On the form and universality of the contempt expression: A challenge to Ekman and Friesen's claim of discovery

The claim of Ekman and Friesen (1986, A New Pan- Cultural Facial Expression of Emotion,Motivation and Emotion, 10, 159–168) that they have found the first empirical support for the existence of a pancultural expression of contempt is challenged on three grounds. First, the claim that no one else had ever attempted to describe an expression unique to contempt in any culture neglects a tradition of research dating back to Darwin. Second, the data presented by Ekman and Friesen were derived using stimuli that are ambiguous representations of their intended expressions. Finally, there are earlier data for the universality of contempt expressions. Ekman and Friesen's contempt expression may best be viewed as a learned modification of a prototypical expression evolved from the infrahuman snarl.     

Counselling Supervision: The British context

Counselling/psychotherapy supervision is on the verge of a professional breakthrough in Britain today. Training courses are emerging, accreditation for supervisors is in progress and a Code of Ethics for Supervisors is finalised. Yet supervision is still little understood. There are few agreed definitions and certainly no agreed tasks, roles, or even goals of supervision. Conflict still abounds about whether it is more akin to therapy than to education, about whether or not it shold be evaluative, and about what areas of counselling it should cover. Supervisors are poorly trained in supervision and areas such as the legal implications and responsibilities of supervision not clear and often not even considered important. What research has been done is confined largely to United States and few attempts have been made to apply findings to Britain, e.g. how valid in Britain is the current research on Developmental Models of supervision which outline the stages through which counsellors in training travel.

Supervision is still tied to counselling theory despite its efforts to become a discipline on its own. Most supervisors in Britain seem to apply their theory of counselling to supervision setting. However, some of the conflicts are being faced and some questions raised about the future of supervision, about the kind of relationship involved, about its relationship to counselling. This article raises some current issues in the field and asks the kinds of questions that need answering before we are able to talk about a British understanding and application of counselling supervision.     

Visual-motor ability of children with articulation disorders

The present study was done to assess differences between children with diagnosed functional articulation disorders and a control group on the variable of visual-motor ability. A group of 34 elementary children with articulation problems were matched with a control group of 34 for sex, age, and grade. Both groups were administered the Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation and the Minnesota Percepto-Diagnostic Test--Revised. Analysis indicated that children with articulation problems performed significantly lower on visual-motor skills.     

Perceived Causes and Consequences of Property Rights to Jobs

We report two studies of property rights to jobs. Perceptions of having or not having a property right were manipulated in a vignette in the first study. Having a property right was viewed as being associated with increased commitment, organizational citizenship behaviors, willingness to sue for wrongful dismissal and decreased absenteeism and turnover in a sample of 202 undergraduates. In a second, self-report study property rights were associated with increased organizational commitment, increased perceptions of control at work, and organizational tenure in a sample of 95 clerical employees.     

Memorability judgments for high- and low-frequency words

Five experiments were conducted in order to examine subjects’ judgments of the memorability of high- (HF) and low-frequency (LF) words in the context of a recognition memory task. In Experiment 1, the subjects were provided study/test experience with a list of HF and LF words prior to making memorability judgments for a new list of HF and LF items. The findings were consistent with previous evidence (Greene & Thapar, 1994; Wixted, 1992) suggesting that subjects are not explicitly aware of the greater recognition memorability of LF words. Experiments 2–5 embedded the memorability judgment task within the recognition test itself. In these experiments, the subjects consistently gave higher memorability ratings to LF items. The contrast between the pattern of results found when the subjects made their judgments at the time of list presentation (Experiment 1) and that when they made their judgments during the recognition test (Experiments 2–5) is consistent with recent evidence that even seemingly highly related metamnemonic judgments (e.g., ease of learning judgments vs. judgments of learning for the same items) may be based on very different factors if they occur at different points in the study/test cycle. The present findings are also consistent with the possibility that very rapid retrieval of memorability information for HF and LF words may affect recognition decisions and may contribute to the recognition memory word frequency effect.     

