group with brief records failed to complete the other parts of the evaluation significantly more often than did those subjects who did not give brief records. There was no significant difference between the two groups on IQ scores or on self-report scores of depression, anxiety, and social desirability. Result are interpreted as supporting Exner's (1988) hypothesis that brief records represent a form of resistance to being tested.