F. Hegelmaier: On memory for the length of a line

Summary A very early student project undertaken by Friedrich Hegelmaier (1833–1906), published in German in 1852, is republished in English translation. Slight though the experimental work is, it nevertheless occupies a unique place in the history of experimental psychology. It is the source whence Fechner had the method of constant stimuli, a method that continued in use as the preferred psychophysical method, substantially in the form described here, for more than a century. The experiment is arguably the first experiment in the modern sense of a systematic preplanned body of observations and has the glaring faults that one would expect in a very first experiment. Finally, Hegelmaier suggests the use of two simultaneous tasks as a means to investigate human performance, a full hundred years before that idea was realized in practice. If only he had continued in experimental psychology!     

Co-operative parenting post-divorce: possibility or pipedream?

Research shows that, after divorce, children do best when they retain a constructive relationship with both parents. Hence, mediation services and recent reforms in family law seek to encourage parents to co-operate fully and amicably, and to share parental responsibility for the care and well-being of their children. There is a danger that a vision of 'happy-ever-after' post-divorce families ignores the complexity of transitions facing separating families, and the emotional, social and economic stresses which parents experience for many years.
Drawing on years of research with divorcing families, this paper invites practitioners to consider whether too much is expected of divorced parents, and whether existing services for separating families adequately address the needs of different family members.     

Discussions on the large group

At the heart of this article are dialogues with three distinguished large group leaders: Patrick de Mare, Earl Hopper and Lionel Kreeger. They address, with Yvonne Agazarian, some of the major issues in leading large groups: terror and chaos, projective identification, annihilation anxiety, and the impact of size, structure, and boundary management on the potential for change and transformation in the large group. Also discussed are the twin heritage of both psychodynamic and sociological theory and the influence of psychoanalysis, basic assumption theory, information theory, general systems theory, and field theory on the current understanding of large group as the context for therapeutic change. The authors also introduce a theory of living human systems, which views the large group as one system in a hierarchy of isomorphic systems and identifies the subgroup as the fulcrum for change. From this systems-centered perspective, changing the structure and function of communication within subgroups simultaneously changes both the large group and the individual subgroup members.FAGPA is a consulting affiliate of Friends Hospital and maintains a private practice in Philadelphia. Dr. Agazarian has spent the last 30 years developing the theory of living human systems and systems-centered group and individual therapy.Frances B. Carter, M.S.S., is a consulting affiliate of Friends Hospital and maintains a private practice in Philadelphia.     

At first glance: Accessibility of the physical attractiveness stereotype

This research investigated two related questions. First, do stereotyped attribute judgments emerge based on attractiveness information presented under severely restricted viewing conditions? Second, will similar biased judgments be obtained for the same targets when subjects are permitted unrestricted viewing time? Experiment 1 found that male and female Caucasian college students were able to differentiate between levels of attractiveness of both males and females on the basis of cue information contained in a single brief glance (100 ms) at a target. Subjects made stereotyped attribute judgments of targets' femininity/masculinity, job suitability, and cooperativeness based on this information under restricted and unrestricted (Experiment 2) conditions. Subjects' eye fixation patterns, recorded during the second experiment, revealed that men and women differed in the way they explored targets, but their differing search strategies had no significant effect on physical attractiveness stereotyping. Results suggest that perception of differential attractiveness occurs automatically with the initial encoding of sensory data.     

University Campus Consultation: Opportunities and Limitations

Consultation on a university campus is an important adjunct mental health service to individual and small-group counseling. It serves as a preventive and an early identification resource for both emotional-social and educational-vocational problems. Interventions with faculty, staff, and campus organizations are made possible with a consultation service. Consultation projects have enhanced support networks for ethnic-minority students and increased the humanization of the campus for all students.     

DEVELOPMENT OF BASIC AUDITORY DISCRIMINATION IN PRESCHOOL CHILDREN

Abstract— Intensity (loudness), frequency (pitch), and duration discrimination were examined in 41 normal-hearing children, aged 4 to 6 years, and 9 adults. A second study retested 25 of the youngest children 12 to 18 months later. Intensity discrimination showed the least improvement with age and was adultlike by age 5 for most of the children. In contrast, frequency and duration discrimination showed highly significant improvement with age, but remained poorer than adults' discrimination for many 6-year-olds. Large individual differences were observed within alt tasks and age groups.     

Self-Awareness, Task Failure, and Disinhibition: How Attentional Focus Affects Eating

ABSTRACT Dieting and nondieting subjects were given either failure or neutral performance feedback on a problem-solving task. Failure subjects were then assigned to one of three self-awareness conditions: One group was forced to watch a video clip of themselves failing on the problem-solving task, one group was asked to watch a distracting video clip on bighorn sheep, and the final group was asked to sit quietly for 10 minutes. Subjects were then allowed to eat as much ice cream as they wanted. Only in those conditions which allowed—or promoted—low self-awareness (the failure/distraction and simple failure condition) did dieters show disinhibited eating. In the failure/videotape condition, which enforced high levels of self-awareness, eating in dieters remained inhibited. This supports the proposal that a reduction in self-awareness is necessary for lifting of inhibitions. Eating in nondieters was reduced in the failure/videotape and simple failure conditions, possibly because of the autonomic correlates of distress.     

Evaluation of the diagnostic interview for children and adolescents for use in general population samples

This article presents evaluative data on the use of the Diagnostic Interview for Children and AdolescentsRevised (DICAR) to classify DSM-IIIR disorders in the general population. Data for the analyses came from a probability sample (N=251) of parentchild/adolescent dyads aged 6 to 16 separately administered the DICAR on two occasions, 10 to 20 days apart, by trained lay interviewers and child psychiatrists. Data are presented on prevalence,testretest reliability, parentchild/adolescent agreement, and trained lay interviewerchild psychiatrist agreement. High prevalences of oppositional defiant disorder derived from parent assessments and overanxious disorder and dysthymia derived from adolescent assessments suggest that these disorders may be overidentified. Interview data provided by 6 to 11year olds to classify the internalizing disorders were too unreliable to be useful. Agreement between parentchild/adolescent dyads was generally low while agreement between trained lay interviewerschild psychiatrists was generally high.This work was supported by funds from the National Health Research and Development Program (grant number 6606-3760-42) and the Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services, and was carried out by the Child Epidemiology Unit, Department of Psychiatry, McMaster University and the Child and Family Centre, Chedoke-McMaster Hospitals, Hamilton, Ontario. Dr. Boyle is supported by a William T. Grant Foundation Faculty Scholar Award; Dr. Offord by a National Health Scientist Award, Health and Welfare Canada; Dr. Szatmari by a Research Fellowship, Ontario Mental Health Foundation; and Dr. Fleming by a NARSAD Young Investigator Award. The authors wish to thank the Hamilton Board of Education, particularly Mr. Keith Reilly and Mr. Owen Jackson; principals and teachers of the Board; and parents and students for their help on this project. Our appreciation also extends to Ms. Barb Hall who assisted in the analysis of the data.