Attention to important versus trivial tasks and salience of fatigue-related symptoms for coronary prone individuals

The present study tested the hypothesis that individuals with the Type A coronary prone behavior pattern focus their attention more on important tasks, and less on trivial tasks than do Type B's. The study used a paradigm in which some subjects worked on math problems (important task) and rated intervening mood items (trivial task), whereas others rated mood items they were to memorize (important task) and worked on intervening math problems (trivial task). All subjects were later tested on recall of mood items. Results indicated that Type A's performed better on math problems and recalled more fatigue-related mood items when the task was important than when it was trivial; for Type B subjects, there was no difference in the number of math problems solved correctly or number of mood items recalled between important and trivial task conditions. Moreover, Type A's reported greater fatigue when mood recall was the important task than when math was the important task, whereas fatigue ratings of Type B's did not differ across these conditions. The findings suggest that Type A's suppress their attention to fatigue-related symptoms only when symptoms are not the objects of focus.     

An awareness approach to the covert symptoms of stuttering

Speech-language clinicians working with the confirmed stuttering client are often faced with the clinical management of the covert symptoms of stuttering in addition to the more observable and measurable overt symptoms. The authors report the successful use of awareness techniques to exaggerate the subjective experience of these covert symptoms and encourage the use of these techniques as an adjunct to the counseling and desensitization procedures traditionally employed. A transcribed clinical management session in which several awareness techniques are used to aid the client in an introspective examination of “anticipation of stuttering,” is analyzed in order to reach some specific recommendations for using awareness techniques in the clinical management of the covert symptoms of stuttering.     

Manifestations, acquisition and diagnostic categories of dental fear in a self-referred population

This study aimed to clarify how manifestations and acquisition relate to diagnostic categories of dental fear in a population of self-referred dental fear patients, since diagnostic criteria specifically related to dental fear have not been validated. DSM III-R diagnostic criteria for phobias were used to compare with four existing dental fear diagnostic categories, referred to as the Seattle system. Subjects were 208 persons with dental fear who were telephone interviewed, of whom a subsample of 155 responded to a mailed Dental Anxiety Scale (DAS), State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and a modified FSS-II Geer Fear Scale (GFS). Personal interviews and a Dental Beliefs Scale of perceived trust and social interaction with dentists were also used to evaluate a subsample of 80 patients selected by sex and high dental fear. Results showed that the majority of the 80 patients (66%), suffered from social embarrassment about their dental fear problem and their inability to do something about it. The largest cause of their fear (84%) was reported to be traumatic dental experiences, especially in childhood (70%). A minority of patients (16%) could not isolate traumatic experiences and had a history of general fearfulness or anxiety. Analysis of GFS data for the 155 subjects showed that fear of snakes and injuries were highest among women; heights and injections among men. Fear of blood was rarely reported. Spearman correlations between GFS individual items and DAS scores indicated functional independence between dental fear and common fears such as blood, injections and enclosures in most cases. Only in specific types of dental fear did these results support Rachman and Lopatka's contention that fears are thought to summate.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

Adolescents' perceptions of friends' and parents' attitudes to sex and sexual risk-taking

This study investigated the association between adolescents' perceptions of parental and peer attitudes towards sexuality and AIDS precautions, and the risky sexual behaviours of 1008 sexually active, heterosexual undergraduate students aged 17-20 years. Students were asked to rate the extent to which their mothers, fathers and friends would agree or disagree with 16 statements reflecting support of the adolescent engaging in sexual behaviour and using sexual precautions, including precautions against AIDS. The adolescents also indicated whether they were sexually active and their level of condom use in both ‘regular’ (or steady) and ‘casual’ relationships. Results indicated that adolescents perceived their parents as non-liberal in their sexual attitudes and relatively unlikely to discuss sex or precautions with them. Parents were viewed as more accepting of their sons' sexual behaviours than of their daughters'. Adolescents believed that peers were more likely to discuss sexuality and precautions than parents, and were more liberal in their sexual attitudes. Adolescent sexual risk-taking was related to the perceived attitudes of significant others in ways which varied across gender and type of relationship. Implications for interventions are discussed.     

