The Stability of Self-Reported Physical Symptoms in African American Mothers and Their Impact on Children

Self-reported physical symptoms are an important marker of health and well-being, particularly among African American women. The stability of African American women’s physical symptoms or the impact of their symptoms on their children, however, has yet to be examined. This longitudinal study examined the stability of maternal self-reported physical symptoms, as well as their role in shaping child-reported physical symptoms, among 137 low-income African American families. Findings revealed that mothers’ self-reported physical symptoms were stable over 2.5 years. Mothers who reported higher levels of physical symptoms were more likely to have children who concurrently reported higher levels of symptoms. Physical symptoms reported by mothers at the first assessment also predicted child-reported physical symptoms 2.5 years later, but only for boys. Physical symptoms appear to be an important, yet understudied, symptom domain that may have significant implications for the health and well-being of African American families.     

New methods for new questions: obstacles and opportunities

Two forces motivate this special section, "New Methods for New Questions in Developmental Psychology." First are recent developments in social science methodology and the increasing availability of those methods in common software packages. Second, at the same time psychologists' understanding of developmental phenomena has continued to grow. At their best, these developments in theory and methods work in tandem, fueling each other. Newer methods make it possible for scientists to better test their ideas; better ideas lead methodologists to techniques that better reflect, capture, and quantify the underlying processes. The articles in this special section represent a sampling of these new methods and new questions. The authors describe common themes in these articles and identify barriers to future progress, such as the lack of data sharing by and analytical training for developmentalists.     

Bestowal Without Appraisal: Problems in Frankfurt’s Characterization of Love and Personal Identity

Harry Frankfurt characterizes love as “a disinterested concern for the existence of what is loved, and for what is good for it.” As such, he views romantic love as an inauthentic paradigm for love since such love desires reciprocation, sexual gratification and so on. I argue that Frankfurt’s conception of love is (a) too general—he does not distinguish between the type of love one has for one’s partner, one’s country, a moral ideal, etc., (b) it overemphasizes the role of bestowal at the expense of the part played by appraisal and (c) it is insufficiently social. Certain forms of love, romantic love and friendship for instance, are defined largely in terms of reciprocation. For Frankfurt, reciprocation is somewhat of an accidental feature of love. This deficiency in Frankfurt’s conception of love can be traced to a problem in his conception of selfhood which I argue is insufficiently social in nature.

Developmental profiles of adolescents and young adults choosing abortion: stage sequence, décalage, and implications for policy.

Three groups of unmarried females (ages 12-14, 17-19, and 23-25) electing to have an abortion in the first trimester of their first pregnancy were administered the Washington University Sentence Completion Test, the Rest Defining Issues Test, and a moral judgment interview of their reasons for choosing an abortion. Results indicated that there were clear developmental differences between the youngest group and the two older groups on the general measures of ego development and principled moral reasoning, as theory would have predicted. There were, however, no major differences across the three groups on the level of reasoning which directly assessed the specific decision concerning abortion. Further, all three groups were assessed at the self-protective level characterized by Stage 2 reasons of financial consequences and the need to rely exclusively on one's own self in such a difficult dilemma. These findings and developmental profiles are compared to national base rates, and the possible implications of apparent décalage, or discrepancy between the general stage assessments and the specific assessment on abortion, are discussed. In addition, the similarity between the older group of adolescents and the young adults was examined, particularly in light of the current controversy over mandatory parental consent.     

Scene articulation: dependence of illuminant estimates on number of surfaces

The ability of observers to detect changes in illuminant over two scenes containing different random samples of reflecting surfaces was determined in an experiment with Mondrian-like patterns containing different numbers of coloured patches. Performance was found to improve as the number of patches increased from 9 to 49. In principle, observers could have used space-average scene colour as the cue ('grey-world' hypothesis) or the colour of the brightest surface in the scene ('bright-is-white' hypothesis), as the two cues generally covary. In a second experiment, observers matched illuminants across different patterns in which the space-average cue and the brightest-patch cue were independently manipulated. The articulation of the patterns was varied: the number of patches increased from 49 (patch width 1 deg visual angle) to over 50000 (patch width 0.03 deg), while the gamut of colours was held constant. Space-average colour was found to be the dominant cue with all patterns except for those with the largest patches.     

Exporting analogue behavioral observation from research to clinical practice: useful or cost-defective?

The special section on analogue behavioral observation (ABO) provided an in-depth review of various ABO assessment procedures. Despite their availability, however, these procedures are rarely used in clinical practice. This may result in part from the traditions on which most ABO assessments are based, from distinctions between clinical and research assessment environments, and from the need for more information about the cost-effectiveness of ABO strategies for meeting specific needs of clinicians in applied settings. Suggestions for bridging the research-clinical gap involve investigating more thoroughly when ABO does and does not provide useful information for various purposes in applied settings and increasing accessibility and cost-effectiveness of ABO procedures for practitioners.