Stability of attachment representations: the transition to marriage

This study examined the stability of adult attachment representations across the transition to marriage. One hundred fifty-seven couples were assessed using the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI; C. George, N. Kaplan, & M. Main, 1985), the Current Relationship Interview (J. A. Crowell & G. Owens, 1996), and measures describing relationship functioning and life events 3 months prior to their weddings and 18 months into their marriages. The authors tested the hypotheses that attachment classifications are stable and that change is related to experiences in the relationship and/or life events; 78% of the sample received the same primary AAI classification (secure, preoccupied, and dismissing) at both times. Change was toward increased security and was associated with feelings and cognitions about the relationship. Only 46% of participants initially classified as unresolved retained the classification. Stability of the unresolved classification was associated with stressful life events and relationship aggression.     

Assessing secure base behavior in adulthood: development of a measure,links to adult attachment representations,and relations to couples' communication and reports of relationships

A focus on the secure base phenomenon creates a framework for exploring the function of the attachment system in adulthood. Engaged couples (N = 157) were videotaped in a problem-solving interaction and assessed using the Secure Base Scoring System (SBSS), a system based on Ainsworth's analyses of infant-parent secure base use and support. Study 1 showed behavior was significantly related to representations assessed with the Adult Attachment Interview (M. Main & R. Goldwyn, 1994). In Study 2, the interactions were independently scored with the Rapid Marital Interaction Coding System (RMICS; R. E. Heyman & D. Vivian, 1993), a communication-based system. The SBSS predicted relationship variables beyond the RMICS, especially for women. Results indicate that the secure base phenomenon provides a cogent perspective on adult attachment behavior.     

Effects of the "beauty is good" stereotype on children's information processing

The authors tested schematic information processing as a function of attractiveness stereotyping in two studies. An adult experimenter read children (ages 3 to 7 years) eight different stories in which a child narrator encountered two characters who varied in level of attractiveness and displayed positive or negative traits that were either consistent or inconsistent with the "beauty is good" stereotype. Following the story, the experimenter showed each child a photograph of the two characters' faces and asked the child to point to the character who displayed the positive trait. In Experiment 1, children made more errors in identifying female characters with stereotype inconsistent traits but did just the opposite with male characters. Experiment 2 replicated the findings with female characters but found no difference in errors with male characters. The findings have implications for how attractiveness and gender stereotypes affect children's information processing, how attractiveness schemata may be organized, and why physical attractiveness stereotypes are maintained.     

Stroop effects in bilingual translation

In two experiments, bilinguals proficient in English and Spanish translated words from one language to the other. In each experiment, following the target word to be translated, distractor words were presented after a short (200-msec) or long (500-msec) stimulus onset asynchrony. In Experiment 1, the distractor words appeared in the language of production and were related to the meaning or form of the spoken translation. The results replicated past studies in demonstrating that semantically related distractor words produced Stroop-type interference, whereas form-related distractor words produced facilitation. In Experiment 2, the distractors appeared in the language of input and were related to the meaning or form of the target word itself. In contrast to the results of Experiment 1, there were only marginal effects of the distractors on translation performance. These results suggest that language cues related to the nature of the input in translation may serve to reduce competition among lexical competitors during lexicalization. The contrast between these results and those in bilingual picture-word interference studies provides important constraints for models of language production and for claims about the locus of language selection.     

Avoidant personality disorder: current status and future directions

Avoidant Personality Disorder (APD) is the topic of a growing body of research literature. In this article, we review empirical studies of APD with the goals of identifying the themes that underlie this work and pointing to new directions for future research. In particular, we recommend that future studies evaluate several unique factors postulated by personality theorists to be central to this condition.     

Abbreviated form of the Wechsler Memory Scale-III Faces subtest

A major criticism of the Wechsler Memory Scale-III Faces subtest is the number of items, which can be daunting and time-consuming for an impaired client or boring for a normal client. An analysis of several versions, with data from a sample of 50 clinical referrals, revealed that a 32-item subtest was best overall. Using this version, 100% (Faces I) and 94% (Faces II) of the predicted raw scores were less than 4 points away from the actual raw scores, whereas 66% (Faces I) and 70% (Faces II) were less than 2 points away. Limitations of this procedure are discussed.     

Lexical, morphological, and syntactic aspects of verb production in agrammatic aphasics

Agrammatic aphasics do not exhibit a normal pattern of verb production; their spontaneous speech is said to lack verbs, and the verbs that are produced lack inflection. The current article focuses on the lexical, morphological, and syntactic aspects of verbs in spontaneous speech of a group of Dutch agrammatic speakers. Dutch is a so-called verb-second language in which the finite verb in the matrix clause is in the second position and nonfinite verbs are in the final position. The analysis shows that agrammatic speakers are sensitive to this relation; they virtually never produce finite verbs in the final clause position or nonfinite verbs in the second position. Nevertheless, they produce significantly fewer finite clauses than do non-brain-damaged speakers. The diversity of the lexical verbs in spontaneous speech is also lower than in non-brain-damaged speakers, but this is due to less variation in the finite lexical verbs. Hence, it is suggested that the problems with verbs in Dutch agrammatic spontaneous speech are restricted to finite lexical verbs. In an experiment, it was evaluated whether these problems with finite lexical verbs are caused by a morphological deficit or a syntactic deficit. The data show that a syntactic deficit is more likely; Dutch agrammatic speakers produce finite verbs in the base-generated position (i.e., in the embedded clause) significantly better than finite verbs that have been moved to the second position (i.e., in the matrix clause). From these data, the authors conclude that in Dutch, a verb-second language, agrammatic aphasics demonstrate specific problems with moved finite verbs, although they are perfectly aware of the relation between verb position and verb finiteness. This syntactic problem affects not only the proportion of finite verbs but also the diversity of the verbs and, hence, communicative contents.     

Body-part metaphors: a cross-cultural survey of the perception of translatability among Americans and Japanese

What kinds of linguistic resources do people utilize when they try to translate metaphors into a foreign language? This investigation of the perception of translatability of body-part metaphors examined the effects of the following factors: the similarity between the human body part and the metaphorical expression (e.g., "eye" in "electric eye") in appearance and function; the frequency of the use of the metaphor in the native language; and the perceived distance between the first language and the target language. The results of a survey of American (n = 151) and Japanese (n = 116) university students showed that both Similarity in Appearance and Similarity in Function correlated positively with Translatability, while the effect of the former was stronger than the latter. Frequency correlated positively with Translatability for the Americans, although the correlation was weaker when the target language is "distant" (Japanese or Chinese) than when the target language is "close" (Spanish). Among the Japanese, Frequency did not correlate with translatability regardless of the target language.