The Impact of the Birth of a Baby on the Time Structure and Social Mixture of a Couple's Daily Life and Its Consequences for Well-Being1

In order to investigate the temporal disruption and social dislocation resulting from the birth of a child, 37 couples were studied at 4 time points: pre-birth (second trimester), and at 1, 4, and 12 months postpartum. A diary-based instrument (the Social Rhythm Metric-SRM) was used to evaluate the habitual times at which 17 events during the day took place, the proportion of events done alone, as a couple only, and with nonfamily members. Also evaluated were perceptions of the quality of the marriage relationship, feelings of depressive symptoms, and feelings of anger. The baby's birth had a major effect on the timing with which daily events were done, and on differences between mothers' and fathers' habitual times, especially in the morning. There were also dramatic differences (50–80% reductions) in the proportion of events done alone, as a couple only, and with nonfamily members. However, these effects were much more marked in mothers than in fathers and were attenuated when there were prior children. Changes in marital quality and mood were also observed. The birth was associated particularly with a decline in marital quality and in the levels of anger and depressive symptoms felt by parents at 1 month postpartum, although these effects interacted with gender and prior parental experience. Furthermore, the changes in well-being were related to changes in SRM indices, though differentially for mothers and fathers.     

Inhibition of Return Is a Foraging Facilitator in Visual Search

Using overt orienting, participants searched a complex visual scene for a camouflaged target (Waldo from the "Where's Waldo?™" books). After several saccades, we presented an uncamouflaged probe (black disk) while removing or maintaining the scene, and participants were required to locate this probe by foveating it. Inhibition of return was observed as a relative increase in the time required to locate these probes when they were in the general region of a previous fixation, but only when the search array remained present. Perhaps also reflecting inhibition of return, preprobe saccades showed a strong directional bias away from a previously fixated region. Together with recent studies that replicate the finding of inhibition at distractor locations following serial but not parallel visual search—so long as the search array remains visible—these data strongly support the proposal that inhibition of return functions to facilitate visual search by inhibiting orienting to previously examined locations.     

Skill development and cognitive approaches to educating young children

A variety of early childhood education programs have been established in the last decade that differ markedly in their philosophical and theoretical foundations. This article illustrates how distinct foundations are reflected in all program variables in a unified program. Two unified early childhood education programs are contrasted: a skill development program based upon behaviorist theory, and a cognitive growth program based upon cognitive developmental theory. Implications of unified programs for classroom behavior and the school psychologist are discussed.     

An analysis-of-variance model for the intrasubject replication design

One- and two-way analysis-of-variance procedures are shown logically to be appropriate for testing hypotheses in successive treatment reversal designs for one-subject and N-subject experiments, respectively. The applicability of these designs is demonstrated through analyses of typical data.     

Generalization of free-operant avoidance behavior in pigeons

Three groups of four pigeons, trained to press a treadle on a free-operant avoidance schedule, were given auditory discrimination training. Alternating 2-min components of avoidance and no shock were paired with either a tone or white noise. The pigeons were subsequently given two types of generalization tests, with and without avoidable shocks scheduled. Two of the groups, trained interdimensionally, produced excitatory and inhibitory generalization gradients along the tone frequency dimension. A predicted post-discrimination gradient was computed from the algebraic summation of these gradients of excitation and inhibition. The predicted gradient was compared with the actual post-discrimination gradient obtained from the third group of pigeons that had been given intradimensional discrimination training on the tone frequency dimension. The predicted postdiscrimination gradient agreed in shape with the empirical postdiscrimination gradient. The results in general support Spence's (1937) gradient interaction theory.