Developmental differences in intake and storage of visual information

A partial report technique was used to determine how much visual information subjects of four ages (ranging from 5-year-olds to adults) were capable of taking in and what the course of information loss was over a 1-sec time period. Subjects were tachistoscopically presented eight items followed by an indicator at variable intervals after array offset and were required to report that item in the indicated position. No reliable age differences were found at the earliest “memory point,” 50 msec. There were, however, age differences both before and after this point. Results suggested an absence of age differences in visual intake capacity, but important differences in other stages of processing.     

Marital satisfaction,job satisfaction,and task distribution in the homemaker job

Several facets of the homemaker job were analyzed in terms of the dynamic relationship between husband and wife. Seventy-one husband and wife pairs completed a questionnaire which assessed satisfaction with the homemaker job, marital satisfaction, distribution of responsibility for homemaker tasks between husband and wife, and other variables. Wives' satisfaction with the homemaker job was found related to the degree to which husbands assumed responsibility for homemaker tasks and to the husbands' attitudes toward women in general. Wives' marital satisfaction was found related to the interaction of wives' employment status (job holder or full-time homemaker) and satisfaction with the homemaker job. Directions for future research in this area were suggested.     

The homosexual in society

This article deals primarily with the social phase of the homosexual. We are now working on articles on two other phases of the problem: an outstanding psychiatrist is preparing one on the psychological dynamics which go into the making of the homosexual, and a hospital chaplain will write another on the contribution the minister can make to the treatment of the problem.     

Emotion regulation and memory: the cognitive costs of keeping one's cool

An emerging literature has begun to document the affective consequences of emotion regulation. Little is known, however, about whether emotion regulation also has cognitive consequences. A process model of emotion suggests that expressive suppression should reduce memory for emotional events but that reappraisal should not. Three studies tested this hypothesis. Study 1 experimentally manipulated expressive suppression during film viewing, showing that suppression led to poorer memory for the details of the film. Study 2 manipulated expressive suppression and reappraisal during slide viewing. Only suppression led to poorer slide memory. Study 3 examined individual differences in typical expressive suppression and reappraisal and found that suppression was associated with poorer self-reported and objective memory but that reappraisal was not. Together, these studies suggest that the cognitive costs of keeping one's cool may vary according to how this is done.     

Inferior temporal lesions do not impair discrimination of rotated patterns in monkeys.

Ablation of inferior temporal cortex in the rhesus monkey produces a visual discrimination learning deficit. The severity of this deficit has often been found to be a function of task difficulty. This report concerns a type of visual discrimination problem that, although difficult, is not sensitive to inferior temporal lesions. Monkeys with anterior, posterior, and complete inferior temporal lesions were repeatedly unimpaired or only slightly impaired in learning to discriminate a pattern from the same pattern rotated 90 degrees or 180 degrees; yet they were very severely impaired in learning equally or more difficult discriminations of two different patterns. This demonstration that discrimination of orientation of patterns is relatively spared after inferior temporal lesions helps specify the pattern-recognition processes that require inferior temporal cortex.     

Family Processes and Treatment Outcome in the MTA: Negative/Ineffective Parenting Practices in Relation to Multimodal Treatment

To elucidate processes underlying therapeutic change in a large-scale randomized clinical trial, we examined whether alterations in self-reported parenting practices were associated with the effects of behavioral, medication, or combination treatments on teacher-reported outcomes (disruptive behavior, social skills, internalizing symptoms) in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Participants were 579 children with Combined-type ADHD, aged 7–9.9 years, in the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (MTA). We uncovered 2 second-order factors of parenting practices, entitled Positive Involvement and Negative/Ineffective Discipline. Although Positive Involvement was not associated with amelioration of the school-based outcome measures, reductions in Negative/Ineffective Discipline mediated improvement in children's social skills at school. For families showing the greatest reductions in Negative/Ineffective Discipline, effects of combined medication plus behavioral treatment were pronounced in relation to regular community care. Furthermore, only in combination treatment (and not in behavioral treatment alone) was decreased Negative/Ineffective Discipline associated with reduction in children's disruptive behavior at school. Here, children in families receiving combination treatment who showed the greatest reductions in Negative/Ineffective Discipline had teacher-reported disruptive behavior that was essentially normalized. Overall, the success of combination treatment for important school-related outcomes appears related to reductions in negative and ineffective parenting practices at home; we discuss problems in interpreting the temporal sequencing of such process-outcome linkages and the means by which multimodal treatment may be mediated by psychosocial processes related to parenting.