Mobilizing positive reinforcement in communities to reduce youth access to tobacco

A community intervention to mobilize positive reinforcement for not selling tobacco to young people was evaluated. The intervention had five components: (a) mobilization of community support, (b) merchant education, (c) changing consequences to clerks for selling or not selling to those under 18, (d) publicity about clerks’ refusals to sell, and (e) feedback to store owners or managers about the extent of their sales to adolescents. A multiple baseline design experiment was conducted, in which two small Oregon communities received the intervention, while two others continued in baseline. Outlets’ willingness to sell was assessed repeatedly by teenage volunteers. The intervention significantly reduced the proportion of stores willing to sell. Mobilizing socia and material reinforcement for stores not selling tobacco to young people is a viable means of reducing such sales. It may be especially valuable in communities where laws against sales to minors go unenforced. This paper supported in part by the National Cancer Institute Grant CA38273.     

Psychosocial Adjustment of Adult Cancer Survivors: Their Needs and Counselor Interventions

The author presents an overview of the literature on the psychosocial adjustment of cancer survivors, identifying 4 areas that may pose difficulties for cancer survivors as they learn to live with a life-threatening chronic illness: coping with the late physical effects of treatment; living with the uncertainty of long-term survival; resolving problems related to intimacy, marriage, and reproduction; and combating employment discrimination. Counseling interventions are proposed for counselors working with cancer survivors on these issues.     

TRANSSACCADIC MEMORY AND INTEGRATION DURING REAL-WORLD OBJECT PERCEPTION

Abstract— What is the nature of the information that is preserved and combined across saccadic eye movements during the visual analysis of real-world objects? The two experiments reported investigated transsaccadic memory and transsaccadic integration, respectively In the critical condition, participants were presented with one set of contours from an object during one fixation and with a complementary set of contours during the next fixation In Experiment 1, participants could at best inconsistently detect contour changes across the saccade In Experiment 2, a change in visible contour had no influence on object identification. These results suggest that a veridical representation of object contour is neither consistently preserved nor integrated across a saccade.     

Daydreaming and curiosity: stability and change in gifted children and adolescents

Developmental differences in daydreaming and curiosity based on cross-sectional data have been reported, but longitudinal data are lacking. Patterns of longitudinal stability and change in two intellectual styles, daydreaming and curiosity, in gifted children and adolescents are described in this paper. Seventy-four intellectually gifted children attended a special program during two consecutive summers. Self-reports of their frequency of and attitudes toward daydreaming and two measures of their curiosity were obtained each year. The findings suggest a pattern of both change and stability in intellectual styles over time. Measures which tap the content of daydreams changed over time, but measures of process or ways of relating to the environment, such as curiosity and frequency of daydreaming, were fairly stable.     

Attitudes of nursing students toward patients with AIDS

Nursing students (N = 124) voluntarily completed a questionnaire designed to measure attitudes towards patients with AIDS. The questionnaire included one of two vignettes, a prejudicial evaluation scale, and the Index of Homophobia. Results indicate that nursing students expressed a significantly more negative attitude toward the homosexual patients with AIDS. Homophobia accounted for a substantial amount of variation in the difference in expressed attitude between heterosexual and homosexual AIDS patients. The researchers recommend that nursing students and other prospective health care workers be provided educational programs dealing with AIDS which include study of homophobia and homosexuality.     

Self-reported assertion and aggression among violent offenders with high or low levels of overcontrolled hostility

Self-report measures of personality, assertion, aggression and difficulty with social situations were completed by 66 male prisoners convicted for violent offences. Inmates were divided into overcontrolled and less-controlled groups on the basis of MMPI OH scores. No significant differences emerged on total ASES Assertion scale scores or on the four social-situation difficulty items dealing with assertiveness. However, overcontrolled men scored significantly lower on the Negative Assertion subscale and on the Aggression scale, as well as on two social-situation difficulty items dealing with the control of aggression. Less-controlled males showed a significant positive correlation between Aggression scale scores and negative assertion which was not obtained for the overcontrolled group. Results were discussed in terms of the different treatment needs of the two groups when using assertion or social-skills training with offender populations.     

