LEMON-JUICE THERAPY: THE CONTROL OF LIFE-THREATENING RUMINATION IN A SIX-MONTH-OLD INFANT1

Chronic, life-threatening rumination was eliminated in a six-month-old infant by squirting a small amount of lemon juice into her mouth whenever rumination or its precursors were detected. A brief suspension of this therapy demonstrated its crucial role. Lemon-juice therapy offers a practical and acceptable alternative to other therapies for rumination, namely electric shock and massive noncontingent attention. However, since this study is limited to a single case, claims as to the effectiveness of this therapy across children are premature.     

Assortative marriage and the familiality of cognitive abilities in families of extremely gifted students

The top 1% of the extremely bright students identified by the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (Benbow & Stanley, 1980b) were tested along with their parents, using a battery of specifically designed cognitive tests. These students represented the top 0.03% of their age group in intellectual ability. The results showed that the parents were extremely able and resembled one another significantly more than parents in the general population. In addition, the intellectually precocious children resembled their parents to a lesser extent than children of average ability resemble their parents. These results suggest that considerable assortative mating has occurred among the parents of these extremely gifted youth, but that extreme giftedness cannot be predicted reliably solely as a result of the mating of bright parents.     

Blood phobia—beware

In every day life, many people complain that they are afraid of the sight of blood. Stories of trainee medical doctors fainting on first witnessing an operation abound. Many people turn away from films of operations. Despite this, there are few accounts of the treatment of patients presenting with blood phobia as a main complaint. Standard texts on phobias (e.g. Marks, 1969; Rachman, 1974) do not mention it, nor do texts on behavioural treatment (e.g. Yates, 1970). The purpose of this short report is to describe the treatment of a long-standing, circumscribed blood phobia in a 16 yr old boy, and to draw attention to some special considerations surrounding the treatment of blood phobic patients.     

Psychometric and CT scan measurements in a case of crossed aphasia in a dextral

A case of crossed aphasia with lesion deep to the right supramarginal gyrus was studied to determine (1) if this patient behaved similar to patients with the same lesion site in the left hemisphere, (2) if visuospatial deficits were present, and (3) if the CT scan asymmetries were similar to those of other right-handers. Speech and language skills were similar to those patients with similar lesions in the left hemisphere. Visuospatial and arithmetic deficits were similar to those described after right-hemisphere and left-hemisphere damage. CT scan asymmetries were atypical. These results provide behavioral and neuroradiological confirmation of atypical hemispheric dominance.     

Analysis of unreplicated three-way classifications,with applications to rater bias and trait independence

The seven analysis-of-variance mean squares for an unreplicated three-way classification may be written as linear combinations of a mean variance and three mean covariances. Formulas are presented for computing the mean variances and mean covariances from linear combinations of mean squares. The relevance of these formulas for assessing rater biases and trait independence is discussed, a numerical example is provided, and proposed extensions are briefly noted.The research reported herein was performed pursuant to a contract with the United States Office of Education, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. The assistance of Sister M. Jacinta Mann, S. C., at one stage of this investigation is gratefully acknowledged.     

Measuring post-traumatic stress: A psychometric evaluation of symptom- and coping questionnaires based on a Norwegian sample

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the psychometric characteristics of the Norweigian versions of the Impact of Event Scale, the Post Traumatic Stress Scale-10 item version and General Coping Questionnaire-30 item version. A group of 40 male and 56 female medical students was tested one week and four months after having started dissection of cadavers for the first time. The results showed that all scales had good internal consistency and test-retest reliability. The student sample scored lower on the IES and PTSS-10 than comparable groups of traumatized subjects. A gender difference emerged, with female subjects scoring higher than male subjects. The factor analysis of the instruments indicated good construct validity for the symptom scales. The analysis of content validity related to DSM IV criteria indicated that the IES and PTSS-10 may have some limitations in their predictive validity of PTSD. Taken together, the three scales have shown good psychometric properties and could be used in future research and clinical work.     

The Processing of Grammatical Gender and Number in Spanish

The aim of the present study is to explore the representation and processing of inflectional morphology in Spanish. Experiment 1 compared the access time for words from the same base morpheme contrasted by the surface frequency of the masculine and feminine form, i.e., masculine-dominant items and feminine-dominant items. The results showed a surface frequency effect in both types of items. Experiment 2 compared the access time for masculine words having the same surface frequency but differing in their summed frequency (masculine plus feminine forms), the results showing no significant effect of this parameter. Finally, experiment 3 compared the access time for words from the same stem and contrasting by the surface frequencies for the singular and plural forms, i.e., singular-dominant and plural-dominant words. A clear frequency effect was observed for the singular-dominant words but not for plural-dominant ones. These results suggest that gender information is stored in the corresponding lexical entry and accessed from the full word form whereas the information about number is accessed from the stem corresponding to the singular form.