Women's Career Plans and Maternal Employment

Maternal employment, perceived maternal satisfaction and goodness of mothering, and sex role conceptions were studied as they relate to future life plans of college senior women. Twenty-five women in a working mother group and 26 in a nonworking mother group were administered the Strong Vocational Interest Blank for Women, the Sex-Role Stereotype Questionnaire, the Inventory of Feminine Values, the Maternal Satisfaction and Maternal Goodness scales, and the Life Plan Questionnaire. Daughters of working mothers scored higher on career orientation ( p <.01, Life Plan Questionnaire) than did daughters of nonworking mothers. High perceived maternal satisfaction and maternal goodness correlated with low career orientation for the nonworking sample (the averaged r across variable pairs =.48). For the working sample, perceived maternal dissatisfaction with feminine role values correlated significantly with higher career orientation (r =.42), while the other satisfaction measure showed no relation to career orientation. Daughters of working mothers displayed broader sex role conceptualizations (p <0.01).     

A bird is a bird is a bird: Making reference within and without superordinate categories

Adults with localized cerebral insult often err in their use of a word to refer to an object or an idea. It is important to assess, then, the patients' appreciation of what a word can refer to, and the way in which they may violate the borders around a referential field. Nonfluent aphasics, fluent aphasics, and nonaphasic patients with insult to the right hemisphere were asked to provide names of items which could be referred to by familiar superordinate terms like “bird.” The principal results revealed that the nonfluent aphasics are anchored to the central portions of a superordinate's referential field (naming items like “robin” and “sparrow,” for instance). While fluent aphasics often violate the borders around a referential field (e.g., providing “beaver” in response to “birds”), it was nevertheless possible to characterize some limits to their choice of a superordinate's referents. These findings were independent both of the absolute number of responses provided and the frequency of occurrence of the response. Further, the patients with insult to the left hemisphere produce few consecutive items whose referents hold attributes in common. When these clusters are produced by aphasics, they consist primarily of subordinates whose referents exhibit many overlapping features (e.g., “bald eagle, black eagle, golden eagle” in response to “bird”). The right-hemisphere-damaged subjects, in contrast, produce many clusters of related items. These consist of less central, basic object level words whose referents hold less obvious features in common (e.g., “albatross, crane, gull” in response to “bird”). Aphasics, then, may be limited in their ability to analyze referents for critical features. Taken together, these data contribute to a more precise characterization of the nonfluent aphasics' and the fluent aphasics' referential deficits, and lend support specifically to the notion that neither group of aphasics relies on definition-like features to determine what a word can refer to.     

Linguistic recovery after closed head injury

Recovery from acute aphasia after closed head injury was studied in 21 young adults at least 6 months after injury. Three profiles of scores were found using standardized language tests. Persistent expressive and receptive impairment was present in 6 patients who sustained severe diffuse brain injury resulting in global cognitive deficit. Residual expressive impairment, primarily of naming, was associated with mild diffuse brain injury though focal left-hemisphere injury was present in 3 of 6 cases. Patients who recovered to normal levels on all language tests generally had acute neurologic findings consistent with mild diffuse brain injury. Cranial computed tomography at the time of followup frequently disclosed ventricular enlargement.     

What the analyst does not hear

In the clinical situation, the analyst fails to hear more than he or she hears and spends much time working in the dark. The author raises questions about how we can take cognizance of that state of affairs in our thinking about analytic work. A clinical example illustrates how, in an analytic atmosphere, a patient will correct an analyst's failure to hear. Some ideas are offered about how to maximize the patient's participation in that effort. The author suggests that the problem may not fall precisely under the heading of technique so much as reflecting the analyst's attitude.     

Up-regulation of exploratory tendencies does not enhance general learning abilities in juvenile or young-adult outbred mice

"General cognitive ability" describes a trait that transcends specific learning domains and impacts a wide range of cognitive skills. Individual animals (including humans) exhibit wide variations in their expression of this trait. We have previously determined that the propensity for exploration is highly correlated with the general cognitive abilities of individual outbred mice. Here, we asked if inducing an increase in exploratory behaviors would causally promote an increase in animals' general learning abilities. In three experiments, juvenile and young-adult male CD-1 outbred mice were exposed to 12 novel environments starting at post-natal days 39 (juvenile) and 61 (young adult), after which they underwent a series of cognitive and exploratory tests as adults (beginning at post-natal day 79). Exposure to novel environments promoted increases in exploration (across multiple measures) on two different tasks, including an elevated plus maze. However, a subsequent test of general learning abilities (aggregate performance across five distinct learning tasks) determined that exposure to novel environments as juveniles or young-adults had no effect on general learning abilities in adulthood. Therefore, while exposure to novel environments promotes long-lasting increases in mice's exploratory tendencies, these increases in exploration do not appear to causally impact general learning abilities.     

