Beyond belief bias: Reasoning from conceptual structures by mental models manipulation

Mental models constitute an alternative to the rule-based systems in the explanation of human reasoning (Johnson-Laird, 1983). In this paper, we claim that the concept of believability generally used to categorize content and context effects is of little use within a semantic theory. Thus, we propose the use of categories that are directly extracted from subjective relations among concepts within the reasoning problem. We demonstrate that manipulations based on this kind of categorization produce predictable patterns of responses in reasoning problems. We present two experiments to test our predictions, using conditional and syllogistic reasoning problems, and in both cases, we demonstrate the influence of conceptual knowledge not only in natural contexts, but also in experimentally created artificial contexts.     

Correlates of gender role orientation during pregnancy and the postpartum

This study was designed to examine the relationship between gender role orientation and psychological adjustment during pregnancy and the postpartum period in a large sample of French-speaking Caucasian mothers. Gender role was assessed with the Bem Sex Role Inventory, which classifies subjects into four categories: androgynous, masculine, feminine, and undifferentiated. A discriminant analysis showed a relationship between androgyny and the following measures of psychological adaptation: self-esteem, satisfaction with social support, and level of apprehension toward perinatal stressors. The masculine gender role was linked with self-esteem, work involvement, age, and severity of perinatal stress. No relationship was found between gender role and the level of antenatal or postnatal depressive symptomatology. Stress, marital support, and social support were among the predictors of postpartum depression, which underlined the importance of taking these variables into account when studying the well-being of mothers during the postnatal period. Results are discussed in light of previous literature on the association between gender role and motherhood. The limitations of Bem's model and inventory are also considered.     

Text Comprehension Training for Disabled Readers: An Evaluation of Reciprocal Teaching and Text Analysis Training Programs

Forty-six reading disabled adolescents were randomly assigned to one of three 25-hr instructional programs. Two programs provided training in expository text comprehension, and a third offered training in academic problem solving and organizational and study skills (an alternative treatment control). One reading comprehension program was designed to remediate a deficient knowledge base, forcing disabled readers to elaborate and further process new text knowledge, focusing on both specific informational content in a text and knowledge of text structure per se. The second program was patterned after the Palincsar and Brown (1984) reciprocal teaching techniques and focused on training four text comprehension strategies used by skilled comprehenders. Both the “knowledge-base” and the “strategy” training approaches were associated with significant improvement in disabled readers' comprehension skills, although training effects did not generalize across all aspects of reading comprehension performance. Strategy-trained readers applied the trained strategies with equal success on instructed and uninstructed text materials, providing strong evidence of transfer of learning. Knowledge-base readers also demonstrated successful transfer of specifically trained procedures (semantic mapping, text analysis) to unfamiliar text. In both programs, the best outcomes were obtained when specific strategies and operations were targeted for training.     

Behavioural family therapy and the influence of a systems framework

A family approach using the techniques of behaviour modification, to a family presenting with problems of encopressis in a five-year-old boy, is described. The usefulness of taking a broader analysis of the context of the behaviours targeted for modification under the impact of systems theories is emphasized. A one-year follow-up after treatment demonstrated both symptomatic and family changes.     

Human figure drawings of gender-problem children: A comparison to sibling,psychiatric, and normal controls

The Draw-a-Person test was used to evaluate a number of questions regarding children referred for potential problems in their gender-identity development (N = 36). Sibling (N = 31), psychiatric (N = 23), and normal (N = 30) children served as comparison groups. The major results included the following: (1) The gender-referred children were more likely to draw an opposite-sex person when requested to "draw a person" than were the other three groups; (2) the gender-referred children who drew an opposite-sex person were more likely to play with opposite-sex toys and dress-up apparel on a free-play task than were the gender-referred children who drew a same-sex person; (3) the gender-referred children drew taller opposite-sex persons than same-sex persons; (4) using Koppitz's (1968) criteria, the normal children had a smaller proportion of emotional disturbance indicators in their same-sex drawings than did the other three groups. These findings were discussed with regard to psychometric and interpretive issues in the assessment of children with atypical gender-role behavior.     

Smoking cessation with behaviour therapy or acupuncture—A controlled study

Five hundred and fifty-eight cigarette smokers (mean 31 cigarettes/day) were randomized in four groups: Acupuncture, Behaviour Therapy, Placebo Medication and Waiting-list Control. The life-table analysis of smoking cessation showed, at a 12-month follow-up, no difference between Acupuncture, Behaviour Therapy and Placebo. Differences appeared only in an analysis of the abstinent subjects at each data point. Behaviour Therapy and Acupuncture accounted for significantly more abstinent subjects than Placebo at the end of the 2-week therapeutic phase. However at 9 and 12 months Acupuncture had a statistically-significant greater number of abstinent subjects than Behaviour Therapy, but there was no difference between Acupuncture and Placebo. The percentage decrease in smoking from baseline appeared significantly greater at 12 months in the first three groups than in the Control conditions. However, as in most smoking-cessation studies, the overall effect was small and non-specific. The results reflect the importance of maintenance programmes and of the prevention of addiction.     

Disintegrated experience: the dissociative disorders revisited

We present proposed changes to the dissociative disorders section of the 4th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and review the concept of pathological and nonpathological dissociation, including empirical findings on the relations between trauma and dissociative phenomenology and between dissociation and hypnosis. The most important proposals include the creation of two new diagnostic entities, brief reactive dissociative disorder and transient dissociative disturbance, and the readoption of the criterion of amnesia for a multiple personality disorder diagnosis. We conclude that further work on dissociative processes will provide an important link between clinical and experimental approaches to human cognition, emotion, and personality.     

A comparison of mothers' and fathers' speech to their 3-year-old sons

The language patterns of 10 mothers and 10 fathers with their firstborn 3-year-old sons were compared. Ten-minute mother-son and father-son conversations were recorded independently in the home during a free-play session with standard play mterials. The findings of this study indicate that although mothers and fathers used a similar number of utterances in conversing with their sons over a 10-minute period, their patterns of speech were different on a number of quantitative measures including MLU, MLU of five longest utterances, percent of imperatives, and percent of questions. In general, fathers' communication was viewed as more controlling and involving the child less, while mothers' communication was viewed as more child-centered and involving the child more.