Apple II/FIRST system control of electrical brain stimulation in the rabbit

An Apple II/FIRST system has been developed to control classical conditioning experiments, collect analog data, and extract dependent variable measures of conditioning from uniphasic (Scandrett & Gormezano, 1980) and multiphasic (Johnson, 1981) response signals. The present paper details the development of an electrical brain stimulation system as a peripheral device to the Apple II/FIRST system. In addition, data are presented that document the capabilities of the EBS system to concurrently stimulate up to eight animals while values along the dimension of each of four stimulation parameters are manipulated by a program written in FIRST. In our judgment, the EBS system has a number of advantages over currently available commercial stimulators, including cost, number of sites that can be independently stimulated, and availability of complete software control.     

Derivatives of the Self-Directed Search: Potential clinical and evaluative uses

Four derivatives of the Self-Directed Search (SDS), accuracy in estimating one's profile, differentiation of one's six SDS personality types, consistency of the types within one's summary code, and congruence of the summary code with the preferred occupational area, were computed and correlated with other indices of career maturity for 138 community college students. Accuracy in estimating one's SDS profile correlated significantly with five other career maturity indices, but the other derivatives tended not to relate to the other career maturity criteria. The discussion examines the implications of using the Accuracy derivative to identify clients in need of assistance with career development and to unobtrusively evaluate career development interventions, and it suggests ways of increasing the reliability of the derivatives and promising directions for further research.     

Homelessness as psychological trauma. Broadening perspectives.

Most mental health literature on homelessness has focused on characteristics that may be risk factors for homelessness. The authors of this article argue that homelessness itself is a risk factor for emotional disorder and use the construct of psychological trauma--focusing on social disaffiliation and learned helplessness--to understand the potential effects of homelessness. Psychological trauma is likely among homeless individuals and families for three reasons. (a) The sudden or gradual loss of one's home can be a stressor of sufficient severity to produce symptoms of psychological trauma. (b) The conditions of shelter life may produce trauma symptoms. (c) Many homeless people--particularly women--become homeless after experiencing physical and sexual abuse and consequent psychological trauma. Research suggests that negative psychological responses to traumatic events can be prevented or mitigated by a supportive and empowering posttrauma environment. The implications of trauma theory for improving the psychosocial conditions of homeless people are discussed.     

Predicting the Everyday Life Events of Older Adults

Predicting the everyday life events of people is a relatively unexplored topic, although several major theoretical approaches deal with related issues. The dispositional approach would assign a causal role to personality, while the situational approach would locate causation in the person's environment. Variations on these two extreme themes invoke an interactionist interpretation. Beyond this, a genuinely transactional approach focuses on the enduring person-environment relationship established as people deal with major and everyday life events. This study investigated a wide range of predictors of daily positive, negative, and ill-health events over time in a sample of 206 older adults. Results showed that personality variables played only a minor role in predicting daily events, although an interaction between extraversion and social network size was significant. Background demographic variables and the major stressors of recent conjugal bereavement and physical disability played a role in daily event occurrences. Overall, the strongest degree of predictability of events came from the events themselves: The high degree of event stability over time indicated the value of a genuinely transactional model in understanding the occurrence of everyday events.     

Use of the family adaptability and cohesion evaluation scales in child clinical research

Although the FACES has become a widely used instrument for assessing children's family relations, the possible linearity vs. curvilinearity of its cohesion and adaptability scales has been treated inconsistently by investigators. This study evaluated whether samples of adolescent repeat offenders, young adult prisoners, and adolescent nonoffenders were discriminated better by a linear or curvilinear treatment of the FACES scores. Between-groups comparisons showed that significant effects were observed for each of the three curvilinear measures (cohesion-curvilinear, adaptability-curvilinear, distance-from-center) and only one of the two linear measures (cohesionlinear). These findings support the superiority of a curvilinear treatment of the FACES. In light of these findings, it is suggested that investigators who use FACES evaluate the linearity of the scales and determine whether a linear or curvilinear treatment of the data produces more meaningful results.