Fine-tuning theory to the needs of the world: Responding to Heller et al.

Comments on the Heller et al. telephone intervention with isolated elderly women are presented. The importance of addressing contextual factors involved in assessments of social support in community samples is discussed. Comparisons are drawn between the assessment of social support among an elderly sample and an assessment of social support among a sample of chronic illness patients. Three key issues are discussed: (a) Is a little support better than no support and is a little all we really need? (b) Is family support more important than friend support, at least to this population? (c) Can long-term relationships be replaced?     

Cerebral control for speech in right-handers and left-handers: an analysis of the views of Paul Broca, his contemporaries, and his successors

According to several recent historical accounts, Broca (1865a) stated that left-handers are the mirror-reverse of right-handers for cerebral control of speech, with the right hemisphere being dominant in left-handers, and the left hemisphere dominant in right-handers. The same accounts then note Broca's error in light of current evidence that the majority of left-handers are left-dominant for speech just as are nearly all right-handers. Eling (1984) has called such statements misrepresentations of Broca's position and has argued that Broca's analysis actually was more compatible with the current view that there is a disjunction, meaning an absence of an intimate anatomical relationship, between cerebral control for handedness and speech. The current paper looks again at Broca's work, describes the context in which his views were first articulated, and traces the development of the mirror-reversal principle. The conclusion is reached that, judged by a narrow reading of the 1865 paper, Broca's views could indeed be construed as an anticipation of the modern disjunction principle. However, judged by a broader reading, by consideration of his other writing, and in the context of the philosophical and scientific tradition that shaped his work, it is suggested that it was the mirror-reversal principle to which Broca was actually disposed.     

Attitudes toward women and their work roles: Effects of intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientations

This study examined the effects of personal religious orientation, religious denomination, and gender on attitudes toward women and their work roles using a sample of 263 single undergraduate university students. Subjects with a high intrinsic religious orientation put significantly more emphasis on family than career in their anticipated general lifestyle relative to those with a low intrinsic religious orientation. Subjects with a high intrinsic religious orientation were also more likely to anticipate the female spouse spending less time in a profession during the children's early years. Males showed more traditional attitudes toward women than females, but there were no gender effects on measures of preferred general lifestyle, preferred child-care distribution, or preferred career involvement for the wife. Subjects belonging to mainline and conservative denomination did not differ significantly in their attitudes toward women or their work roles.     

The effects of a microcounselling programme with social work students: A preliminary look at cognitive issues

Microcounselling has featured widely as a systematic approach to improving the interviewing and counselling skills of a range of professional groups (Dickson, 1981). Reviews of research largely attest to its effectiveness in this regard (Baker & Daniels, 1989). The outcome criteria upon which such conclusions have been based have, however, been essentially behavioral and proximal. In an earlier study (Dickson & Mullan, 1990), only limited evidence for the generalisability of outcomes was forthcoming. This paper extends that work by presenting a preliminary investigation of the impact of microcounselling on some of the cognitive processes which are thought to mediate skilled performance. As part of a more extensive evaluation (Dickson & Mullan, 1990), a pre-experimental single group pretest-posttest design was used to assess the extent to which measures of locus of control (Rotter, 1966), evinced by a group of social work students, would change following a microcounselling intervention. Despite predictions of a move towards greater internality of control, no significant pre-post training differences emerged. This result is discussed within the context of the limitations of the design and, in keeping with the preliminary nature of the study, a number of areas for further investigation are indicated.     

Fat,Four-Eyed,and Female: Stereotypes of Obesity,Glasses, and Gender1

In a between-subjects design, 46 male and 101 female Australian university students rated a target person described as male or female, overweight or average weight, and wearing glasses or not, on twelve 7-point rating scales. As predicted, a negative stereotype of the overweight person and a complex one of the person with glasses were found. However, there was no significant effect of sex of target except on the ratings of masculine and feminine and no interaction of sex of target with either the glasses or obesity variables. Nor did sex of subject influence the ratings. The results suggest that, although stereotypes of obesity and glasses do exist, they may be as severe for men as for women.     

Perceived depth vs. structural relevance in the object-superiority effect

When subjects must identify a barely visible line in a briefly flashed display, their accuracy depends on the configuration of the context in which the target line appears. Weisstein and Harris (1974) found that accuracy is highest when the target is part of a pattern that resembles a unified, three-dimensional object, and lowest in a flat-looking pattern composed of disconnected lines; they labeled this phenomenon the object-superiority effect. In the three experiments reported here, identification accuracy was found to correlate highly and significantly (r =.78) with the judged depth of the patterns. Judged structural relevance of the target line to the pattern (McClelland & Miller, 1979) was uncorrelated with accuracy (r=?.28). Even when the target line appeared as an isolated fragment within the context pattern, a pattern perceived as three-dimensional yielded higher identification accuracy than one perceived as flat.     

SUPPRESSION OF SELF-STIMULATION: THREE ALTERNATIVE STRATEGIES

Four boys with autistic-like behavior were treated for self-stimulatory behavior with three different treatment procedures—time-out, differential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO), and overcorrection. All four boys showed a rapid response to the overcorrection procedure. Three boys demonstrated some evidence of decrement in responding with time-out. During the DRO procedure, one showed a modest decrease, two showed no change, but one exhibited a consistent increase in responding under this condition. A multiple baseline applied to one of the subjects failed to reveal any generalization of suppression from one setting to another. A strong but not perfect relationship was found between a frequency and a duration measure of self-stimulation. There was some evidence of negative side effects for one boy during overcorrection and for another during time-out. None of these negative side effects was enduring. There was also some indirect evidence that overcorrection facilitated appropriate play.     

Memory for metaphors

Three experiments examined memory for metaphorical sentences. No differences between metaphors and nonmetaphorical equivalents (e.g.,The ivy cuddled up to the window vs.The ivy grew up to the window) in the number of correct recalls or recognitions were found. There was, however, a significant trend for recall errors that were meaning-preseving to be less metaphorical than the input sentence. The results supported hypotheses that metaphors and nonmetaphors are equally easy to remember and that the stored memory representation does not distinguish whether its antecedent linguistic input was metaphorical or not.This research was supported by Grant MH 28493-01 from NIMH and by a grant from the Kansas State University Bureau of General Research.Some of the data were reported at the Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Denver, November 1975.