Conceptualizing and Measuring a Power/Interaction Model of Interpersonal Influence1

In response to new theoretical conceptualizations (Raven, 1992, 1993), an instrument was developed to measure 11 bases of power, the original 6 French and Raven (1959; Raven, 1965) bases of power, with 3 of these further differentiated: reward (personal, impersonal), coercion (personal. impersonal), legitimate (position, reciprocity, equity, dependence), expert, referent, and information. In Study 1, 317 American student respondents rated the likelihood that each of these power bases contributed to a supervisor successfully influencing a subordinate in a series of hypothetical situations. The internal consistency of the items which made up the 11 power bases proved adequate. Factor analysis found 7 factors and 2 categories of bases: harsh and soft. In Study 2, which used 101 Israeli health workers, the earlier findings were generally supported. In addition, job satisfaction was found to be positively related to the attribution of soft bases to the supervisor.     

FEMALE PARTNERS OF BISEXUAL MEN What They Don't Know Might Hurt Them

Individual interviews with 350 behaviorally bisexual men aged 18–30 revealed that 71% of their female sexual partners and 59% of their steady female sexual partners in the past 6 months had not been aware of their homosexual activity. Rates of nondisclosure were higher for African-American than White men. Compared to nondisclosers, men who disclosed to all their female partners were less self-homophobic and perceived their friends, families, and neighbors as more accepting of their homosexual behavior. Compared to men who had disclosed, the nondisclosers had more female partners and used condoms less consistently with women.     

Verb Comprehension Deficits in Probable Alzheimer's Disease

Studies of lexical comprehension in probable Alzheimer's disease (pAD) have focused almost exclusively on nouns. In the following preliminary study, we examined whether lexical comprehension for verbs is also impaired in 25 pAD patients. The semantic meaning of motion verbs, cognition verbs, and perception verbs was assessed with a triadic comparison task. Structural meaning associated with these verbs was evaluated by asking the patients to judge the coherence of sentence frames that accept these verbs naturally or awkwardly. We found that pAD patients are significantly impaired at identifying semantic relations among verbs. pAD patients also encountered significantly more difficulty judging the coherence of sentences than control subjects. Correlation and regression analyses demonstrated that semantic characteristics of verbs are projected from the verbs' sentence frames in control subjects, but there was minimal evidence for such a structural–semantic relationship in pAD. We consider several possible explanations for our preliminary observations of an impairment that has consequences for processing both semantic and structural aspects of verb meaning.     

Inhibition in ADHD,aggressive, and anxious children: A biologically based model of child psychopathology

In this study the stop signal task was employed to investigate inhibitory control in 15 children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), 18 aggressive and 20 anxious children, and a group of 17 normal controls. The psychopathological groups were recruited from special educational services. Parent, teacher, and child questionnaires were used to select children with pervasive disorders. Controls attended regular classes and scored low on all questionnaires. Based on Quay's model of child psychopathology (Quay, 1988, 1993), we hypothesized a deficit in inhibitory control in children with externalizing disorders, whereas anxious children were predicted to be overinhibited. The ADHD group and the aggressive group showed poor inhibitory control and a slower inhibitory process. No evidence of overinhibition was found in anxious children.     

A transactional analysis of biobehavioral systems

The system of behavior [B] consists of those transactional interrelationships between organism [O] and environment [E] that govern their commerce. The biological significance of such [O]-[E] interrelationships, their truing through learning, as well as those systems involved in the subordinate and superordinate regulation of behavior, are clear when life, itself, is seen as an emergent property of the [O]-[E] complex. In addition, a systems view of these hierarchically organized complexities suggests that they adaptively self-stabilize and self-organize, over time, as they participate in [L], the organism-environment complex. Such a transactional analysis of biobehavioral systems resonates well with the most basic axioms of Pavlov’s paradigm.     

Assessing decision strategies using HyperCard

The use of “process-tracing” techniques for examining individuals’ decision strategies has been criticized widely for yielding results that are uninformative and often confounded. The present paper describes a new technique based on a “structural” approach that allows efficient assessment of finely discriminated decision strategies via a HyperCard program called DECOUT. The program presents individuals with an information matrix (e.g., describing five alternative pesticides on three attributes). Individuals are asked to choose the best or the worst alternative in the matrix for 12 problems. Information in the matrix is constructed so that choice of an alternative by an individual is uniquely associated with use of one particular decision strategy. The strategies include information integration, maximin, maximax, pessimism-optimism, and minimax-regret processes. An experiment using the program is described, and possible directions for future research and development are discussed.     

Fourier analysis of movement patterns in pigeons

Fourier analysis describes the amount of variation in a time series by partitioning it into sinusoids of different amplitudes and wavelengths and quantifying the extent to which these waves are synchronized. The importance of a given wave is represented by its contribution to the explained variance of the time series. To illustrate its potential application to the study of movement, Fourier analysis was used to quantify the movement patterns of 2 pigeons on a variable-interval (VI) and a variable-time (VT) schedule of reinforcement. For comparison, the movements of 2 pigeons that did not receive reinforcement were similarly analyzed. Characteristic frequencies were higher during VI than during VT, and relatively low during nonreinforcement. We concluded that Fourier analysis can be used to represent movement patterns compactly, study their periodicity, stereotypy, and resonance, and assist in computer simulations and models of movement.