Relationship of internal-external locus of control,self-concept,and masculinity-femininity to fear of success in Black freshmen and senior college women

The concepts of locus of control, self-concept, masculinity-femininity, and their relationship to fear of success in Black college women were explored. Scores were obtained from stories written in response to six verbal cues designed to assess fear-of-success imagery. Tabulations ranging from zero (denoting absence of fear) to six (denoting most fear) were correlated with Gurin's I-E Scale, the Modified Piers-Harris Self-Concept Scale, and the Modified Gough Masculinity-Femininity Scale. There was no significant mean difference between freshmen and seniors on fear of success. However, an analysis of variance revealed that externals showed significantly more fear-of-success imagery than internals. Significant inverse correlations were located between the measure of self-concept and certain cues eliciting fear of success. Femininity was not shown to be related to any of the fear-of-success measures.     

Framing pictures: the role of knowledge in automatized encoding and memory for gist

In general, frame theories are theories about the representation and use of knowledge for pattern recognition. In the present article, the general properties of frame theories are discussed with regard to their implications for psychological processes, and an experiment is presented which tests whether this approach yields viable predictions about the manner in which people comprehend and remember pictures of real-world scenes. Normative ratings were used to construct six target pictures, each of which contained both expected and unexpected objects. Eye movements were then recorded as subjects who anticipated a difficult recognition test viewed the targets for 30 sec each. Then, the subjects were asked to discriminate the target pictures from distractors in which either expected or unexpected objects had been changed. One consequence of the embeddedness of frame systems is that global frames may function as "semantic pattern detectors," so that the perceptual knowledge in them could be used for relatively automatic pattern recognition and comprehension. Thus, subjects might be able to identify expected objects by using automatized encoding procedures that operate on global physical features. In contrast, identification of unexpected objects (i.e., objects not represented in the currently active frame) should generally require more analysis of local visual details. These hypotheses were confirmed with the fixation duration data: First fixations to the unexpected objects were approximately twice as long as first fixations to the expected objects. On the recognition test, subjects generally noticed only the changes that had been made to the unexpected objects, despite the fact that the proportions of correct rejections were made conditional on whether the target objects had been fixated. These data are again consistent with the idea that local visual details of objects represented in the frame are not neccesary for identification and are thus not generally encoded. Further, since subjects usually did not notice when expected objects were deleted or replaced with different expected objects, it was concluded that if two events instantiate the same frame, they may often be indistinguishable, as long as any differences between them are represented as arguments in the frame. Thus, for the most part, the only information about an event that is episodically "tagged" is information which distinguishes that particular event from others of the same general class. The data reinforce the utility of a frame theory approach to perception and memory.     

Some effects of gaze on subjects motivated to seek or to avoid social comparison

In a conceptual replication and extension of Sarnoff and Zimbardo's study (Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1961, 62, 356–363), subjects were motivated to seek (Fear Arousal) or avoid (Embarrassment Arousal) social comparison. They were then required to affiliate with another person who either encouraged social comparison by gazing directly at the subject or discouraged it by averting his gaze. This other person was either an appropriate reference person (similar saate) or irrelevant for social comparison purposes. As predicted, Fear subjects liked a companion who looked at them and felt less tense in his presence, while Embarrassed subjects preferred the person who looked away. This interaction occurred only in the Appropriate Reference Person condition, a result consistent with an explanation based on social comparison processes.     

Non-motor aspects of Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease is primarily considered to be a movement disorder and is defined by its motor signs. Yet, the behavioral manifestations of the disease are often more debilitating than its motor complications. This review will focus on the non-motor aspects of Parkinson's disease, including mood, psychosis, cognitive, sleep, fatigue, apathy, delirium, and repetitive disorders, that may occur. The phenomenology, pathology, and treatment of the behavioral symptoms of Parkinson's disease will be discussed.     

Avoidant attachment and the experience of parenting

Guided by attachment theory, this research investigated connections between avoidant attachment styles and the experience of parenting after the birth of a couple's first child. One hundred and six couples completed a battery of measures approximately 6 weeks before and 6 months after the birth of their first child. As anticipated, parents with more avoidant attachment styles experienced greater stress after the birth of their child and perceived parenting as less satisfying and personally meaningful. Attachment theory maintains that adult attachment styles should affect relationships with adults and with one's children. The present findings provide some of the first evidence that self-reported adult romantic attachment styles, which have been the focus of attachment research by social and personality psychologists, are systematically associated with parent-child relationships. They also provide insight into the processes through which secure and insecure attachment styles might be transmitted from one generation to the next.     

Is there a special psychoanalytic love?

Although the analyst's role mandates a degree of detachment, analysts have often said that they offer patients a special kind of love. They have tended to equate that love with understanding, thus neutralizing the paradox but also diluting the love. When something more resembling a loving affect is sought, the suggestions include the love a scholar feels for his subject, the love that accompanies immersion in great literature, and love that is self-generated by deliberate efforts to move toward the patient or to generate empathy in oneself. But a form of love may also arise from the analyst's unique and relatively pure acquaintance with a person's "appeal," by which is meant the patient's effort to elicit responses from the analyst. Although the awareness of transference most obviously tends to immunize him, it also gives him a poignant "insider's" feel of the patient's appeal, since he is the target of that appeal while being unencumbered by the myriad considerations that would color his perception were he to regard himself as a proper object.     

Comparison of four scoring methods for the reading span test

This study compared four common methods for scoring a popular working memory span task, Daneman and Carpenter’s (1980) reading span test. More continuous measures, such as the total number of words recalled or the proportion of words per set averaged across all sets, were more normally distributed, had higher reliability, and had higher correlations with criterion measures (reading comprehension and Verbal SAT) than did traditional span scores that quantified the highest set size completed or the number of words in correct sets. Furthermore, creation of arbitrary groups (e.g., high-span and low-span groups) led to poor reliability and greatly reduced predictive power. It is recommended that researchers score span tasks with continuous measures and avoid post hoc dichotomization of working memory span groups.