Recency judgments as a function of word frequency: A framing effect and frequency misattributions

The effects of word frequency on judgments of recency of item presentation were examined in two experiments. Subjects in Experiment 1 were presented two mixed lists of high- and low-frequency words followed by a list assignment task for recognized items. It was found that subjects were biased toward assigning low-frequency words to the more recently presented list. Subjects in Experiment 2 were presented a single mixed list of high- and low-frequency words followed by either a relative recency of presentation judgment task or a relative primacy of presentation judgment task. Each word pair on the tests contained one high-frequency word and one low-frequency word. It was found that, for the recency judgment task, subjects were biased to select the low-frequency item as having been presented more recently. However, on the parallel primacy judgment task, there were no effects of word frequency; moreover, overall accuracy levels were higher with primacy than with recency instructions. We interpret the effects of word frequency on recency judgments in Experiments 1 and 2 in terms of a misattribution of frequency-related differences in recollection-based recognition. The finding that recency and primacy instructions produced different patterns of results provides further evidence (Flexser & Bower, 1974) for an effect on performance of the way in which the temporal judgment task was framed.     

Demonstrations of neophobia and enhanced neophobia in the albino rat.

The conditions under which neophobia and enhanced neophobia occur in the albino rat were studied. Neophobia to a .1% saccharin solution was demonstrated in a 10-min single-bottle test. This neophobia was enhanced by pairing water ingestion with a radiation exposure of 100 r. or an injection of lithium chloride 24 hr prior to the saccharin test. In addition, it was found that the differences in consumption of saccharin in a 10-min single-bottle test due to neophobia and enhanced neophobia were produced by consistent differences in drinking rates which appeared early in the 10-min period. The disappearance of neophobia and enhanced neophobia in a 1-hr single-bottle test suggested that the effects of neophobia and enhanced neophobia are short-lived and are best measured in a brief single-bottle test. Finally, enhanced neophobia was not found when 2 days of water drinking were interposed between LiCl poisoning and saccharin testing.     

A stereotaxic implant technique for the weanling rat

A modified technique for permanently implanted electrodes in the weanling rat is presented. As a reliable and durable technique, long-term stimulation of the juvenile rat is made possible.     

Survival needs of the older church member: Implications for educational programming

Conclusion Pastors and church education planners must be made aware of the fact that older adulthood is a dynamic period fraught with new challenges for the elderly. The constriction phase of the adult life span places new demands on the older adult through its emerging social roles, developmental tasks, and teachable moments. Instrumental forms of education are required to develop new competencies that will, in turn, retard the process of decline. It is imperative that the decline process be slowed down in the older adult so that he may continue to experience new growth and expansion opportunities.Only through the recognition of the developmental growth changes of the older adult, and through the appropriate planning of educational programs designed to provide immediate competency for coping with such changes, can the real needs of the older church member be met. Such efforts will be reflected positively in the enriched lives of the senior members of our churches.     

How shall we study individual differences in cognitive abilities?—Methodological and theoretical perspectives

Selected studies in recent research literature are examined with regard to (a) their methodological adequacy in establishing dimensions of individual differences in information-processing abilities, and (b) the theoretical problems involved in inferring psychological processes from individual difference dimensions. Many methodological inadequacies are noted, including use of small Ns, questionable procedures in establishing variables (e.g., use of raw difference scores), improper or inadequate use of factor analysis and other multivariate statistical techniques, and poor presentation of results. On the whole, little progress has been made thus far in identifying psychological processes through research in individual differences, even though this research approach is viable and potentially useful. Serious theoretical difficulties arise in attempting to infer the nature and operation of psychological processes merely from the identification of individual difference trait dimensions. Promising research, however, is represented by studies in which an effort is made to analyze tasks into their components, to vary task characteristics, and/or to consider the strategies that individuals can employ in performing the tasks.