‘Why should we talk to you? You'll only tell the Court!’ On being an informer and a family therapist

The family therapy literature recognizes the constraints imposed on a therapist's freedom and impartiality in a statutory agency. This paper shows that clinical settings that are apparently independent are not free of such constraints. The wider professional welfare system has confused expectations of a clinical agency that it should provide simultaneously both therapy and a measure of social control. An account is given of one hospital-based family therapy team's struggles to find manoeuvrability in child-focused statutory cases, so as to be helpful both to families and referrers. One method of working is illustrated with a case example.     

The influence of concurrent load on mouthed and vocalized modality effects

A visual search task was coupled with the serial recall of words to assess the extent to which modality effects mediated by vocalizing and silent mouthing reflect an automatically activated preattentive process. Overall, serial position functions systematically changed as concurrent task demands increased, but the magnitude of the modality effect associated with both mouthing and vocalizing was not altered, regardless of whether or not subjects simultaneously searched for digits. These results support the notion that modality effects index a preattentive process that can be activated automatically by either spoken input or gestural cues associated with speech.     

Detection of noisy visual targets: Models for the effects of spatial uncertainty and signal-to-noise ratio

Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts 02115 An “extreme-detector” model for detecting spatially uncertain targets in noisy backgrounds predicts how both detection and localization abilities are degraded by increasing the number of possible target locations. Experiments 1 and 2 show that the model accurately predicts detection and localization performance in tasks with two, four, and eight locations from d’ estimates of the observer’s ability to detect the target in a known spatial location. These predictions can be linked to the physical stimuli by combining the extreme-detector model with a “psychophysical” model that specifies how stimulus measures determine the target’s detectability in a given location. Single-parameter fits of four such combined models were compared with estimates of detection and localization performance in Experiment 3, which manipulated the target’s physical signal-to-noise ratio across various conditions of an eightlocation task.     

Problem solving in hyperactive,normal, and reading-disabled boys

Diagnostic problem solving was examined in groups of hyperactive, normal, and nonhyperactive reading disabled boys matched on age and verbal IQ. On the matrix solution task employed (a version of the game of 20 Questions) hyperactives used less efficient questions and strategies than the other two groups, in spite of the task being designed to maximize the performance of the hyperactives. Readingdisabled children were not significantly worse than normal children on the task. The results were interpreted as suggesting that the attentional difficulties of hyperactives retard the development of strategies for solving complex problems. Nonhyperactive reading disabled children may be less affected in this area because of the absence of significant attentional difficulties.This article is based on a doctoral dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research of McGill University by the first author. We are grateful to the students, teachers, and principals of the following schools in the Montreal area: Allancroft, Beacon Hill, Briarwood, Cedar Park, Greendale, Hillcrest, Lakeside Heights, Martinvale, Sunny Dale, Thomas H. Bowes, and Vivian Graham. Special thanks are due Rhonda Amsel, John MacNamara, and Chet Olsen for their help and advice.     

Spontaneous play in two-year-olds born to substance-abusing mothers

The aim of the study was to determine if spontaneous play was altered in 2-year-olds born to polysubstance-abusing mothers. The study is part of a longitudinal research project of chronic substance-abusing mothers and their children living in poverty in the inner city of Los Angeles, identified in the hospital at birth by positive urine-toxicology screens, and compared to non-substance-abusing mothers and their children living in the same geographic area, of similar ethnic group and socioeconomic and marital status. The behavior of the 31 target and 21 comparison children in the 16-minute procedure was measured by frequency counts of manipulative, functional, and symbolic acts as well as by ratings of the quality of play. The play of the prenatally drug-exposed children differed from the comparison group by demonstrating significantly more immature play strategies, less sustained attention, more deviant behaviors, and fewer positive social interactions with their caregivers.     

The rescue of Jewish girls and teenage women to England and the USA during the Holocaust: a gendered perspective

This article deals with the lives and experiences of refugee girls and young women who found refuge in England and the United States during the Holocaust. Between 1934 and 1945 more than 12,600 unaccompanied children and teenagers from Central Europe between the ages of five and sixteen were shielded from Nazism in the Great Britain or the United States. In addition, approximately 1000 Jewish refugee children were brought to the United States by various refugee organizations prior to and during the war years. The experiences of girls and young women in this group were different than those of boys and young men, particularly with respect to foster parent preferences, immigration, resettlement and adaptation, treatment in the foster home, professional choices, and assimilation into a new society. This article discusses these differences from the standpoint of identity construction, socio-cultural adjustment problems and alienation-assimilation dialectics.