The act of death and the gift of suffering: a response to Breck, Amundsen, and Bresnahan.

This response to the articles by Breck, Amundsen, and Bresnahan is argued from a traditional Orthodox point of view, which accepts the historical Tradition of the Church and recognizes the relevance of this Tradition in the modern world. Traditional Orthodox ethics is grounded in a radical perception of the Resurrection of Christ. Many Western and Eastern commentators on Orthodox religion and spirituality have noted the centrality of the Resurrection to all facets of our Tradition. Thus the discussion of euthanasia should be seen in the light of the Resurrection of Christ.     

Functional analysis and treatment of social-communicative behavior of adolescents with developmental disabilities.

This investigation used functional analyses to identify the social variables that maintained the inappropriate social-communicative behaviors of 2 adolescent students with mental retardation. Analyses were performed in the students' classrooms with the assistance of peers and teachers. The results of these assessments were used to identify appropriate, functionally equivalent behaviors that the students were taught to self-monitor. Findings showed substantial decreases in inappropriate social responding and increases in the use of appropriate social skills.     

Self-focused attention in schizophrenic patients with and without auditory hallucinations and normal subjects: A comparative study

Self-focused attention has been implicated in a number of psychiatric disorders, but little research has examined this in schizophrenic subjects. In this study, a sample of schizophrenic patients experiencing auditory hallucinations, schizophrenic patients not experiencing auditory hallucinations and normal controls were asked to complete the private self-consciousness subscale of the Self Consciousness Scale. It was found that patients experiencing auditory hallucinations exhibited significantly higher levels of self-focus than those not experiencing hallucinations, although they did not differ from normal subjects. It was also shown that level of self-focus predicted whether or not subjects experienced hallucinations. These results, and their implications, are discussed with reference to the literature.     

An assessment of cerebral dominance in language-disordered children via a time-sharing paradigm

A time-sharing paradigm was used to assess language lateralization in language-disordered and normal children aged 4–7 years. Several expressive language tasks as well as a vocal, but nonlinguistic, task were administered concurrently with unimanual finger tapping. Dependent variables were percent disruption scores and number of syllables produced per concurrent trial. All language concurrent tasks produced tapping reductions for both hands for both groups. This result contrasts to similar time-sharing studies claiming asymmetrical interference and hence language lateralization in children (N. White & M. Kinsbourne, 1980, Brain and Language, 10, 215–223; J. Obrzut, G. Hynd, A. Obrzut, & J. Leitgeb, 1980, Brain and Language, 11, 181–194). A multiple regression analysis revealed a significant interaction effect differentiating language-disordered from normal children. Normals exhibited a parallel response pattern for speech and tapping (both increased or decreased in rate) under all lateralization conditions. Language-disordered children exhibited an inverse response pattern (e.g., if speech output increased, tapping rate decreased) only under left-hemisphere time-sharing.     

A counselling service for nurses in training

An account is given of the inception and development of a counselling service for nurses in training at a large London teaching hospital. The aims of the service are described, as are the evolving role of the counsellor and the use made of the service both by student nurses and other members of the hospital organisation. Some recommendations are made concerning the future development of counselling services within National Health Service hospitals.     

Serial position effects in the recall of picture sequences

Sequences of 10 pictures of familiar objects were presented for immediate recall, and typically bow-shaped serial position curves were obtained. The effects of redundant stimulus suffixes, and of redundant stimulus prefixes, which could be either extra pictures, or written words (the names of similar familiar objects) were examined. In the prefix conditions, extra words produced a general decrement over positions 1-4, as compared with a control condition. Picture prefixes had no effect. In the suffix conditions, redundant words affected positions 9 and 10, whereas the main effect of redundant pictures was at positions 8 and 9. The differential serial position effects are taken to reflect the presence of two memory codes, a verbal one and a visual one, which vary in trace-strength or accessibility at different list positions.     

Hemispheric differences in a letter classification task

The experiment examined hemispheric differences in same-different judgments for unilaterally presented letter pairs which could be classified as “same” on the basis of name identity (NI, e.g., Aa) or physical identity (PI, e.g., AA). Two groups of Ss were tested, a right-handed group and a predominantly left-handed group. The experiment employed a reaction time measure, and fixed the duration of brief exposures to yield an overall performance level of 90% correct. Analysis of the results focused on the difference between RTs for the NI matches and for the PI matches in each hemisphere. The method allowed differences in cognitive processing to be assessed while sensory and response factors were minimized. The right-handed group all showed a smaller mean NI-PI difference in the left hemisphere (84 msec) than in the right hemisphere (181 msec). The left-handed group showed smaller and less consistent differences, but the group as a whole had a reversed asymmetry, with a mean NI-PI difference of 128 msee in the left hemisphere and 90 msec in the right hemisphere.     

“But that's not really mean”: Competing in a cooperative mode

Girls' games are widely perceived as impediments to the goal of a more equitable society because they are simpler and less competitive than boys' games, and foster skills, attitudes, and competencies that are inappropriate to the achievement of higher status adult roles. Girls' more cooperative social orientation, their concern for being “nice,” and for relationships with small groups of friends has been cited to explain why girls avoid more complex, competitive games. Observations from an ethnographic study of one girls' play group are used to illustrate that this type of social orientation is not incompatible with competition among girls. It shapes their ways of competing, not whether they compete at all. The girls in this study used a stereotypically feminine rhetoric of “nice” and “friends” to support, and even demand, aggressive competition among players.     

Contextual constraints on usage of cognitive words

The conversations of 36 41/2 to 5-year-olds differing in race (black and white) and social class (professional and working class) and the adults with whom they spoke were tape-recorded during play and teaching time at preschool and dinnertime at home. Usage of cognitive words was analyzed for six levels of meaning that differed in depth of processing from reference to (1) perception and attention, (2) recognition, (3) fact recall, (4) understanding, (5) metacognition, and (6) evaluation of presuppositions. Although the rank order of usage was the same, children devoted less of their lexicon to the three higher levels of meaning than adults. Even in adults, perceptual references predominated. Use of higher-level meaning was less prominent in school and in the black working-class population. There were significant correlations between exposure to adult conversations with high-level meaning and child use of those meanings, and between the diversity of cognitive vocabulary in children and adults, but those correlations were smallest in the black working-class population.Funds to the project on which this paper is based were given by The Carnegie Corporation of New York to William S. Hall. The authors wish to thank the Computer Science Center of the University of Maryland for funds for data analysis.