Book review

EVANS, R. M. The Perception of Color. New York: Wiley and Sons. 1974. Pp. xii + 248. £ 8.10.

ROSS, H. E. Behaviour and Perception in Strnge Enviroment. London: George Allen and Unwin. 1974. Pp. 171. £ 3.95. (Hardback), £ 1.95. (Peperback).

COOPER, J. R. BLOOM, F. E. and ROTH, R. H. The Biochemical Basis of Neuropharmacology. 2nd Ed. New York and London: Oxford University Press. 1974. Pp. 272. £ 2.50.

JOHNSON, F. N. (Ed.) Lithium Research and Teerapy. London: Acakemic Press. 1974. Pp. 570. £ 13.50.

GERGG, L. W. (Ed.) Cognition in Lerning and Memory. New York: Wiley. 1972. Pp. vii + 263. £ 5.85.

SCHIEFELBUSCH, R. L. and LLOYD, L. L. Language Perspectives-Acquisition, Retardation and Intervention. Macmillan: Baltimore, 1974. Pp 670. £ 7.95.

CHOMSKY, C. The Acquisition of Syntax of Syntax in Children form 5 to 10. Cambridge, Massa-chusetts: M. I. T. Press. 1969. Pp. 126.

Annual Review of Psychology. Vol. 25. Palo Alto, California: Annual Reviews Inc. 544 PP. $ 12.50.

HARRISON, B. Meaning and Structure: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. New York: Harper and Row. 1972. Pp. 318. £4.65.

MACKINTOSH, N. J. The Psychology of Animal Learning. Academic Press. 1974. Pp. 730. £ 8.00.

BURES, J., BURESOVA, O. and KRIVANEK, J. The Mechanism and Application of Leao's Spreading Depression of Electroephalagraphic Activity. New York: Academic Press. 1974. Pp. 410. £ 14.15.

SOLSO, R.L. (ED.). Theories in Cognitive Psychology: The LOyola Symposium. Potomac, Maryland: Lawrence Erlbaum associates. 1974. £ 7.95.

MURDOCK, B. B. Jr. Human Memory: Theory and Data. Potomac: Erlbaum (distributed by Wiley). 1974. Pp. 362. £ 6.85.

REED, S. K. Psychological Process in Pattern Recogntion. New York: Academic Press. 1973. $ 13.95.

RABBIT, P. M. A. and DORNIC, D. (Eds). Attention and Performance V. London: Academic Press. 1975. Pp. 732. £ 16.00.     

Effects of letter-names on visual search

When a subject searches through a list of letters of mixed case in a letter cancellation task search is slowed if the background items include the target letter in the other case. This effect is largest when target and confusing background have visual analogue similarity (e.g., cC) but still obtains when no special visual similarity exists (e.g., aA). In searches for two targets, one of either case, search is facilitated when the targets are both cases of the same letter.     

From dispositions to behaviors: The flip side of attribution

The implicational relations between dispositional levels and relevant categories of behavior were investigated. Observers were asked questions about the extent to which persons occupying moderate or extreme positions on an attribute (dispositional) continuum (a) attempt various behaviors, (b) are potentially able to perform various behaviors, and (c) generally emit those same behaviors. Three determinants—central tendency, ability, and social desirabliity—offer a reasonable account of the observed implicational relations. First, persons with a given disposition are not expected to emit behavior that is widely discrepant with that disposition. Second, ability considerations dictate that persons with skillful dispositions are believed capable of unskillful behavior, but unskillful persons are thought relatively incapable of skillful behavior. Third, persons are believed to more frequently attempt socially desirable than socially undesirable behavior. Also, persons with moderate dispositions are believed to actually emit socially desirable behavior more frequently than socially undesirable behavior. Finally, the determinants noted above may be of differing relevance for morality, ability, and preference attributes.     

Relative salience of intonation fall and pause as cues to the perceptual segmentation of speech in an unfamiliar language

The modification of subjects' attention by two prosodic features was investigated using their reaction times to a nonspeech stimulus which coincided with these features. By using a foreign language unfamiliar to the subjects (Czechoslovakian), the influence of semantic and syntactic knowledge was controlled. The results indicate that for native speakers of English intonation fall is a relatively more important cue to the perceptual segmentation of speech than is pause.