The behavior of young children in a strange situation

Abstract. The social behavior of young children was assessed in a strange situation which was to become increasingly more stressful. The strange-situation procedure reported by Ainsworth & Wittig (1969) was repeated as closely as possible. Children between 1 and 1¹/₂ years were accompanied by their mothers or by a female stranger in various combinations, or were alone, according to a prearranged sequence. The data were subjected to a commonality analysis (Masters & Wellman, 1974). Common changes in the frequencies of 20 behavior items were noted across the different episodes. The physicaldistance relationship between the child and its companion, the exploratory behavior of the child, and individual differences among the children were analyzed in light of Bowlby's attachment theory. The results gave some support to the findings reported by Ainsworth and her group, but also pointed to functional differences between the behavior items examined. The results on crying were compared with those of Ainsworth & Wittig (1969), showing a fair degree of agreement. Finally, the subjects were divided into groups according to an operationalization of the criteria given by Ainsworth et al. (1971). Often children, only three could unequivocally be placed in one of eight groups. This suggests that it may be difficult to use the group characterization proposed by Ainsworth et al.     

A cross-cultural study of personality: Swedish and English children

Five hundred and thirty-one Swedish boys and 559 Swedish girls completed the Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (J.EPQ) translated into Swedish by the authors (A.-L.v.K. and L.v.K.). Factor comparisons indicated virtually identical factors of Psychoticism (P) Extraversion (E), Neuroticism (N) and social desirability—Lie (L)—in Sweden as in England. Slight item additions produced scales with adequate reliabilities. Sex differences were in line with most studies, i.e. boys scoring higher than girlson Psychoticism (P) but lower on Neuroticism (N) and Lie (L). Finally, the only significant cross-cultural difference between Swedish and Engish children proved to be on Neuroticism (N) where the Swedish children had much lower scores than the English children.     

Relationship control and interpersonal perception in marriage

The correlation between married couples' interpersonal perception and relationship control in communication was investigated. A normated, standardized and shortened version of Laing et al. 's Interpersonal Perception method (IPM) was used to measure interpersonal perception. The test contain three levels of perception, namely (1) direct perception of the relationship, (2) misunderstandings, and (3) disagreements about the relationship. The couples' relationship control was observed in three different situations. Previous studies have found the amount of one-upmanship in married couples to be associated with problems of interpersonal perception. Although different methods were applied in the present study, this finding was replicated to some extent. Additionally, the results indicate that the more the couples communicated to each other that they both had the right to control the relationship, the less problems they had in interpersonal perception. The results also strongly suggest that couples communicating in egocentric and self-disqualifying ways perceive their marriage as less satisfying, and they also perceive each other's feelings and behaviours less accurately than those who have little or no such deviant communication.     

ON THE PROBLEM OF ENVY

It is easy for modern man to draw up outlines of a future ideal society where people are good and happy and no social discord prevails anymore It is probably even easier to criticize mistakes of the past, to hold our forefathers responsible for social wrongs and human suffering. The greatest difficulty lies in realizing the limitations of our own conception of the world and of our own objectives. Each generation tends to be blind to its own mistakes, but becomes later, in its turn, the object of the judgment of history.     

"I would do anything for my child, even quit tobacco": Bonus effects from an intervention that targets adolescent tobacco use

This paper aims to assess program bonus effects on adult tobacco use from a long-term intervention that targeted adolescent tobacco use. The school-based community intervention started in Västerbotten County in Sweden in 1993 and adults were invited to support adolescents to stay tobacco-free. It was combined with repeated cross-sectional surveys in schools annually 1994–99 among grades 7–9 and after 1999 every second year. Participating schools were randomly selected before the first survey representing both rural and urban settings. Out of 4,055 students, 1,008 (24.8%) reported that their supporting adult had been a tobacco user who quit tobacco in order to be allowed to participate. Out of these, 13.2% used tobacco daily before joining. The remaining 2,997 students' adult partners were not tobacco users. Engaging tobacco using adults as partners in interventions targeting adolescent tobacco use seem to have a considerable tobacco-reducing bonus effect in the adults.     

