Ambivalence in play and ritual

Life is not breath, but action; to live is to make use of our organs, our senses, our faculties, every part of ourselves which gives us the feeling of our own existence. Rousseau Emile     

A longitudinal analysis of personality structure and adolescent substance use

Within the context of a prospective longitudinal research design, the structure of personality and initial levels of drug use were used to predict, multivariately, later drug use among male and female adolescents. The findings indicated that personality and belief measures of nonconventionality provide a significant increment in the prediction of later drug use beyond a level achieved by knowing initial usage rates. In addition, other personality and belief measures yield further increments in the prediction of subsequent drug use. Developmentally, the results revealed a differentiation of drug use patterns across the year's time, with one pattern primarily reflecting alcohol use, and a second pattern primarily reflecting use of marijuana and ‘hard’ drugs. While both patterns were related to measures of nonconventionality, certain personality features distinguished between them. Emergent use of marijuana and ‘hard’ drugs was related to depression, mistrust and attractiveness, while emergent alcohol use was related to generosity, ambition, agility and cheerfulness. These results were cross-validated in two samples of subjects. Implications of the findings for adolescent psychosocial development are discussed.     

Selective migration— Still a viable hypothesis

Kamin (1980) has contended that arguments presented in Wolff (1979) are too weak to justify “resuscitating the selective migration debate.” Although Kamin's (1980) critique points up the need for closer scrutiny of the cumulative-deficit phenomenon, it fails to refute Wolff's (1979) conclusion that selective migration is partly responsible for the North-South black IQ differential.     

Effects of neutral and positive stimuli on stuttering: “Calling attention to stuttering” revisited

This study investigated the effects of presumably positive and neutral response-contingent stimuli on the occurence of stuttering. Eight adult stutterers spoke spontaneously during a 60-min experimental session, which was divided into three 20-min periods. During Condition I no stimuli were delivered. During Condition II a digital counter and a pair of yellow lights were activated each time the subject stuttered. During Condition III these same response-contingent stimuli were delivered, but with the additional factor that the subject would earn 5¢ each time the counter moved forward and the lights were illuminated. Conditions II and III were counterbalanced across subjects. The experimenter was unaware of which of the two contingencies were operative during Conditions II and III. Results showed no significant changes in occurence of stuttering due to either response-contingent stimulus. A discussion of theoretical and experimental implications is given.     

Mentally ill foragers and beggars in a peasant society: Their social networks and psychopathology

In this study of psychotic persons in a peasant society, there was a significant attrition in important social network structure after the onset of psychosis. The difficulties involved in providing non-reciprocal social support is noted, yet modest social support of functions may be critical.This work was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (grant Number 1 R01 MH34322-01). Acknowledgement is expressed to Dr. Phim and Mr. Phimpha for their assistance with data collection, and to Dr. Robert Zimmerman and Ms. Beth Stone for their assistance with data tabulation and analysis.     

Inferential processing of context: Studies of cognitively impaired subjects

Language comprehension tasks involving pronoun coreference were administered to a group of demented patients, a group of patients with cardiac disease, and groups of normal elderly persons and young adults. Pronoun coreference was constrained by either lexical, syntactic, or contextual cues. No differences were found between old and young subjects for any task. While the demented patients were impaired on all tasks, the cardiac patients were specifically impaired in the inferential processing of context.