Children's perception of certain musical properties: scale and contour

Children's perception of scale and contour in melodies was investigated in five studies. Experimental tasks included judging transposed renditions of melodies (Studies 1 and 3), discriminating between transposed renditions of a melody (Study 2), judging contour-preserving transformations of melodies (Study 4), and judging similarity to a familiar target melody of transformations preserving rhythm or rhythm and contour (Study 5). The first and second studies showed that young children detect key transposition changes even in familiar melodies and they perceive similarity over key transpositions even in unfamiliar melodies. Young children also are sensitive to melodic contour over transformations that preserve it (Study 5), yet they distinguish spontaneously between melodies with the same contour and different intervals (Study 4). The key distance effect reported in the literature did not occur in the tasks of this investigation (Studies 1 and 3), and it may be apparent only for melodies shorter or more impoverished than those used here.     

Television Food Commericals' Effect on Children's Resistance to Temptation1

This study investigated the effect of television food commercials on children's self-control within a resistance to temptation paradigm. Commercial type, food stimulus type, and the child's sex provided the three independent variables in a 4 × 4 × 2 factorial design. Behavioral and self-report indices of temptation and control were measured. Children were significantly more tempted to transgress for the low-nutrition food, regardless of the commercial shown. Sex differences in reported degree of temptation were found. However, the television commercials did not affect the children's latency to transgress.     

Preventing Substance Abuse Among American-Indian Adolescents: A Bicultural Competence Skills Approach

Tobacco, alcohol, and drug use are problems for American-Indian people. We reviewed these problems and the explanations for them and described a bicultural competence skills approach for preventing substance abuse with American-Indian adolescents. Data from a study of that approach suggest its efficacy with American-Indian youth. At posttest and a 6-month follow-up, American-Indian subjects who received preventive intervention based on bicultural competence skills concepts improved more than did American-Indian subjects in a no-intervention control condition on measures of substance-use knowledge, attitudes, and interactive skills, and on self-reported rates of tobacco, alcohol, and drug use. Our findings have implications for future substance-abuse prevention research with American-Indian people.     

Family system functioning: behavior in the laboratory and the family treatment setting

The Family System Functioning (FSF) scale is a new instrument for measuring dimensions of the intrafamilial environment thought to be important in recovery from major psychiatric illness. Modest statistical correlations were obtained when FSF ratings of laboratory-based family interactions were compared with researcher-guided therapist ratings of FSF based upon the family's behavior in family therapy sessions during the subsequent month. The data from these two settings provide support for the validity of some of the scales. Because of the modest size of the correlations, however, behavior in the laboratory setting may not always be an accurate indicator of how the family will behave in the early weeks of family therapy.