Use of semantic context by patients with Alzheimer's disease

In this study we used semantic-priming procedures to examine limitations in the use of semantic context by patients with Alzheimer's disease. We also tried to determine whether any such contextual effects were mediated solely through automatic processes or whether attentional processes were also involved. Three tasks were applied to examine the effect of semantic context on the performance of 18 normal elderly and 18 normal young subjects, and on 18 patients with Alzheimer's disease. When normal and demented subjects were asked to decide whether a given item was a member of a certain category, results showed that their response times were equally affected by the item's dominance in the category. The time that demented patients took to recognize a word was actually affected more by the semantic context provided by a priming sentence than was that of normal subjects. When asked to generate the final word of an incomplete sentence, demented subjects performed very poorly unless potential responses were highly constrained by sentence context.     

Control by stimulus features during fading.

Sixteen children were given four successive circle-size discrimination problems with luminance as the fading stimulus. Children who were first presented with a difficult size discrimination failed to acquire this discrimination. Those who first received an easy discrimination learned the difficult discrimination. At the end of each 10-trial block, two probe stimuli were presented to monitor any shift in control from luminance to size. One probe was the same size as the positive stimulus but of different luminance; the other was the same luminance but of different size. If, in the course of fading, size and luminance both controlled responding, fading was successful. If luminance alone controlled responding until the end of fading, the size discrimination was not established. Dual control, and thus successful fading, resulted when the target stimuli were very discriminable, or when the target stimuli were subtly different provided that previous fading series had first established less subtle discriminations.     

Canonical versus factor analytic perspectives on the structure of associations between the MMPI and the Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory

A canonical correlational analysis of MMPI profiles versus Buss-Durkee hostility and aggression scales was conducted, resulting in the identification of a general hostility-aggression-maladjustment dimension and three relatively specific aggression-personality relationships. These findings were contrasted with those obtained from a factor analysis of the combination of both sets of scores. Though often used in previous studies of associations between the Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory and other measures, factor analysis was seen to be less than optimally suited to such a purpose. It was concluded that canonical correlation is preferable to factor analysis when seeking to clarify the multivariate structure of relationships between two sets of variables.     

A clarification of continuous repertoire development

The key-peck response of five pigeons was reinforced on a schedule whenever the interval between pecks at two response keys was between 1.0 and 2.33 seconds in the presence of a 2,500-Hertz tone or between 4.66 and 6.0 seconds in the presence of a 1250-Hertz tone. There was no tendency for responses of intermediate duration to occur when test tones of intermediate frequency were presented. This result clarifies a previous finding using a similar procedure but with a visual intensity stimulus dimension.     

Chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgicencephalomyelitis as a twentieth-century disease: analytic challenges

The challenges of chronic fatigue syndrome (often called myalgic encephalomyelitis, especially in the UK) (CFS/ME) to analytical and medical approaches are connected with our inability to understand its distressing somatic symptoms in terms of a single identifiable and understandable disease entity. The evidence for the roles of viral aetiologies remains inconclusive, as does our understanding of the involvement of the immune system. The history and social context of CFS/ME, and its relation to neurasthenia and psychasthenia are sketched. A symbolic attitude to the condition may need to be rooted in an awareness of psychoid levels of operation, and the expression and spread of CFS/ME may sometimes be aided by the ravages of projective identification. Psychic denial, sometimes violent, in sufferers (especially children and adolescents) and their families may be important in the aetiology of CFS/ME. We draw out common threads from psychodynamic work with five cases, four showing some symptomatic improvement, analytic discussions of three cases being presented elsewhere in this issue of JAP.     

The functional independence of mands and tacts

This study demonstrates functional independence in the acquisition of mands and tacts. Some subjects first learned to mand the experimenter's placement of objects with the prepositional phrases “On the left” and “On the right.” They were regularly tested for collateral appearance of tacts with these same phrases. Other subjects learned to tact the location of objects with these prepositional phrases and were regularly tested for collateral appearance of mands. All subjects were next trained in the repertoire that had not been trained in the first condition (either tact or mand). After all subjects had learned both to mand and to tact correctly, another assessment of mand-tact independence was undertaken. Mands (tacts) were reversed and testing assessed collateral reversal of tacts (mands). The results demonstrated that tacts and mands, even when incorporating identical response forms, were functionally independent during acquisition. Subsequent modification of one repertoire (by reversal training) produced collateral reversal in three of nine subjects.     

Forgiveness and its associations with prosocial thinking, feeling, and doing beyond the relationship with the offender

Past research has revealed that forgiveness promotes prosocial cognition, feeling, and behavior toward the offender. The present research extends this research by examining whether forgiveness may spill over beyond the relationship with the offender, promoting generalized prosocial orientation. Consistent with hypotheses, three studies revealed that forgiveness compared to unforgiveness is generally associated with higher levels of a generalized prosocial orientation, as indicated by higher levels of a we frame of mind (as indicated by a greater use of first-person plural pronouns, e.g., we, us, in a language task) and greater feelings of relatedness toward others in general. Moreover, forgiveness (vs. unforgiveness) was even associated with greater probability of donating to charity and greater willingness to engage in volunteering. Finally, the authors found that unforgiveness reduces tendencies toward generalized prosocial orientation, whereas forgiveness restores generalized prosocial orientation to baseline levels within the relationship.     

Validation of the Clance Imposter Phenomenon Scale

The Clance Impostor Phenomenon Scale (CIPS; Clance, 1985) was compared to the newly developed Perceived Fraudulence Scale (Kolligian & Sternberg, 1991). The two scales were found to have high internal consistency and to correlate in a similar manner with other measures. Further, discriminant validity evidence for the Impostor Phenomenon (IP) was provided by comparing the CIPS to measures of depression, self-esteem, social anxiety, and self-monitoring. The IP was related to, but substantially discriminable from, these constructs. Finally, construct validity evidence for the CIPS was provided through principal components analysis that yielded three stable factors: Fake, Discount, and Luck.