The Suinn-Lew Asian Self-Identity Acculturation Scale: Cross-Cultural Information

Results on the Suinn-Lew Asian Self-Identity Acculturation Scale (SL-ASIA; Suinn, Rikard-Figueroa, Lew, & Vigil, 1987) confirm similarities between Singapore Asians and United States Asians on acculturation factors. The research also compared mean values on the SL-ASIA scale as a method of adding validity information regarding the scale. Singapore Asians did achieve a score indicative of Asian identity, whereas Asian Americans obtained a mean score indicative of higher Western acculturation.     

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The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

Scientific Meetings of the Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

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.     

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.     

Self-focused attention, gender, gender role, and vulnerability to negative affect

Research has independently shown that both gender and self-focused attention are linked to depression. In this article, we report a series of studies investigating the relation between these variables. Using a standard self-focusing manipulation, Study 1 suggested that women evidence a greater propensity to self-focus than men. We replicated these findings in Study 2. In Study 3, we conducted an experiment to determine if sex role in conjunction with experimentally increased self-focused attention would lead to more emotional distress after a negative event had occurred. Results suggested that feminine individuals who received a self-focusing manipulation responded with greater levels of self-focused attention and negative affect than did any other group. We interpreted findings in terms of a tendency to self-focus that might prime feminine people to experience depression, or alternately, as a lack of self-focusing that may insulate masculine individuals from the experience of depression.     

The influence of the minority on perception: A note on a possible alternative explanation

This research note raises some concerns about possible alternative explanations to studies using perceptual change as indicative of minority vs majority influence. Having failed to replicate the original study (S. Moscovici & B. Personnaz, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 1980, 16, 270–282), using the same and an alternate measuring procedure, inspection of additional data introduces the role of suspiciousness in explaining this and previous findings. An informal study adds further credence to this explanation.     

Levels of Processing and Retrieval: Recency Effects After Incidental Learning in A Reaction Time Task

In their development of the levels-of-processing approach to memory Craik and Jacoby (1975) proposed a dual-process theory of retrieval which involves both the scanning of recent episodic memory and a process of reconstruction in semantic memory. The theory predicts that a depth of processing effect will emerge only when the latter retrieval process is employed. Two experiments tested this prediction under the “conveyor-belt” assumption that scanning will be adopted for recent items while earlier items must be retrieved by reconstruction. An incidental-learning paradigm was employed, in which subjects performed an orienting reaction-time task on a sequence of word-pairs. Each word-pair was judged at either a semantic, phonemic or (in Experiment I) orthographic level of coding. In the first experiment half the subjects subsequently attempted free recall while half performed a recognition task; in the second experiment subjects were cued for recall in the last six serial positions, followed by free recall of the remaining items. A consistent “levels” effect emerged in both recall and recognition and this was particularly clearly observed in recency positions. A significant difference also emerged between positive and negative judgements. Although it is argued that these effects might emerge even in scanning it is concluded that these experiments provide no support for the proposal of two distinct retrieval modes.