American Indian Secondary School Students' Preferences for Counselors

Researchers examined the importance of similar ethnicity and the preference for a counselor of the same sex among American Indian secondary school students.     

The relationship between personal authority in the family system and discovery of meaning in life

This study investigated the relationship between intergenerational family relationships and Frankl's concept of meaning in life. Intergenerational family relationships were measured by the Personal Authority in the Family System Questionnaire (PAFS-QE) by Bray, Williamson, and Malone. The meaning in life variables were measured by the Life Attitude Profile-Revised (LAP-R) by Reker. This quantitative study, using the BMDP Statistical Package (Dixon, 1990), correlated the scores on various subscales from both instruments, resulting in seven statistically significant relationships. The findings, although modest, suggest the existence of a relationship between these two theoretical areas.This article is based in part on the first author's doctoral dissertation at Texas Woman's University.A copy of the PAFS-Q may be obtained from: James H. Bray, PhD, 5510 Greenbriar, Houston, TX 77005. A copy of the LAP-R may be obtained from: Gary Reker, PhD, Trent University, Psychology Department, Peterborough, Ontario Canada K9J 7B8.     

Is anorexia nervosa a neuropsychological disease?

Evidence for central nervous system, and more particularly cortical, etiology of anorexia nervosa is reviewed. Topics covered are neuropsychiatric comorbidity, inheritance patterns, the neurobiology of body-image disturbance and of the eating function, perinatal and alcoholic insult to the brain, neurochemical and neuroelectric disturbance, anatomic and metabolic brain imaging, and neuropsychological impairment. It is concluded that there is indeed an important neuropsychological etiological dimension to anorexia nervosa. The profile most frequently associated with anorexia nervosa is right posterior hypometabolism, followed by right anterior hypermetabolism, both associated with right-sided abnormal electroencephalogram spiking. It is also proposed that bulimia consists of a positive neurological subtype and that restricting anorexia represents a negative neurological subtype. Priorities for further research into anorexia nervosa are specified to include twin adoption studies, brain electrical topography studies, postmortem histological studies, and experimentally inspired neuropsychological studies.     

Comparison of simultaneous prompting and constant time delay procedures in teaching sight words to elementary students with moderate mental retardation

Simultaneous prompting (a type of antecedent prompt and test procedure) and constant time delay were compared with four students with moderate mental retardation learning expressive sight words. A parallel treatments design across word sets and replicated across students was used. For acquisition, the simultaneous prompting procedures required fewer trials, sessions, and training time to criterion and resulted in fewer student errors during daily probe and training sessions. However, maintenance data indicated mixed results across the two procedures. Reliability data (both dependent and independent variables) revealed no differences between the two procedures in terms of the teacher's accuracy in recording student responses and implementing each procedure. Future research issues are discussed.     

Developmental psychology in the real world: A paradigm of parent education

Twenty years ago, William Kessen, Greta Fein and I developed and tested a model of parent education, a model which involved variation in curricular content, didactic approaches, and child outcomes–experimentally contrasted. Our experience yielded some valuable lessons about the extent to which researchers can influence parents' behaviour, and parents their children's development. In the present article I suggest that these lessons might be useful for researchers now as they were for us then. I present some observations about the research that developmental psychologists have done in the intervening two decades and suggest that we could learn much by using such a model of parent education to answer questions about the effets of parents' behaviour on children's development. Carefully done, parent education studies can yield valuable information about many of the questions raised in recent correlational research. Parent training research can suggest hypotheses that can be tested with data collected non-interventively and analysed in causal model analyses–and vice versa. What is more, because one reason for studying parent effects is so that we can offer guidance to parents about rearing their children, this design has a particular advantage; it is both the medium and the message.     

Marital satisfaction and family stress as predictors of classroom behaviors

The purpose of this research was to examine the relationship between parents' perceptions of marital satisfaction and family stress and their third grade children's classroom behavior. Twenty-one married couples completed questionnaires during home visits. Behavior observations were made from videotapes of children recorded in their classroom during lunch and group academic periods on each of three days. Frequencies of peer interactions, solitary behaviors, and teacher interactions were coded. Regression analyses showed that mothers' level of marital satisfaction (but not fathers') predicted their children's frequency of peer interactions during lunch. Fathers' level of perceived family stress (but not mothers') predicted their children's frequency of peer interactions during lunch. Neither measure for either parent was related to the frequency of peer interactions, solitary behaviors, or teacher interactions observed during the academic sessions. These findings highlight the importance of assessing the potential differential relation of parent variables to children's trans-situational behaviors, and the examination of these variables in relation to different social-environmental contexts in which children participate outside the home.     

Subjective contours 1900–1990: Research trends and bibliography

Abibliography on subjective contours and a brief summary of trends in research-on-thin problem are presented. The bibliography covers the years 1900–1990 and contains 445 entries, each briefly annotated with a code that indicates the general content and theoretical orientation of the item.     

On axiomatization of many-valued logics associated with formalization of plausible reasonings

This paper studies a class of infinite-valued predicate logics. A sufficient condition for axiomatizability of logics from that class is given.To the memory of Jerzy Supecki