Fact and fantasy: the roles of accuracy and variability in confusing imaginations with perceptual experiences

In Experiment 1, pictures were presented to subjects two, five, or eight times, and subjects were asked to imagine each pciture two, five, or eight times. Subsequently, subjects estimated the number of times each picture had been presented. Their estimates of the frequency of these external events were influenced by imagination trials; this effect was greater for good imagers than for poor imagers. Experiment 2 involved a similar design in which subjects were asked either to imagine the same referent for a word or to imagine a different referent for a word on successive imagination trials. Consistency (same referent) did not increase the influence of imaginations on immediate judgments of external frequency. Thus, the results of Experiment 1 were attributed to the greater accuracy (as opposed to greater consistency) of good imagers' internal generations of the stimuli. Furthermore, variation (imagining different referents), like greater accuracy, increased the effects of imagination trials on immediate but not on delayed judgments of frequency. Possible mechanisms underlying these effects are discussed. In general, the two studies show that qualitative characteristics of completely covert generations influence their impact on estimates of the frequency of external events.     

Durkheim Revisited: “Why Do Women Kill Themselves?”

Durkheim divided suicide into four social types; egoistic, anomic, fatalistic, and altruistic assigning the first two to modern, western society while relegating the last two to pre-industrial social orders. However, contemporary studies of female suicidal behavior and depression show that such women exhibit personality characteristics of low self-esteem, passivity, dependence and living vicariously for others which correspond to the behavioral indices of impersonalism, submissiveness, passivity, and obedience that produce the lack of individuation characteristic of Durkheim's altruistic/fatalistic suicide categories. On this basis, the author suggests that altruistic/fatalistic suicide may even in the modern world be relevant to the explanation of female suicidal behavior, a hypothesis which, if true, would support the contention that "men and women inhibit different social worlds."     

The social origins of male dominance

Writings in psychoanalytic theory and social science that discuss the basis of men's motive to dominate women are reviewed. Both men's fear and envy of women and men's tenuous masculine identity arise from the exclusive early mother-child tie. It is suggested that an important step in altering the development of the motive underlying male dominance would be to have men, as well as women, care for infants. The possibility of greater equality in the family and in the economy is discussed.This article represents a considerable expansion of the first part of a paper entitled Sex Role Development and Sex Discrimination: A Theoretical Perspective by Jean Stockard, Miriam M. Johnson, Joan Acker, and Marion Goldman, presented at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association in San Francisco in 1975. We wish to thank Joan Acker and Marion Goldman for the earlier discussions we had with them which led to this article.     

SCOPE: A Comprehensive-Sequential Approach to Career Counseling

SCOPE is a comprehensive career-counseling program presently in operation at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, New Jersey. It consists of a basic program plus a cluster of supplemental, optional exercises. The basic program has a sequence of four career-planning phases, one of which applies to each undergraduate year. Efforts are made to process students systematically through the entire basic program. An individual checklist kept for each participating student provides an internal mechanism for program evaluation and modification. Early results suggest effectiveness and positive student reactions.     

Detecting Alcoholism in Clients

Alcoholism is a primary, progressive, fatal, and treatable disorder. It often goes undetected because of a lack of understanding of how to tell an alcoholic from someone who drinks heavily. This article presents a systematic approach using the most reliable and valid instruments available. The approach will allow a clinician to quickly and accurately diagnose or rule out the presence of alcoholism in a client. Accurate diagnosis will allow proper treatment of this disorder, which affects about 6.7% of all people.     

Assessment of human obesity: The measurement of body composition

The most common methods of assessing degree of obesity in humans are reviewed. These include anthropometry, somatotyping, bodyweight, skinfold calipering, densitometry, and several nondensitometric procedures. The evidence suggests that bodyweight may often be an unreliable and invalid index of obesity. The parameters influencing its inaccuracy are discussed. These include age, height, sex, muscularity, and degree of obesity or amount of recent weight loss. The most reliable and valid measures of human bodyfat are generally the most complicated and impractical. Compromise assessment procedures involving nonintrusive measurement of subcutaneous fat and selected anthropometric dimensions may offer an incomplete but welcome improvement over sole reliance on bodyweight as an index of obesity.     

Practice effects for visual resolution in the periphery

Resolution thresholds at 0° (fovea), 20°, 40°, and 60° along the horizontal meridian of the temporal visual field revealed a characteristic degradation in visual resolution with increasing stimulus eccentricity. However, substantial individual differences were found, particularly at 40° and 60° of eccentricity. Dramatic improvements in peripheral visual resolution occurred over a period of 11 practice sessions, with the time course of practice effects increasing for greater visual field eccentricities. Improvements with practice reduced, but did not eliminate, individual differences. The present visual resolution findings are compared to previous studies of peripheral motion detection and increment thresholds.     

A multi-element analysis of the effect of teacher aides in an "open"-style classroom

Open classrooms with few rules, individualized instruction, and informal class organization present new problems for the application of behavior principles. The effects of three types of teacher aides on student achievement and on-task behavior were studied. Each was compared with a standard no-aide condition. Subjects were 54 third graders in two "open"-style classrooms. The three types of aide, helping adult, disciplinary adult, and helping fifth-grade aide, were compared in a multi-element design with a no-aide control. The helping-adult aide significantly affected the academic output of the class, when compared with the no-aide condition. All aide conditions produced more academic work and on-task behavior than did the standard no-aide condition.     

Community applications of instructional technology: teaching writers of instructional packages

A community education program, to develop a variety of performance competencies in large numbers of neighborhood residents, requires a technology for preparing learning units administerable by community members themselves. The effects of a writing manual, designed to teach nonprofessionals to prepare such instructional packages, were analyzed in two experiments. Experiment I employed a multiple-baseline design across three university student trainees. The results showed that appropriate program writing increased by 75% after completion of the manual. The results of Experiment II, with two low-income neighborhood residents serving as trainees, showed that packages produced by trained writers resulted in a greater increase in skill activities than sets of training stimuli produced by untrained writers.     

A controlled trial of the treatment of nocturnal enuresis in residential homes for children

The present study was undertaken to evaluate the practicability and efficacy of treating enuretic children in residential Children's Homes by means of the enuresis alarm. A control group design was employed with 19 and 20 subjects in the treatment and control groups respectively. Eighteen of the nineteen treatment group children achieved initial arrest of enuresis in a mean of 11.9 weeks of treatment (range 5–28 weeks). Over the initial 12-week period, the treatment group showed a statistically significant reduction in mean wetting frequency, both over time and in comparison with the control group. After a follow-up period of at least 20 months. 17 of the 19 children were known to be dry. The results of an independent evaluation are reported, and it is concluded that alarm treatment is as effective and practicable in Children's Homes as it is in family situations.