Book reviews

Long, J. and Baddeley, A. Attention and performance IX. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 1981. Pp 643. ISBN 0-89859-156-2. £30.

Cutler, A. and Ladd, D. R. (Eds.). Prosody: Models and measurements. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. 1983. Pp. ix + 159. ISBN 3-540-12428-4. $24.

Wood, G. Cognitive psychology: A skills approach. Monterey, Cal.: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company. 1983. Pp. 352. ISBN 0-534-01262-0.

Engelkamp, J. and Zimmer, H. D. Dynamic aspects of language processing: Focus and presupposition. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. 1983. Pp. 102. ISBN 3-540-12433-0

K. Rayner (Ed.). Eye movements in reading: Perceptual and language processes. New York: Academic Press. 1983. pp. xxi + 526. ISBN 0-12-583680-5. £34.40.

Lass, N. J., McReynolds, L. V., Northern, J. L. and Yoder, D. E. (Eds.). Speech, language and hearing. Philadelphia: WB Saunders Co. 1982. Vol I: Normal processes. (ISBN 0-7216-5641-2, pp. 422, $26.50.) Vol II: Pathologies of speech and language. (ISBN 0-7216-5642-0, pp. 368, $24.50.) Vol III: Hearing disorders. (ISBN 0-7216-5643-9, pp. 238, $22.50.)

Singleton, W. T. (Ed.). The body at work: Biological ergonomics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1982. Pp. 430. ISBN 0-521-24087-5. £32.50.

Magill, R. A. (Ed.). Memory and control of action. Amsterdam: North-Holland. 1983. Pp. 395. ISBN 0-444-86559-4. $53.25.

Hewstone, M. (Ed.). Attribution theory: Social and functional extensions. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 1983. Pp. 256. ISBN 0-631-13322-4. Hardback £25.00; paperback £9.50.

Ellis, A. W. Reading, writing and dyslexia: A cognitive analysis. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 1984. Pp. 147. ISBN 0-86377-002-9. Hardback £12.95. Paperback £5.95.     

Effect of couple illness perception congruence on psychological adjustment in women with rheumatoid arthritis.

OBJECTIVE: To characterize similarities and differences in illness perceptions between women with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and their husbands, and examine whether illness perception congruence predicted wives' subsequent psychological adjustment. DESIGN: Women with RA and their husbands (N=190 couples) recruited from community and clinical settings completed mailed surveys at baseline and 4-month follow-up. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Data for this investigation included illness perceptions in partners and illness severity, marital variables, and psychological adjustment in wives. RESULTS: In general, wives and husbands had similar views of RA. Couple congruence concerning women's personal control over RA and its cyclic nature predicted better psychological adjustment in women 4 months later. Post hoc tests showed better psychological adjustment in wives from couples with similar optimistic beliefs about personal control, illness coherence, and RA consequences, when compared to those in couples with similar pessimistic beliefs. Furthermore, when partners disagreed about RA's consequences, wives fared better when husbands overestimated rather than underestimated their beliefs. In contrast, couple congruence about the emotions and timeline of RA was unrelated to adjustment. CONCLUSION: It may be important for husbands to understand wives' views on their control over RA and its cyclic nature. Furthermore, wives may benefit when they share optimistic views with their husbands about RA, and when their husbands avoid underestimating RA's consequences. Developing interventions to enhance partners' illness understanding may be beneficial.     

An experimental investigation of the misinformation effect in crime-related amnesia claims

Research suggests that both internal (i.e., lying) and external (i.e., misinformation) factors can affect memory for a crime. We aimed to explore the effects of post-event misinformation on crime-related amnesia claims. We showed participants a mock crime and asked them to either simulate amnesia (simulators) or confess to it (confessors). Next, some participants were provided with misinformation. Finally, all participants were requested to genuinely recollect the crime. Overall, simulators reported less correct information than confessors. Moreover, these two groups were equally vulnerable to misinformation. In addition, exploratory analyses on strategies adopted by simulators revealed that those who previously, mostly omitted information while simulating amnesia exhibited the lowest amount of correct details. Simulators who instead used a mixed strategy disclosed more fabricated memory errors. Findings suggest that legal professionals and jurors should take into account that even offenders, irrespective of confessing or simulating memory loss for a crime, can be susceptible to post-event misinformation.     

Early understanding of emotion: Evidence from natural language

Abstract

Young children's early understanding of emotion was investigated by examining their use of emotion terms such as happy, sad, mud, and cry. Five children's emotion language was examined longitudinally from the age of 2 to 5 years, and as a comparison their reference to pains via such terms as burn, sting, and hurt was also examined. In Phase 1 we confirmed and extended prior findings demonstrating that by 2 years of age terms for the basic emotions of happiness, sadness, anger, and fear are commonly used by children as are terms for such related states as crying and hurting. At this early age children produce such terms to refer to self and to others, and to past and future as well as to present states. Over the years from 2 to 5 children's emotion vocabulary expands, their discussion of hypothetical emotions gets underway, and the complexity of their emotion utterances increases. In Phase 2 our analyses go beyond children's production of emotion terms to analyses of their conception of emotion. We focus especially on when children use emotion terms to refer to subjective experiential states of persons. From their earliest uses of these terms in our data children