Attributional and Symbolic Predictors of Abortion Attitudes1

Attributional and symbolic politics approaches were used to develop a model relating symbolic predispositions, perceptions of responsibility for unwanted pregnancy, affects, and attitudes toward abortion. In Study 1, a taxonomy of 12 distinct causes of unwanted pregnancy was identified. College-student subjects in Study 2 rated these causes on importance, controllability, blame, pity, anger, and judgments in favor of abortion. A regression analysis revealed that abortion approval in this student sample is negatively related to conservatism, religiosity, and blame. In Study 3, a more extensive path mode) is offered indicating that abortion approval in a nonstudent sample is linked negatively to religiosity and moral traditionalism, and positively to sympathy. Results of the study demonstrate the utility of applying social psychological theory to abortion attitudes.     

Placement Stability Following Short-Term Residential Care

Youth discharged from a short-term residential facility and reunified with their parents were contacted at least one year after discharge to determine whether or not they had a disruption in their placement since reunification. Follow-up intervals of 149 youth contacted (82% of the eligible sample) ranged from a minimum of 12 months to a maximum of 30 months post-discharge. Differences in the time to placement disruption were analyzed using survival analysis techniques. After controlling for adjustment differences during the treatment program, youth behavior problems, and family problems, a significant interaction of youth age and treatment intensity was found: Compared to the others, younger youth who received additional treatment components had placement disruptions later and less frequently.     

Panic Disorder: Cognitive Behavioral and Pharmacological Treatment Strategies

The past decade has seen significant advances in both psychosocial, notably cognitive behavioral (CBT), and pharmacological treatments for panic disorder. Given the widely acknowledged efficacy of both forms of treatment, it is reasonable to consider that the combination of approaches should yield an extremely potent strategy to treating panic disorder. The present report summarizes scientific evidence for the singular and combined treatment approaches to panic disorder. Data across studies indicate that combined treatments yield immediate and short-term benefits above those provided by either pharmacologic treatment or CBT alone. In the long-term, however, these benefits disappear. In fact, the combination of benzodiazepines and CBT appears to produce poorer end-state functioning than CBT alone. Other data indicate that the sequencing of pharmacotherapy and CBT may be useful for benzodiazepine fading. Although these data are preliminary, combined treatments do not appear to be the treatment of choice for patients with panic disorder. Treatment algorithms are suggested based on existing data.     

Faces as forms in the world of the newborn

A number of recent studies have indicated that newborns can learn to recognize mother's face within a few hours of birth. Two of the present authors suggested that a simple auto-associative net might explain that rapid learning. This paper reports three experiments in which the newborn's ability to recognize a learned face over three transformations was tested. The transformations were: (1) a photonegative transformation, (2) a size change and (3) rotation in the third dimension of visual space. Existing auto-associative nets cannot maintain identification across these transformations. The newborns succeeded with all three. An alternative proposal based on the idea that there is a built-in specification of the true shape of a face in the frontal parallel plane is outlined. These data present a challenge not only to associationist theories but also to their main rival, differentiation theory.     

The encoding of rate and talker information during phonetic perception

The acoustic structure of the speech signal is extremely variable due to a variety of contextual factors, including talker characteristics and speaking rate. To account for the listener’s ability to adjust to this variability, speech researchers have posited the existence of talker and rate normalization processes. The current study examined how the perceptual system encoded information about talker and speaking rate during phonetic perception. Experiments 1–3 examined this question, using a speeded classification paradigm developed by Garner (1974). The results of these experiments indicated that decisions about phonemic identity were affected by both talker and rate information: irrelevant variation in either dimension interfered with phonemic classification. While rate classification was also affected by phoneme variation, talker classification was not. Experiment 4 examined the impact of talker and rate variation on the voicing boundary under different blocking conditions. The results indicated that talker characteristics influenced the voicing boundary when talker variation occurred within a block of trials only under certain conditions. Rate variation, however, influenced the voicing boundary regardless of whether or not there was rate variation within a block of trials. The findings from these experiments indicate that phoneme and rate information are encoded in an integral manner during speech perception, while talker characteristics are encoded separately.     

