Gender Differences in Emotional Closeness Between Preschool Children and Their Mothers

The emotional closeness between mothers andtheir children was examined to determine if motherdaughter pairs exhibit closer emotional relationshipsthan mother son pairs. Forty-one mother childpredominantly Caucasian dyads were videotaped during asemistructured play setting. The children were 4 (10males and 10 females) and 5 years of age (10 males and11 females). Emotional closeness was defined as physical proximity, mutual eye contact, and global levelof enjoyment. Results demonstrated that compared toboys, girls were physically closer to their mothers,engaged in more mutual eye contact with their mothers, and were rated higher on global enjoyment.Results are consistent with Chodorow's theory thatgender identity development is related to the emotionalrelationships that develop between children and their mothers.     

Assessment and Diagnosis of the Substance Use Disorders (SUDs)

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition (DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) provides counselors with an updated method for diagnosing Substance Use Disorders (SUDs). In this article, the author presents information that demonstrates the need for all counselors to be knowledgeable concerning the SUDs and examines the essential features of the SUDs and the use of the DSM-IV in their diagnosis. A review of select instruments and techniques for assessment of the SUDs is presented.     

Integrating the ethical and social context of computing into the computer science curriculum

This paper describes the major components of ImpactCS, a program to develop strategies and curriculum materials for integrating social and ethical considerations into the computer science curriculum. It presents, in particular, the content recommendations of a subcommittee of ImpactCS; and it illustrates the interdisciplinary nature of the field, drawing upon concepts from computer science, sociology, philosophy, psychology, history and economics.     

Multidimensional scaling of subjective colors by color-blind observers

Temporal coding theories of color vision suggest explanations of flicker-induced subjective colors such as those that appear on Benham’s disk. If color blindness were due simply to photopigment anomalies, then subjective colors might be elicited by central patterns of neural activity in color-blind observers that mimic those which the cones normally produce in colornormal observers. We had color-normal and color-blind observers scale subjective colors like those on Benham’s disk for similarity. The inferred color spaces for six normal observers resembled the familiar hue circle, but the spaces for five red-green-deficient observers were compressed along the red-green axis. This is consistent with the position that flicker colors are due to retinal processes, and suggests that color blindness may involve variations of the central nervous system in addition to photopigment anomalies.     

Behavioral and Physiological Consequences of Crowding in Humans1

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of crowding on human performance. Results generally supported the hypothesis that crowding acts as a stressor which may be mediated by overarousal. Moderate decrements in complex but not simple task performance were found for crowded subjects as compared to uncrowded controls. Poorer performance on a group cooperation task and less tolerance for frustration as an aftereffect of the crowded experience were reported. Crowded subjects in comparison to controls also exhibited significant elevations in blood pressure and pulse rate and manifested additional behavioral indices of stress, which included greater behavioral stereotypes, increased defensive postures, more remarks toward the door of the experimental room, and self reports of greater discomfort and hostility.     

Statistical judgement: A further test of the representativeness construct

Kahneman and Tversky's (1972) construct of ‘representativeness’ as a mediator of statistical judgements has been subjected to several recent criticisms. The present study allows test of the hypothesis that individuals differ in their use of the representativeness heuristic. Tasks are devised which permit measure of two types of judgemental error attributed to use of the heuristic. One is a misperception of Bernouilli sequences, in which subjects expect sequences to have shorter run lengths than would actually occur by chance. The other error is a tendency to give insufficient weighting to the evidence of larger samples. The tasks were administered in two experiments by on-line computer. Characteristic errors of both sorts are found in two experiments, but in neither case was there any evidence of a correlation between them. It appears, then, that even a modified form of the representativeness hypothesis, that might be reconciled with other critiques, is lacking in empirical support.     

λ-Normal forms in an intensional logic for English

Montague [7] translates English into a tensed intensional logic, an extension of the typed -calculus. We prove that each translation reduces to a formula without -applications, unique to within change of bound variable. The proof has two main steps. We first prove that translations of English phrases have the special property that arguments to functions are modally closed. We then show that formulas in which arguments are modally closed have a unique fully reduced -normal form. As a corollary, translations of English phrases are contained in a simply defined proper subclass of the formulas of the intensional logic.This research is supported in part by National Science Foundation Grant BNS 76-23840.     

The effectiveness of visual and gustatory conditioned stimuli in human classical aversive conditioning with electric shock

Thirty-six undergraduate volunteers, divided into three equal groups, were given electric shock while sipping a colored, unflavored solution (Group I): a flavored, colorless solution (Group 2); or a colored, flavored solution (Group 3), in order to determine whether human Ss respond differentially to visual and gustatory cues when the UCS is aversive electric shock. Using a standard classical discrimination procedure, the CS + was blue water for Group 1, citric acid solution for Group 2, and blue citric acid solution for Group 3. For all groups the CS- was plain water, which was never paired with electric shock. The dependent variables were derived from Staats' A-R-D theory: attitudinal change (A) and a performance measure of sip-size taken during conditioning trials (D) both confirmed the hypothesis that taste can be an effective CS when the UCS is shock, in contrast to results typically obtained with rats where visual but not taste cues are effective with a shock UCS.