Maternal styles in infant psychotherapy: Treatment and research implications

Infant psychotherapy, in which the mother is requested to follow the baby's activities without initiating or directing, is described. Mothers demonstrate different styles of involvement with their infants: a protective mode, a prohibitive mode, a competitive mode, and other ways of interfering with their infants' tendency to explore the environment. Attempts to analyze such factors as position, distance and movement are discussed. Research for recording and analyzing the movement of infant and mother dyads is proposed.     

Absence of compensation and reasoning-like processes in the perception of orientation in depth

When errors are present in the perceived depth between the parts of a physically stationary object, the object appears to rotate as the head is moved laterally (Gogel, 1980). This illusory rotation has been attributed either to compensation (Wallach, 1985, 1987) or to inferential-like processes (Rock, 1983). Alternatively, the perceived distances of and directions to the parts of the object are sufficient to explain the illusory perceived orientations and perceived rotations of the stimulus. This was examined in three experiments. In Experiment 1, a perceived illusory orientation of a stimulus object extended in depth was produced by misleading binocular disparity and was measured at two different lateral positions of the head under two conditions. In the static condition, the head was stationary at different times at each of the two measurement positions of the head. In the dynamic condition, continuous motion of the head occurred between these two positions. In Experiment 2, static and dynamic conditions of illusory stimulus orientation were observed with the head stationary. In Experiment 3, a perspective illusion instead of binocular disparity produced the errors in perceived depth. In no experiment did the perceived orientation of the object differ for the static and dynamic conditions. In the absence of head motion, neither compensatory nor inferential-like processes were available. It is concluded that these processes are not needed to explain either illusory or nonillusory perceptions of the orientation or rotation of stimuli viewed with a laterally moving head.     

Sex differences on televised toy commercials

Televised toy commercials were observed during the 1977 (N=44) and 1978 (N=47) Christmas holiday seasons; children shown in the commercials were classified by sex and activity or passivity. In 1977 53 boys and 37 girls were observed; 71 boys and 35 girls were shown in 1978. There were significantly more boys than girls in the 1978 sample of commercials; more commercials contained boys than girls, and there were more boys than girls per commercial. Girls were more likely to appear in a passive role than boys were in the 1977 commercials. There were significantly fewer mixed-sex commericals than expected in 1977, but not in 1978. Percentages of commercials representing 12 toy categories and percentages of boys and girls appearing within each category are described; differences between years are discussed.     

Reliability of the Attitudes Toward Women Scale (AWS) and the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ)

The stability and internal consistency of Spence and Helmreich's Attitudes Toward Women Scale (AWS) and Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ) are reported. An entire first-year class of 1,007 male and 78 female cadets at the U.S. Military Academy were given a battery of psychological tests before and after cadet basic training, a 2 1/2-month period. The AWS and PAQ proved to be highly reliable, comparable to other frequently used psychological tests. This psychometric information encourages researchers to make further use of these gender-related instruments.This research was conducted under research grants from the Army Research Institute (Alan G. Vitters and Jerome Adams, Principal Investigators). The views expressed herein are opinions of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the policy of the U.S. Army, the U.S. Military Academy, or the Army Research Institute. The authors appreciate the editorial comments of Dr. Brenda Major.