Risk status of adolescent children of problem-drinking parents

These studies assessed the risk status of children of untreated alcoholics. In Study 1, a cross-sectional survey of 208 high school students identified 18% as having serious concern about their parents' drinking. In Study 2, 32 children of problem-drinking parents and 39 others who participated in self-help groups were surveyed. Children of problem-drinking parents were more at risk of depression, low self-esteem, and heavy drinking than their peers in the general high school population. Within self-help groups, however, children's symptomatology was not related to their parents' drinking status. The results support the need for preventive intervention for children of problem-drinking parents and for developing strategies for improving the participation rate of such children in the intervention programs that are available.     

Tone production deficits in nonfluent aphasic Chinese speech

Previous studies demonstrating a right hemisphere lateralization of musical, tonal, and intonational stimuli had suggested that in aphasic tone language speakers, the tonal phonemes might be subject to a lesser degree of deficit than consonantal phonemes. Using a word repetition task, this research demonstrates that left-damaged nonfluent aphasic speakers of Chinese experience a tonal production deficit which is both quantitatively and qualitatively equivalent to the deficit experienced by these speakers in the production of consonants. It is suggested that in tone languages, lexical specification of tone contour information results in left hemisphere lateralization of that information, thus making the tonal phonemes vulnerable to left hemisphere damage.     

A plea for greater recognition and appreciation of our group members' courage

Courage-a mental act that involves a decision to face and deal with emotional pain as honestly as possible without any guarantee of a positive outcome-resides at the heart of the therapeutic alliance and the work of psychodynamic group therapy. The author's experience suggests that group therapists tend to take for granted or underestimate the courage required to join and participate in a psychodynamic therapy group. Written from the perspective of self-psychology, this article provides a theoretical rationale for courage recognition as a central and crucial leadership function. Examples of courage are presented and contrasted with behaviors that appear courageous but are not. A detailed case example discusses the courage it takes for dyads to work through reciprocal negative transferences. Suggestions are offered to assist the group therapist in recognizing and calling attention to courageous behaviors. The author discusses some of the pitfalls of our profession's preference for value-free language and then shows how and why the occasional and judicious use of non-neutral language, courage being an example, can facilitate and deepen group work.     

Short-term recognition memory of tones

Four Os participated in a recognition memory experiment for a period of 5 weeks. The task required O to judge whether two temporally sequenced tones (ISI = 0.5, 2.0, or 8.0 sec) were the “same” or “different ” Latencies and confidence ratings were obtained for each judgment. TSD analyses applied to individual O’s data indicated consistent and rapidly decreasing d’s as a function of ISI. ROC functions generated from the latencies and ratings produced comparable results, indicating the feasibility of using latency measures along with the type of judgments made to obtain sensitivity measures. Response bias, as indicated by the differences in the latencies between “same” and “different” judgments, did not produce consistent trends.     

Incorporating prior biases innetwork models of conceptual rule learning

A series of simulations is reported in which extant formal categorization models are applied to human rule-learning data (Salatas & Bourne, 1974). These data show that there are clear differences in the ease with which humans learn rules, with the conjunctive the easiest and the biconditional the hardest. The original ALCOVE model (an exemplar-based model), a configuralcue model, and two-layer backpropagation models did not fit the rule-learning data. ALCOVE successfully fit the data, however, when prior biases observed in human rule learning were implemented into weights of the network. Thus, current empirical learning models may not fare well in situations in which learners enter the concept-formation situation with preconceived biases regarding the kinds of concepts that are possible, but such biases might nevertheless be captured within these models. By incorporating preexperimental biases, ALCOVE may hold promise as a comprehensive category-learning model.     

Assessing violent offending in serious juvenile offenders

The convergent validity of the two most frequently used methods for assessing violent offending in juveniles (i.e., selfreports and arrests) was evaluated. Participants were 87 serious juvenile offenders and their maternal figures, primarily from disadvantaged families. Validation measures tapped established behavioral, family, and peer correlates of delinquency. Results failed to support the ability of either arrests for violent crimes or selfreported violent offenses to index violent criminal behavior accurately. Several methodological features of the study support our hypothesis that the findings were not spurious. Procedural and conceptual implications of the findings are discussed.The Family and Neighborhood Services Project was funded by Grant 2H87MH43557-04 to the South Carolina Department of Mental Health from the National Institute of Mental Health. The authors extend their most sincere appreciation to Commissioner Joseph Bevilacqua, Commissioner Richard McLawhorn, Joe James, Dale Chandler, Madeline Blackwell, Kristen Rowden, Pam King, Nancy King, Nancy Yue, and Jerry DeLoye.