The role of age on reactivity and memory for emotional pictures

The purpose of this study was to investigate subjects' reactivity to emotional pictures and their recollection of these pictures, and to examine these two factors as they relate to age. Adolescents and young adults were shown emotionally arousing scenic pictures for long (4-s) and very brief (50-ms) durations. Recognition of the pictures and recall and recognition of words presented along with the pictures were assessed both immediately after the presentation and six weeks later. The results showed that very negative pictures are retained better than neutral or even positive pictures, and that very negative pictures reduce memory for associated information. It was also found that adolescents show a somewhat lower reactivity to very negative pictures and a higher degree of retention of these pictures than adults. The results are discussed in relation to (a) habituation effects, (b) strategies that subjects might develop to block emotional involvement, and (c) the notion that watching violence might serve as a powerful prime to socially undesirable behaviour.     

Disconfirmatory feedback in families of schizophrenics

A new approach to the study of family communication and psychopathology, in particular schizophrenia, using Saugstad's theory about use of language as its point of departure is presented. Conflicts between family members were observed and measured using a new unrevealed difference technique, the Colour Conflict Method (CCM). Communication was analysed in terms of continuous feedback processes, using the new computerized method, Confirmation-Disconfirmation Coding System (CONDIS). Feedback mechanisms in the internal communication of families of schizophrenics, normals, and non-schizophrenic pathological controls (n = 21) are described. The findings show that families of schizophrenics lack the ability to adapt their communication to changing situational requirements. When conflicts were introduced, families of schizophrenics-in contrast to non-schizophrenics within the extended schizophrenia spectrum and normals-increased their frequency of disconfirmatory feedback reactions instead of expressing disagreements openly. This was due to active disqualifications occurring between the parents and from the parents towards their schizophrenic offspring, who reacted with incomprehensible egocentric communication acts.     

Episodic remembering in young adults, 73-year-olds, and 82-year-olds

Younger adults (mean age = 20.6), 73-year-olds, and 82-year-olds were examined in free and cued recall of words preceded by standard instructions or organizational instructions. The younger adults outperformed the elderly groups in free and cued recall preceded by standard instructions. When organizational instructions were provided, recall differences between the younger adults and the 73-year-olds were eliminated, while both these groups outperformed the 82-year-olds. Within-group comparisons showed that the younger group was relatively independent of contextual support at encoding (organizational instructions) and retrieval (cues) respectively. Furthermore, the group of 73-year-olds was able to utilize support at both stages of remembering, whereas the group of 82-year-olds utilized contextual support only at retrieval. The results were compared with research on memory development in childhood through the application of Ribot's law.     

Swedish norms for completion of word stems and unique word fragments

Swedish norms for completion of word stems and single-solution word fragments, with few or many letters specified, were obtained from Swedish students. Comparisons were made for completion rates between stems and fragments that were possible to complete with the same word. As expected, completion rates for fragments were generally superior to those of word stems since the word stems allowed alternative completions. Adding one letter to the word stems and fragments resulted in a significant increase in the probability of completion, for both stems and fragments. A stepwise regression analysis was conducted in order to partial out factors determining the completion probability for fragments. The ratio of specified letters to blank characters, and the familiarity of the solution was found to be the most important factors. Finally, the effect of number of given letters in the word stem on the number of generated words per stem was studied. The mean number of words generated per stem was found to be equal for both two- and three-letter word stems.     

Determinants of word fragment completion

A current debate in the memory literature concerns the validity of word fragment completion (WFC) as a test of implicit memory. It has been claimed that language variables exert a strong influence on the task, and that the task reflects memory only to a small extent (Hintzman & Hartry, 1990). For these reasons, the use of contingency analyses of recognition and WFC performance as a means of studying underlying memory processes has been criticized. The present study addressed this issue by examining the influence of language variables on completion of a set of computer generated single-solution fragments of Swedish words (Olofsson & Nyberg, 1992). It was found that language variables indeed had a large effect on completion performance, and that priming only accounted for a small portion of variance in the task. It is therefore suggested that the method of triangulation should be employed for contingency analyses involving WFC.