Task-related arousal of type A and type B persons: level of challenge and response specificity

To determine whether different levels of challenge had differential effects on the arousal levels of Type A and Type B persons, 30 Type A and 30 Type B male subjects worked on an intelligence test task (digits backwards recall) that was easy, moderately difficult, or extremely difficult. Arousal was measured in terms of systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, pulse rate, pulse volume, skin resistance, and subjective arousal. Results indicated that while working on the extremely difficult task, the Type A subjects evidenced reliably higher systolic blood pressure than did the Type B subjects (p = 0.1; difference = 7.52 mm of Hg) and that there were not reliable differences between the subjects in systolic blood pressure at other levels of challenge or on other measures of arousal.     

Sex stereotype impacts on competence ratings by children

Female and male children, 67 and 114 months of age, provided ratings of perceived relative competence of male and female stimulus persons who were depicted as engaging in sex-stereotyped professions. Ratings for each of eight occupations were made by allocating 10 plastic chips between the two stimulus persons. After the last trial, children also were asked to recall the occupation last paired with a particular stimulus person. Children at each of three age levels rated as more competent the individual whose sex was consistent with the stereotype for the occupational group presented; the degree of differentiation increased with age. Recall was influenced by the consistency of the stimulus person/occupation pairing with the sex stereotype, but was not related to ratings of competence.A research grant from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte Foundation provided partial support for this research. The authors would like to thank Dr. R. Bruce Irons, principal, and the many teachers at Irwin Open Elementary School who cooperated on this project; William G. Graziano for bringing the chip allocation task to our attention; and Helene A. Hilger for helpful comments.     

The psychotherapist's duty to act reasonably to prevent suicide: A proposal to allow rational suicide

It is proposed that society should re-examine its assumptions about suicide. Rational suicide is viewed as an extension of the right to die. After a review of the legal liability of the psychotherapist and psychiatric facility for both inpatient and outpatient suicide, the author presents an analysis of philosophical, ethical, and psychoanalytic arguments for allowing rational suicide. It is argued that emotional pain should be given more legitimacy as a reason for suicide. The decision to live or to die is argued to best rest with the individual.     

Smoking and academic performance

Smokers and nonsmokers were compared on three aspects of academic achievement. Although exactly the same percentage of smokers and nonsmokers passed the first-year university examination, smokers obtained significantly higher marks. Similarly, smokers achieved significantly higher marks in their final year examinations in comparison with nonsmokers. Finally, a comparison of the tutorial essay marks of the smokers and nonsmokers again showed that smokers obtained significantly higher marks than nonsmokers. These data are consistent with the idea that ambitious students adopt smoking in the belief that it will help them study and sustain concentration.     

Word age-of-acquisition and residence time in lexical memory as factors in word naming

Previous reports of age-of-acquisition effects have been theoretically ambiguous since, in any particular individual, word age-of-acquisition is perfectly correlated with the length of time that a word has been known. The study reported in this article attempted to disentangle effects of word age-of-acquisition and length of word residence time in lexical memory. To this end, words varying in recency-of-introduction to British English were presented in a word-naming task to 46 native speakers whose ages ranged from 20 to 58 years. Using subjects’ ratings of the words on age-of-acquisition, it was possible to assess word residence times and to compare the effects on naming speeds of age-of-acquisition and residence times. Regression analyses indicated that age-of-acquisition was a more important factor than residence time in the word-naming task.     

Suicide and rurality in urban society

Recent findings suggest that suicide increases with rurality, but research on rural suicide leaves many questions unanswered. This study specifies problems of community organization as a reason for expecting a positive effect of rurality on the suicide rate. A multiple regression analysis of county data shows that rurality has a substantial positive effect and is, in fact, the best predictor of the suicide rate among several variables selected from the previous literature. Additional research is needed to test the interpretation that rurality contributes to an incomplete, fragmented form of community organization which influences the suicide rate by disrupting primary relationships.     

The recognition of and empathic response to “personal legends”

The ability to recognize and analyze a personal legend in the conversation of an older person is a useful tool for the skilled, compassionate conversation partner. Having isolated the legend, the empathic listener can offer the teller of the legend the gift of an understanding, clarifying interpretation of its significance.Carolyn K. Dennis, M. Th., is assistant chaplain and program coordinator of the health care lay ministry training program at Gaston Episcopal Hospital, in Dallas, Texas.     

Short-term memory for colors and color names in the absence of vocalization

In a previous experiment, Allen found no release from proactive inhibition using the Brown-Peterson procedure in a group who were shifted from recalling colors to recalling the names of colors. The lack of release suggests that colors and color names are encoded in similar ways. It was argued that the similarity of encoding might have been caused by the procedure of requiring the subjects to say out loud the names of the colors at the time of stimulus presentation and recall. In the present experiment, a procedure was devised that eliminated the need for verbalization of the colors. The same pattern of results was obtained, namely, release from proactive inhibition in the group shifted from recalling color names to colors but not in the group shifted in the opposite direction. It was concluded that if subjects encode colors as a verbal label, then this encoding strategy is not caused by the procedure of requiring the subjects to verbalize the colors.