Gender and aggression II: Personal aggressiveness

To investigate how gender, ethnicity, age and education influence aggressiveness, we surveyed 115 male and female college students (56% male; 50% Anglo and 26% Hispanic) and 79 persons (72% male; 92% Anglo) working on a military base. Participants were administered the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire and asked about their own aggressive behaviors. In both samples, men scored significantly higher than women on the Physical Aggression scale of the Aggression Questionnaire but not on the other scales. In the military sample, men indicated that they expected to behave more aggressively than women. Positive correlations among different aspects of aggressiveness were found for both men and women. Increasing age and education were associated with lower aggressiveness in both genders, suggesting that aggressiveness may be susceptible to modification over the course of one's life.We would like to thank Angela Bennett, Gail Bliss, Kayleigh Carabajal, Julie Depree, Carmen Gonzales, Deborah Good, Scott Griffin, Gladys Herrera, George Selix, Ruth Tangman, and Jon Woodland for their assistance with the development, distribution, and coding of the questionnaire.     

Beliefs about stories: Parents' and therapists' explanations of childhood difficulties

Therapists and parents were given vignettes describing the behavioural and emotional difficulties of two nine-year-old children and were asked to rate the importance of a number of possible explanations for such difficulties. Broad agreement was found between parents and therapists, but also there were a number of significant differences. Parents endorsed more child centered explanations and put greater emphasis on physical and developmental factors, while therapists endorsed relationships factors and saw the beliefs of other family members as important. Therapists who were parents showed a pattern of responses that lay between those of parents and non-parent therapists.     

Can we learn from the clinically significant face processing deficits,prosopagnosia and capgras delusion?

This review describes two clinically significant face processing deficits, prosopagnosia and Capgras delusion, and provides new knowledge about the face recognition process by a convergence of empirical findings. These empirical findings are structured around two questions that are viewed from the perspectives of the two deficits. First is the question of hemispheric specificity, which inquires into the degree of each hemisphere's contribution to the face recognition process. Second is the question of dual neural pathways, which addresses the possibility that the face recognition process proceeds along two parallel pathways in the brain. Findings from the hemispheric specificity studies reinforce the current view that right hemisphere involvement is necessary for face recognition while left hemisphere involvement is minimal. Findings from the dual neural pathways studies reinforce the plausible but yet unproven hypothesis that two neural pathways pass information from the visual association cortex in the occipital lobe toward the temporal lobes and limbic system when faces are seen and recognized. These findings, which also indicate that each of the dual neural pathways carries different, nonredundant information, could be instrumental in showing that the pathways play different roles in the manifestations of the clinically significant face processing deficits, prosopagnosia and Capgras delusion.     

Counseling and screening for cystic fibrosis in patients with congenital bilateral absence of the vas deferens: Patient perceptions

Congenital bilateral absence of the vas deferens (CBAVD) occurs in approximately 1.3% of infertile males and is thought to be, in most cases, a primarily genital form of cystic fibrosis (CF). Fourteen males with CBAVD considering microsurgical sperm aspiration from the epididymis (MESA) and in vitro fertilization were seen for genetic counseling and screening for CF. To retrospectively evaluate these patients' perceptions of the counseling and screening information, we conducted structured telephone interviews to assess their recall of information about CF and its impact on their health concerns and reproductive plans. We found that, as the health implications of CF are abstract and not as important to patients as the diagnosis of CBAVD itself, patients tend to view their CF status primarily in terms of their reproductive potential. Retrospective analysis afforded us an opportunity to identify the psychosocial issues of most concern to this unique patient population.     

Progressive changes in articulatory patterns in verbal apraxia: A longitudinal case study

This research reports findings in a 10-year study of an apraxic adult, who was one of five subjects described by Shankweiler and Harris, (Cortex, ,2 277–292, 1966). Confusion matrices and feature analysis were used to compare 1965 and 1975 performances. Results indicate that over the 10-year period, errors of place, manner, and omission were markedly reduced. Voicing errors, however, while reduced in total number, still constituted a significant percentage of the patient's residual errors. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

A system for the assessment of human performance in concurrent verbal and manual control tasks

A multipurpose laboratory system incorporating a voice interactive terminal and graphic display system is described. The facility is designed to investigate some aspects of human performance on concurrent verbal and tracking tasks. The results of a pilot study showing decrements in dual-task performance are reported.     

Memory aids people use: Two interview studies

In two interview studies subjects were asked what memory aids they used and how often. In particular, the reported frequencies of use of external aids such as shopping lists and memos were compared with those of internal aids that have been investigated by psychologists, such as the method of loci. Subjects in the first study were 15 male and 15 female university students, and in the second, a group of 30 adult women, most of whom were housewives. In both studies the aids reported to be used most were external ones. However, it is pointed out that the most commonly used methods of remembering must be internal, although these are not usually considered to be aids. Some difficulties that arise in the assessment of memory in interview and questionnaire studies are discussed.     

Response class: A Guttman scale analysis

This study addressed the problem of response class as it relates to coercive child behavior. Guttman scale analyses were used to determine if there were regular, unidimensional progressions across eight coercive response categories; that children who performed high probability coercive behaviors would also tend to perform all of the lower probability coercive behaviors. Rank-order correlations were done to determine if there was consistency in the response class across settings. Two samples of boys were observed in two school settings, classroom and playground. One sample was a derivation sample of 26 boys, the second a replication sample of 27 boys. Reproducibility coefficients for the derivation sample were .92 for the classroom Guttman scale analysis and .93 for the playground analysis. For the crossvalidation sample the reproducibility coefficients were .94 in both settings. Rankorder correlations across settings and done in terms of the number of subjects performing each of the coercive responses were .971 (df=6,p<.001) for the derivation sample and .996 df=6,p<.001) for the crossvalidation sample. It was concluded that the eight coercive responses observed appeared to constitute a response class, i.e., the ordering of the responses was transitive across subjects, and that the coercive response hierarchy was stable across school settings for groups of children.I wish to extend thanks to Gerald Patterson et al., of the Oregon Social Learning Center, for their space, time, and encouragement. Special thanks to Mark Weinrott for his excellent editorial comments.