Self-image formation in adopted children: The environment within

Adoption of a child is an event in which a number of crises have converged. Both the biologic and adoptive families have contributed their failures and crises, and the subsequent interpretations of these by the adopted child can lead to polarized themes of goodness and badness. The absence of the biologic parents and of a coherent history reinforces the tendency to splitting. This paper explores these operations and raises questions about prevailing adoption practices.Paper presented at Spence-Chapin Symposium on Identity Problems of Children in Non-Nuclear Families, April 11, 1981.     

Personality patterns of adolescent poor and good sleepers

To determine whether poor sleepers have a unique personality constellation significantly different from that of good sleepers, a sample of 162 emotionally disturbed adolescent poor sleepers was compared to a sample of 153 emotionally disturbed adolescent good sleepers on standardized personality instruments. Poor sleepers were found to have a high incidence of neurotic psychopathology with personality patterns characterized by depression, fearfulness, inhibition, anxiety, and rumination. In contrast, good sleepers showed quasi healthy and/or characterological patterns. While this study does not resolve cause and effect relationships, it does establish a highly significant relationship between neuroticism and sleep disturbance for adolescent boys and girls, and also demonstrates a similarity of personality dynamics and patterns between adult and adolescent samples of patients with sleep disturbances.     

The Primary Mental Health Project (PMHP): Evaluation of current program effectiveness

This study evaluated the effectiveness of the Primary Mental Project (PMHP), a program for early detection and prevention of school adjustment problems. Pre- and postprogram assessments were done with 215 primary-grade children seen in PMHP, usig teacher ratings of problem behaviors and competencies, and child-aide ratings of problems. School mental health professionals judged educational and behavioral changes in project children during the year. Significant across-the board improvements were found on all criterion measures. Modest intercorrelations among criterion change estimates suggested that the observed changes were due to program, rather than halo, effects. PMHP children also improved significantly more than matched, retrospective controls.     

A machine-level software program for the generation of aversive conditioning schedules using the KIM-1 microprocessor

A microprocessor system can be used both to control aversive conditioning (classical, signaled and Sidman avoidance, and conflict) experiments and to acquire behavioral data in multiple subjects at a fraction of the cost of solid state systems. The software described in this paper can be used to program tones and shocks and count responses, independently, in up to 12 animals simultaneously.     

Ratio scaling of taste intensity by a matching procedure

Given the assumptions that the taste sense is analytic and that the total perceived intensity of a complex taste equals the sum of the perceived intensities of the components, a new procedure was devised to scale taste intensity. Subjects matched the intensity of test substances either to the total intensity or to the intensity of one component of two-component mixtures tin which the two components appeared equally intense. Given the above-stated assumptions, such a pair of matches should define a psychological ratio of 2∶1. Scales erected by this procedure agreed well with scales determined by magnitude estimation.     

Explorations using computer simulation to comprehend thematic apperceptive measurement of motivation

The new theory of motivation by Atkinson and Birch (1970), based on conceptual analysis of a change in activity, has been programmed to allow computer simulation of effects of differences in motivation on the stream of operant behavior. Simulation of conditions that exist when people who differ in strength of achievement motive write imaginative stories in response to a sequence of pictures shows that construct validity does not require internal consistency as traditionally supposed. The theoretically deduced differences in total time spent imagining achieving (instead of something else) can postdict input differences in motive strength (i.e., construct validity) even when there is little or no internal consistency reliability as indicated by Cronbach's (1951) alpha computed from theoretically deduced time spent imagining achievement in response to particular pictures. This general point has already been amply documented in 25 years of productive empirical research using TATn Achievement. Now a definitive theoretical refutation of the repeated psychometric criticism of the method is provided. Those who have been moved to dispel fantasies about fantasy-based measures of achievement motivation (Entwistle, 1972) are invited, instead, to examine the shallow theoretical foudation of our traditional myths of measurement.This paper elaborates a report presented August 30, 1975, at the 83rd annual meeting of the American Psychological Association. The authors gratefully acknowledge early assistance by Mary M. Moffett, and financial support by a Rackham Faculty Research Grant (JWA), a National Science Foundation Fellowship (KB), and a Michigan Student Medical Research Grant (LHP). Intricate detail has been avoided in describing the several simulations for the sake of clarity in this overview of exploratory work.     

Influence of temporal masking on click-pair discriminability

When temporal auditory acuity is estimated using time-reversed click pairs, the asymmetry of temporal masking may influence the results. To investigate this hypothesis, we first established normal-hearing listeners’ psychometric functions for the discrimination of time-reversed click pairs. An attempt to relate listeners’ performances in click-pair discrimination to their performances in forward and backward masking tasks was unsuccessful, probably due to the presence of spectral artifact in the temporal masking paradigms. We then investigated listeners’ abilities to discriminate time-reversed click pairs in which the intensity of the lower level click in one pair was altered. This alteration was introduced at random in order to minimize the influence of spectral artifact. Our results suggest that the course of temporal masking influenced the discriminability of the modified click pairs. Thus, the discrimination of time-reversed click pairs may yield a biased estimate of auditory temporal acuity.     

The Cost-Reward Model of Helping Behavior: A Nonconfirmation1

A field experiment was designed to test several predictions derived from the Piliavin and Piliavin cost-reward model of helping behavior. Female and male subjects' reported intent to help a hemophiliac in a nearby hospital was unrelated to the costs for helping, the costs for not helping, and the order in which the subjects received the costs' manipulations. The obtained rates of helping were also unrelated to whether or not subjects reported having donated previously. Failure to obtain the predicted results is discussed.     

Normative location theory: Placement in continuous space

This paper selectively reviews an area of operations research, refered to as normative location theory, that deals with the placement of objects in continuous space. The computational procedures discussed in this literature require initially that a certain set objects be located a priori; the placement of the objects in a second set is then determined in such a way that the total “interaction” among the fixed and variable objects is minimized. A number of strategies appropriate for different distance functions are surveyed and a numerical example is given illustrating one particular iterative algorithm. Although the current versions of these location methods depend upon more than the nonmetric information contained in the proximity measures defined for all pairs of objects, they can be generalized, and consequently, several possible connections to nonmetric multidimensional scaling are pointed out.