Frontal lobe functions in attention deficit disorder with and without hyperactivity: A review and research report

We review 22 neuropsychological studies of frontal lobe functions in children with attention deficit disorder with and without hyperactivity (ADD/+H,ADD/-H). Some measures presumed to assess frontal lobe dysfunctions were not reliably sensitive to the deficits occurring in either form of ADD. Tests of response inhibition more reliably distinguished ADD/+H from normal children. Where impairments were found on other tests between ADD and normal subjects, they were highly inconsistent across studies and seemed strongly related to age of the subjects and possibly to the version of the test employed. Other methodological differences across studies further contributed to the discrepant reports. The co-morbidity of other disorders, such as learning disabilities (LD) and conduct problems, with ADD may be an additional confounding factor in some, though not all, of these studies. In a separate study, children with ADD/+H (n=12) were then compared on frontal lobe tests to three other groups: ADD/-H (n=12), LD but no ADD (n=11),and normal children (n=12) statistically covarying for differences in conduct problems across groups. Most measures did not distinguish among these groups. Both ADD groups made more omission errors on a Continuous Performance Test (CPT) than the normal group. All three clinical groups performed more poorly on the word and interference portions of the Stroop Test. Thus, while both types of ADD share some apparent similarities in deficits on a few frontal lobe tests in this study, the totality of existing findings suggests an additional problem with perceptual-motor speed and processing in the ADD/-H group.This research was supported by NIMH grant MH41464 and by funds from the Department of Psychiatry, University of Massachusetts Medical Center. The authors are grateful to Judy Tessier and Ellen Mintz-Lennick for their assistance with some of the data collection and scoring. The comments of Virginia Douglas on an earlier draft of this paper are greatly appreciated.     

Conservatism and Perceptions of Poverty: An Attributional Analysis1

Attribution theory was used to relate causal explanations for poverty to affect and behavioral intentions. In Experiment 1, student subjects rated 13 causes of poverty on importance, the attribution of controllability, blame, affects of pity and anger, and judgments of help-giving (personal help and welfare). Two individual differences, conservatism and the belief in a just world, were also assessed. A principal components analysis categorized the causes into three types: individualistic, societal, and fatalistic. Conservatism correlated positively with a belief in the importance of individualistic causes, controllability, blame, and anger, and it correlated negatively with perceptions of the importance of societal causes, pity, and intentions to help. No systematic effects of the belief in a just world emerged. A structural equation analysis revealed that personal help is emotionally determined, whereas welfare judgments are directly related to attributions of responsibility and political ideology. Experiment 2 revealed a similar pattern of results using a nonstudent sample.     

A Comparison of Feminist and Nonfeminist Women's and Men's Reactions to Nonsexist and Feminist Counseling: A Replication and Extension

In Study 1 the authors examined the reactions of 159 feminist and nonfeminist college women to videotaped versions of nonsexist-humanistic, liberal feminist, and radical feminist approaches to counseling. College women rated all counselors similarly on the dimensions of attractiveness, expertness, and trustworthiness and on other measures of counselor preference. Feminist counselors, however, were rated as more likely than were nonsexist counselors to pursue various feminist goals. In Study 2 the authors used the same methods to examine the reactions of 123 men to nonsexist, liberal, and radical feminist counselors. In general, men's responses were similar to those of women.     

Development of a tool to assess suicide risk factors in urban adolescents

Dramatic increases in the adolescent suicide rate over the past three decades have underscored the need for risk-assessment tools. The tools that do exist are oriented to older populations and their application to adolescents is questionable. A project was initiated at the University of Utah's Health Education Department to develop a pilot instrument to examine the differences between adolescents who have attempted suicide and other teenagers. Eighty-two subjects between the ages of 14 and 19 participated in the test of this instrument. Twenty-five subjects were identified by a physician or psychologist as having failed in a sincere suicide attempt within the previous 18 months. Fifty-seven nonsuicide attempters with similar demographic profiles served as a comparison group. An 86-item questionnaire was administered to both groups. Questions were generated from a review of the literature of the past three decades for problems associated with suicide in this population. Questions were sorted into three domains (family environment, social environment, and self-perceptions), with each domain having several subdomains. Statistical analysis revealed significant differences for each of the three domains and on 55 of 86 questions. The results were used to create a streamlined instrument for assessing suicide risk that can be administered in 20 minutes.     

Psychosocial management of glioma patients treated with combined therapy

Based on an empirical study it is pointed out that psychosocial care of patients with glioma differs in some points from that of other cancer patients. The first essential difference is that the emotional involvement of the care staff is not as intensive as those of other cancer patients. Other differences concern some illness- and therapy related effects such as family problems or monotony problems resulting from the longterm therapy. These specific problems are described in detail.