Participant roles and the processing of verbs during sentence comprehension

This paper explores the nature of thematic information made available when a verb is accessed during sentence comprehension. Following Shapiro, Zurif, and Grimshaw (1987), a cross-modal lexical decision (interference) task was employed to examine whether either the number of argument structures or the number of participant (thematic) roles inherent in a verb cause an increase in processing load upon access of the verb. It was determined that there was no evidence for such an increased processing load covarying with the number of argument structures of the verb, at least for those verb types examined in this study. However, there was an increase in processing load as a direct function of the number of participant roles carried by the verb. It is concluded that the participant roles (thematic roles associated with the central meaning of the verb) are stored with the representation of a verb and are made immediately, available upon access of the verb for further processing during comprehension.The first author gratefully acknowledges discussion and advice from Adele Goldberg and the support of grant T32 DC 00041 in pursuing this work. The second author acknowledges the support of NIH grant RO1 DC00494 for the work presented in this paper, and the helpful comments and criticisms of a reviewer.     

Working with older adults and their families – a review

This paper discusses family work with older adults by exploring some of the related literature published since Herr and Weakland's work in 1979, and compares psychoeducational and systems-based approaches to work with later life families. Issues of bias and omissions in the existing literature, and the definition of family therapy with this client group are raised. Areas for future research are indicated.     

MENSTRUAL JOY The Construct and Its Consequences

Fifty female college students participated in a study of women's health. In a counterbalanced design, half of the participants completed the Menstrual Joy Questionnaire (MJQ) and the Menstrual Attitude Questionnaire (MAQ) in the first testing session. A week later they completed the Menstrual Distress Questionnaire (MDQ) and the Menstrual Attitude Questionnaire. The other participants completed the MDQ and MAQ in the first session and the MJQ and MAQ in the second. A multivariate analysis of variance revealed that those who received the MJQ first reported more positive cyclic changes on the MDQ and more positive attitudes on the MAQ. A follow-up study of 40 college students examined their responses to the MJQ. Participants reported that they were surprised or incredulous; most had not previously considered positive aspects of the menstrual cycle. Thirty percent reported that the MJQ had caused them to look at menstruation in a different way.     

Negative priming without probe selection

Responses to an object may be slower or less accurate if that object shares attributes with a recently ignored object(negative priming). Some studies have found negative priming only if the probe trial required selection against a distractor stimulus. In the present experiment, subjects responded to the location of a target (O), ignoring a distractor (X) if it appeared in another location. Reaction time was slower to probe targets that appeared in the same location as the prime distractor, regardless of whether or not the probe target was accompanied by a distractor.     

Measuring How We Preach What We Practice: Psychoeducational Change in Depressed Inpatients

This study investigated the relationship between acquisition of psychoeducational principles and symptomatic improvement in depressed in-patients. One hundred and twenty-three inpatients hospitalized on a Cognitive Therapy Unit were administered the Test of Cognitive Behavioral Principles (TCBP) and the Beck Depression Inventory at admission and discharge. It was predicted that the TCBP scores would be higher at discharge than at pre-testing at admission. Further, it was hypothesized that the higher TCBP scores at post-test would be significantly correlated with lower Beck Depression Inventory scores at post-test. The results revealed that inpatients' TCBP scores improved over the course of treatment supporting the first hypothesis. However, the data did not support the second hypothesis as there was not a significant relationship between the TCBP scores and the BDI scores at discharge. The results are discussed in terms of clinical, theoretical, and methodological implications.     

Aggression Observation Scale for Group Psychotherapy

An observational scale to record aggressive behaviors, defenses, and interventions that occur during a psychotherapy group has been developed. Content and process items were included. The content items focus on the spoken material and are on a continuum of increasing group members' awareness of and responsibility for their anger. The process items are directed to underlying psychodynamic issues on a continuum from avoiding anger, to indirect and then expression of anger. Leader interventions (responses) are also included. The development of the scale, the Aggression Observation Scale for Group Psychotherapy (AOSGP), is described including pilot testing and reliability and validity findings.     

Cultural specificity of support sources,correlates and contexts: Three studies of African-American and Caucasian youth

Levels and correlates of parental support, peer support, partner support, and/or spiritual support among African American and Caucasian youth were examined in three contexts: adolescent pregnancy (Study 1), first year of college (Study 2), and adolescence and young adulthood (ages 15–29; Study 3). Partially consistent with a cultural specificity perspective, in different contexts different support sources were higher in level and/or more strongly related to adjustment for one ethnic group than the other. Among pregnant adolescents, levels of spiritual support were higher for African Americans than Caucasians; additionally, peer support was positively related to well-being only for African Americans whereas partner support was positively related to well-being only for Caucasians. Among college freshmen, family support was more strongly related to institutional and goal commitment for African Americans than Caucasians; conversely, peer support was more strongly related to institutional and goal commitment among Caucasians. Among 15 to 29-year-olds, levels of parental support and spiritual support were higher among African Americans than Caucasians; additionally, spiritual support was positively related to self-esteem for African Americans but not for Caucasians. Implications and limitations of the research are discussed. The third study was supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grant RO1 MH40963. We thank Monica Greene, Shea Lyda, Wendy Stevenson, and the many undergraduate students who contributed to the three research projects. We also acknowledge the very thoughtful and helpful comments of the anonymous reviewers and the editor, Edison Trickett.     

One size doesn't fit all: Full inclusion and individual differences

Recent studies have documented the increasing trend among school districts toward adopting full inclusion as the predominant model for serving students who qualify for special education services. Although these data may suggest that a paradigm shift has already taken place and that a consensus of opinion has been achieved, several organizations representing students with specific disabilities continue to support a continuum of placement options. This paper challenges a one size fits all approach to special education, and highlights the importance of considering the individual characteristics of students. The relevance of research on full inclusion, as well as methodological issues that limit generalizability of findings related to student outcomes, are discussed. The radical perspective of full inclusion is rejected in favor of an approach that emphasizes the complexities of placement decisions.     

Word-order and imagery in the recall of adjective-noun phrases

Previous research using French material and subjects has found that noun-adjective pairs are easier to recall than adjective-noun pairs, which suggests that linguistic rules are important in determining performance. However, experiments using English material have also suggested that noun-adjective phrases are easier, although in English these pairs violate grammatical conventions. The latter findings have been interpreted as supporting the view that mental imagery is important in remembering. However, these studies are faulty in various respects. In an experiment on free recall, using English material, the grammatical order (adjective-noun) was found to produce better performance than the reversed order (noun-adjective), but only because reversed phrases tended to be reported in the conventional order. This supports the original view that grammatical constraints affect recall.