Development and Initial Validation of the Child Routines Inventory

The importance of establishing predictable routines during childhood consistently has been emphasized in the popular parenting literature, despite a paucity of empirical evidence. The lack of research may be partially due to a lack of suitable instruments designed to measure children's routines. This study describes development and preliminary psychometric data in support of the Child Routines Inventory (CRI), an empirically derived, content-valid, parent-report measure of commonly occurring routines in school-aged children. Principal components analysis yielded a four-factor structure (composed of 36 items), accounting for 44.2% of the total variance. The CRI was found to have excellent internal consistency ( = .90), good test-retest reliability (r = .86), and preliminary evidence of construct validity, demonstrating a moderate relationship with measures of child behavior problems and family routines. These results suggest the CRI to be a promising new measure of child routines that would benefit from further validation studies.     

Cognitive ability, expertise, and age differences in following air-traffic control instructions

Differences in cognitive ability and domain-specific expertise may help explain age differences in pilot performance. Pilots heard air-traffic controller messages and then executed them while "flying" in a simulator. Messages varied in length and speech rate. Age was associated with lower accuracy, but the expected Age x Message Difficulty interactions were not obtained. Expertise, as indexed by pilot ratings, was associated with higher accuracy; yet expertise did not reduce age differences in accuracy. The effect of age on communication task accuracy was largely explainable as an age-associated decrease in working memory span, which in turn was explainable as decreases in both speed and interference control. Results are discussed within frameworks of deliberate practice and cognitive mediation of age differences.     

The effect of hemispatial neglect on the perception of centre

Highly variable bisection performance in neglect patients has been attributed to an increased 'zone of indifference'. The indifference zone indicates the discrepancy between two line lengths which are judged as equal in length. Following this argumentation, the central area of a line should be expanded in neglect patients. The present two experiments investigated for the first time the expansion of the central area using a modified version of the Landmark Task. The location of a central or asymmetrical bisection mark on a horizontal line had to be judged (centre/left/right). In both experiments neglect patients, unlike healthy and patient controls, showed clear deficits in judging the location of the mark correctly and tended to judge asymmetrical marks of up to 4 cm as centrally positioned. The results are in agreement with and provide the first clear evidence of an enlarged perceptual zone of indifference in patients with hemispatial visual neglect.     

Stereotypes of stutterers and nonstutterers in three rural communities in Newfoundland

The existence of a negative stereotype of stutterers among residents of three small, rural communities in Newfoundland, Canada was investigated. Members of these communities (n = 106) completed a 25-item semantic differential scale developed by Woods and Williams (1976) which asked them to rate a hypothetical adult male stutterer and nonstutterer. Results indicated that community members perceived hypothetical stutterers in a negative manner in comparison to nonstutterers, despite the fact that 85% of the respondents reported knowing stutterers and 39% reported being related to stutterers. It is suggested the negative stuttering stereotype exists because nonstutterers generalize state to trait anxiety, and because of the nature of the stuttering moment itself. Since this study and previous studies appear to show that the stereotype is not modified by exposure to stutterers, familial relationships, and/or educational background, further research is needed to determine what, if any factor, can modify the pervasive negative stereotype.     

The death of an analysand: transference, countertransference and desire

This paper is offered as an exploration of transference and countertransference issues when, in the process of analysis, the analysand becomes terminally ill. Written from the point of view of the analyst, eros and boundary issues are discussed. It is proposed that those who are about to die may form particularly intense erotic attachments and that this is characteristic of a speeded up individuation process. The paper is based on the case of a suicidally depressed man who formed an immediate, dependent and erotic transference. After three months, he was diagnosed as having an inoperable lung cancer. From then on the analytic frame was challenged by pressures to act out in a number of different ways. It is argued that gender difference and the heterosexual pairing facilitated the differentiation of adult, sexual and Oedipal feelings from infantile, pre-Oedipal ones. Maintenance of the analytic frame enabled the individuation process to continue to the end.