Opposing effects on muscarinic acetylcholine receptors in the piriform cortex of odor-trained rats

We combined pharmacological studies and electrophysiological recordings to investigate modifications in muscarinic acetylcholine (ACh) receptors (mAChR) in the rat olfactory (piriform) cortex, following odor-discrimination rule learning. Rats were trained to discriminate between positive and negative cues in pairs of odors, until they reached a phase of high capability to learn unfamiliar odors, using the same paradigm (“rule learning”). It has been reported that at 1–3 d after the acquisition of odor-discrimination rule learning, pyramidal neurons in the rat piriform cortex show enhanced excitability, due to a reduction in the spike-activated potassium current I_AHP, which is modulated by ACh. Further, ACh and its analog, carbachol (CCh), lost the ability to reduce the I_AHP in neurons from trained rats. Here we show that the reduced sensitivity to CCh in the piriform cortex results from a decrease in the number of mAChRs, as well as a reduction in the affinity of the receptors to CCh. Also, it has been reported that 3–8 d after the acquisition of odor-discrimination rule learning, synaptic transmission in the piriform cortex is enhanced, and paired-pulse facilitation (PPF) in response to twin stimulations is reduced. Here, intracellular recordings from pyramidal neurons show that CCh increases PPF in the piriform cortex from odor-trained rats more than in control rats, suggesting enhanced effect of ACh in inhibiting presynaptic glutamate release after odor training.     

Does diabetes protect or provoke Alzheimer's disease? Insights into the pathobiology and future treatment of Alzheimer's disease

Diabetes mellitus has long been considered a risk factor for the development of vascular dementia. Epidemiologic evidence has suggested that diabetes mellitus significantly increases risk for the development of Alzheimer's disease, independent of vascular risk factors. As insulin's role as a neuromodulator in the brain has been described, its significance for AD has also emerged. Insulin dysregulation may contribute to AD pathology through several mechanisms including decreased cortical glucose utilization particularly in the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex; increased oxidative stress through the formation of advanced glycation end-products; increased Tau phosphorylation and neurofibrillary tangle formation; increased b-amyloid aggregation through inhibition of insulin-degrading enzyme. Future treatment of AD might involve pharmacologic and dietary manipulations of insulin and glucose regulation.     

Predicting the suicide attempts of lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth

In this study predictors of serious suicide attempts among lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) youth were examined. Three groups were compared: youth who reported no attempts, youth who reported attempts unrelated to their sexual orientation, and youth whose attempts were considered related to their sexual orientation. About one third of respondents reported at least one suicide attempt; however, only half of the attempts were judged serious based on potential lethality. About half of all attempts were related to youths' sexual orientation. Factors that differentiated youth reporting suicide attempts and those not reporting attempts were greater childhood parental psychological abuse and more childhood gender-atypical behavior. Gay-related suicide attempts were associated with identifiability as LGB, especially by parents. Early openness about sexual orientation, being considered gender atypical in childhood by parents, and parental efforts to discourage gender atypical behavior were associated with gay-related suicide attempts, especially for males. Assessment of past parental psychological abuse, parental reactions to childhood gender atypical behavior, youths' openness about sexual orientation with family members, and lifetime gay-related verbal abuse can assist in the prediction of suicide attempts in this population.     

Can sex offenders who minimize on the MMPI conceal psychopathology on the Rorschach?

Rorschach sensitivity to minimization is important in forensic evaluations of sex offenders because these individuals frequently deny psychological problems. To study Rorschach minimization, we divided alleged sex offenders according to whether they minimized on the MMPI (Hathaway & McKinley, 1943) or MMPI-2 (Butcher, Dahlstrom, Graham, Tellegen, & Kaemmer, 1989) and compared their Rorschachs on indexes of distress, faulty judgment, interpersonal dysfunction, and cognitive distortions. We predicted there would be no differences between MMPI minimizers and nonminimizers on these indexes and that sex offenders of both groups would show greater psychopathology than normative adult samples. Results indicate that mini- mizers produce normal MMPI clinical profiles but still show evidence of psychopathology on the Rorschach. As predicted, sex offenders showed more Rorschach psychopathology than normative samples. Sex offenders' protocols that contained sexual content also showed perceptual distortions. These findings indicate that the Rorschach is resilient to attempts at faking good and may therefore provide valuable information in forensic settings where intentional distortion is common.