Choice and multiple reinforcers

Pigeons chose between equivalent two-component mixed and multiple terminal-link schedules of reinforcement in the concurrent-chains procedure. The pigeons preferred the multiple schedule over the mixed when the components of the compound schedules were differentiated in terms of density of reinforcement, but the pigeons were indifferent when the components were differentiated in terms of number of reinforcers per cycle. Taken together, these results indicate that a local variable, the interval to the first reinforcer, but not a molar variable, the number of reinforcers, was sufficient to differentiate the components and thereby evoke preference.     

Factors affecting entrapment in escalating conflicts: The importance of timing

Entrapping conflicts are those in which individuals continue to invest their resources—even in seemingly losing propositions-in large part to justify previous unfilled expenditures. It has been demonstrated that individuals define their motivation for investing very differently at the various stages of an entrapping conflict. One implication of this motivational dynamic is that various factors may differentially affect degree of entrapment (i.e., amount invested), depending upon the point in time at which they are introduced. The present studies were designed to test this notion. All subjects were given an initial monetary stake and had the opportunity to win more by taking part in an entrapping investment situation. In Experiment 1, half the subjects were provided with a payoff chart that made salient the costs associated with investing (Highcost salience condition) whereas half were not (Low-cost salience condition). Moreover, for half of the subjects the payoff chart was introduced before they were asked to invest (Early condition) whereas for the other half it was introduced after they had invested a considerable portion of their resources (Late condition). Entrapment was lower in the High salience-Early than in the Low salience-Early condition. However, there was no difference between groups in the Late condition. In Experiment 2, the perceived presence of an audience interacted with personality variables related to face-saving to effect entrapment. When the audience was described as “experts in decision making,” subjects high in public self-consciousness (or social anxiety) became less entrapped than those low on these dimensions. When the audience consisted of individuals who “wished simply to observe the experimental procedure,” however, high public self-consciousness (or social anxiety) individuals were significantly more entrapped than lows. Moreover, these interaction effects occurred when the audience was introduced late, but not early, into the entrapment situation. Taken together, these (and other) findings suggest that economic factors are more influential determinants of behavior in the earlier stages of an entrapping conflict, whereas face-saving variables are more potent in the later phases. Alternative explanations are discussed.     

Cognitive styles in the development of medical careers

Recent research has shown that academic choice and achievement may be partly a function of the student's standing on the field-dependence-independence cognitive-style dimension. The results of two longitudinal studies suggest that information about field dependence-independence may be of value for student guidance in the medical setting. The first, a study of college undergraduates who early expressed an interest in medicine, showed that these cognitive styles play a discernible role in determining who will eventually enter medical school. The second, a study of medical students, showed that field-dependent and field-independent students subsequently tend to choose different medical specialties. These results are consistent with cognitive-style theory, which proposes that field-independent people will choose vocations that require cognitive restructuring skills, whereas field-dependent people will choose vocations that require greater social-interpersonal involvement.     

The dispositional shift in attribution over time

Two experiments examined the effect of time on causal attributions. In Experiment I, subjects who described themselves into a tape recorder assumed more personal responsibility for their behavior after 3 weeks' time than others who explained their behavior immediately after its occurrence. In Experiment II, actor-subjects took part in a getting acquainted conversation and explained their behavior more dispositionally and less situationally after 3 weeks' time than they had initially, while observer-subjects experienced no change over time. Results were interpreted in terms of an altered self-perspective in memory and the diminished salience of situational details over time.     

Children at risk for delinquency: A follow-up comparison of aggressive children and children who steal

This study compared the follow-up incidence of court-recorded nonstatus offenses for three groups of adolescent children. These children had been seen 2 to 9 years earlier for problems with aggression in the home (N = 21), for stealing problems (N = 25), or for normative comparisons (N = 14). The results showed that 77% of the children with stealing problems had court-recorded offenses. This was significantly higher than the aggressive children, whose rate did not differ from the normative sample. These findings suggested that young aggressive children were not at risk for adolescent court contact. Instead, it was the young child with identified stealing problems who was highly likely to become an official delinquent. It also appeared that parental reports of stealing events constituted a predictive measure of later criminal acts.