Reasons for Living: Mood Effects Revisited1

To explore the relationship between mood and cognitive restraints to suicide, 98 undergraduates experienced the Velten mood-induction procedure to induce an elated, depressed, or neutral (unchanged) mood. They then completed the Multiple Adjective Affect Checklist, the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory, and the Reasons for Living Inventory. Surprisingly, compared to neutral students, depressed students reported more overall reasons for living, greater feelings of responsibility to family, and more moral objections to suicide, and elated students reported more feelings of responsibility to family. Most responsive depressed students also had higher fear of suicide than others, and most responsive elated students had higher survival and coping beliefs than others. Results suggest that a mildly depressed mood caused students' increased reliance on cognitive beliefs about not committing suicide, and may indicate that mildly depressed persons might benefit from and be particularly receptive to cognitive interventions stressing beliefs about family and religious commitments.     

INDUCING VARIABILITY IN COMMUNICATIVE GESTURES USED BY SEVERELY RETARDED INDIVIDUALS

Handicapped individuals who have been taught spontaneous gesture requests often use only a small part of their vocabulary. Procedures to recover the unused part of this vocabulary have not been documented. This study was designed to identify procedures for increasing the proportion of gestures used spontaneously. Six mentally handicapped individuals served as subjects. After a baseline phase during which spontaneous gesture requests were reinforced, consequences were withheld for high-rate gesture requests. This led to an increase in different gesture requests. Although gesture requests did not return to baseline levels during a reversal condition, functional control was demonstrated by way of a multiple baseline across subjects. The absence of a reversal effect suggests enduring effects of the procedure.     

Multiple role juggling and daily mood states in working mothers: an experience sampling study

The effects of multiple role juggling (i.e., simultaneously attending to demands of different roles) on daily mood states of employed mothers were examined. Ss completed activity and mood questionnaires 8 times a day for 8 days. Multiple role juggling had immediate negative effects on task enjoyment and mood. However, contrast effects and habituation to role juggling occurred when mood and satisfaction were examined over time. Furthermore, mood states tended to spill over from one episode to the next within a day, but contrast effects were found across days. These results reflect the complex nature of psychological adjustment to multiple role occupancy.     

After-contraction phenomenon: influences on performance and learning

Three experiments investigated the influence of an after-contraction phenomenon on the performance and learning of a dynamic force-production task. The after-contraction effect refers to an involuntary potentiation (induced by a sustained precontraction) that is thought to summate with voluntary motor commands to bias subsequent responding. The precontraction involved a brief (20 s) static contraction. The subsequent influence of the precontraction on a dynamic force-production task was assessed. Experiments 1 and 2 were aimed at demonstrating the direct impact of the precontraction intensity on the magnitude and decay of the after-contraction effect. The results indicated that as the intensity of the precontraction increased, the magnitude of the induced bias increased. In Experiment 3, the indirect influence on subsequent retention of varying the precontraction intensity during acquisition was investigated. The results indicated that the performance of subjects experiencing varying precontraction intensities during acquisition was inferior to that of subjects experiencing a constant precontraction intensity, but the performance of the varied precontraction intensities group was superior on the test of retention. It is noted that the paradoxical reversal from acquisition to retention is similar to that found in contextual interference experiments and may arise from similar mechanisms.     

Naming speed deficits in reading disability: multiple measures of a singular process

Speed of word identification is important in the theories of reading proposed by La Berge and Samuels (1974) and Perfetti (1985), and is substantially correlated with reading skill. However, there is controversy about whether disabled readers have a speed deficit that is restricted to the identification of printed words, or if instead, they have a more general speed deficit in retrieving names of even single digits. To investigate this issue, poor and average readers (N = 43) in grade 2 were assessed on several indices of speed of digit and letter naming, using both continuous-list and discrete-trial methodologies. MANCOVA indicated clear effects of reader group on discrete-trial latencies, as well as an interaction between reader group and the speed with which to-be-named items were presented. A series of hierarchical regression analyses explored the amount of shared variance between various measures of digit naming speed and five indices of reading skill. Latency for word identification shares considerable variance with latency for digit naming, and, in general, accounts for the shared variance of naming speed and several other measures of reading skill. Naming speed contributed variance in reading skill. Naming speed contributed variance in reading skill independently of measures of phonological awareness.     

The relationship between trauma and financial and physical well-being among Cambodians in the United States.

This study focused on the relationship between trauma and financial and physical well-being of Cambodian refugees in the United States. Trauma was defined by three variables: whether or not trauma had been experienced in Cambodia, the number of traumas experienced, and the number of years spent in refugee camps. It was hypothesized that these trauma variables would predict financial and physical health among Cambodians in the United States. A discriminant analysis showed significant relationships between the trauma variables and current employment status, and multiple regression analyses showed that trauma predicted income and physical health.     

Is object texture a constraint on human prehension?: kinematic evidence

The present experiment determined whether object texture influenced the transport and grasp components of human prehension. Infrared markers placed on the index finger, thumb, and wrist were recorded using a WATSMART system. The test objects were cylindrical dowels (103 mm high, 25 mm diameter, and 150 g in weight) of various surface materials (plain metal, coated with Vaseline, and covered with coarse sandpaper). Only temporal kinematic measures were affected by texture: Movement time (ms), time after peak deceleration (ms), percentages of movement time following maximum aperture, velocity, and deceleration were all significantly greater for the slippery dowel than the normal and rough dowels. Results indicated that the increased time associated with the slippery dowel could be explained entirely by increased time between contact with the dowel and dowel lift. Thus, these results are like those of Weir, MacKenzie, Marteniuk, Cargoe, and Frazer (1991), in which object weight was shown not to affect the free-motion phase, which includes the transport and grasp components of prehension. It appears that intrinsic object properties like weight and texture affect only the finger-object interaction phase of prehension; subsequent research is needed to dissociate inertial and surface friction effects while in contact with objects     

The use of guided imagery in psychotherapy: Modules for use with passive relaxation training

Passive relaxation training can be an important technique when conducting psychotherapy with anxiety disorder clients. A central element of the passive relaxation process is the use of guided imagery. The clinical use of imagery is verbally guided by the therapist and includes multiple sense modalities. The exact procedures used in guided imagery are not often described in adequate detail. An appendix is included to describe five guided imagery modules to be used in combination with the passive relaxation procedures.     

Hopelessness in community-residing aged persons: a viable construct?

Previous work with the Geriatric Hopelessness Scale (GHS; Fry, 1984, 1986) suggests that it may be a useful measure of pessimism for a variety of domains among elderly persons. One hundred seven community-residing aged persons were individually administered the GHS and a variety of personality and cognitive functioning measures in an effort to further refine and validate the GHS. Results suggest very modest internal consistency and a poorly defined factor structure for the GHS, in contrast to earlier findings. Although the GHS failed to differentiate elderly persons by age, it was nonetheless related to self-esteem, depression, self-rated health, internality, morale, and life satisfaction. Taken together, these data indicate that the research and clinical utility of the GHS with community-residing aged persons may be more limited than previously believed.