Dreams of traditional and nontraditional women: Are dream aggression and hostility related to higher levels of waking well-being?

In order to determine whether varying degrees of traditionality would be manifested in specific behaviors that would be present in women's waking and dreaming life, 100 women between the ages of 22 and 79, 12% of whom were African American, were administered a number of self-report measures of psychological well-being and were asked to complete ongoing dream diaries for a 2-week period. These instruments were then scored along with a variety of measures used to determine to what extent traditionality differentiated among the women. Randomly selected dreams from the dream diaries were scored for aggression, anxiety, emotion, hostility, self-efficacious problem-solving, and success/failure. While traditionality was not a significant factor among the self report scales, a number of significant relationships between traditionality and dream content scales were found. As predicted, nontraditionality was positively correlated with a high ratio of achievement-oriented success to failure interactions, self-efficacious problem-solving, and aggressive dream interactions. However, nontraditionality was also significantly correlated with higher overall dream hostility. The results are discussed within the context of recent dream function theory as well as within a broader sociocultural context on shifting gender roles.This research was completed in partial fulfillment of the first author's requirements for the doctoral degree in clinical psychology at Yeshiva University. The authors wish to thank Stan Fevens, Ph.D., for his enthusiastic support and encouragment as well as his invaluable assistance. An amended version of this paper was presented at the June, 1993 meeting of the Association of the Study of Dreams, Santa Fe, NM     

Sex differences in the object representations in the dreams of adolescents

The present study explored sex and age differences in the level of object representations and human movement in the dreams of adolescents. In order to test empirically the contention that early object relations are significantly linked to the formation of children’s gender identity, 389 dreams recorded by 115 adolescents, ages 15–18, were scored for object representations and levels of human movement. As predicted, there were significant differences in the quality of object representations in male and female adolescent’s dream content. In addition, female’s dreams contained significantly higher amounts of human movement than males’ dreams although these differences may well be attributable to longer dream narratives in the female sample. Further, these sex differences were most pronounced at the highest end of the sample age range. Results are discussed in terms of object relations adolescent development. The authors wish to thank Patricia Heenan, M.A., for her invaluable assistance with data management, Alice Pope, Ph.D., for her helpful suggestions, and Dave Cowen, Ph.D., for making his data available to us. Portions of this paper were presented at the Association for the Study of Dreams, June 1996, Berkeley, CA.     

Thinking about decisions: An integrative approach of person and task factors

Decisions vary. They may vary in both content and complexity. People also vary. An important way that people vary is how much they think. Some prior research investigating thinking and decision making largely conflicts with most traditional decision theories. For example, if considering an array of products to choose from, thinking more about the alternative's attributes should lead to a better decision. However, some research indicates that thinking more may also lead to focusing on irrelevant aspects of the decision and a less optimal outcome. We propose that this conflict in the literature exists because of a failure to consider the interaction between the individual and the decision task. To test this, we used separate methodologies that enhance or attenuate a person's thinking. In Study 1, we selected people who were especially high or low in need for cognition and had them complete a robust decision-making inventory, which included both complex and simple tasks. In Study 2, we manipulated participant's level of glucose, which acts as the brain's fuel to enhance or attenuate thinking ability. Both studies provide insight for understanding our central tenant that more thought leads to better decisions in complex tasks but does not influence simple decisions. These findings show how the individual's thinking can interact with the constructive elements of the task to shape decision choice.     

Effects of combined muscarinic and nicotinic blockade on choice accuracy in the radial-arm maze

Acetylcholine (ACh) systems have been found to be crucial for the maintenance of accurate cognitive performance. A great variety of studies have shown that the muscarinic ACh receptor blocker scopolamine impairs choice accuracy in the radial-arm maze. Recently, it has been found that the nicotinic ACh receptor blocker mecamylamine also impairs radial-arm maze choice accuracy. In the present study, we investigated the effects of combined administration of these two ACh blockers. Scopolamine (0.15 mg/kg) and mecamylamine (10 mg/kg) each moderately impaired choice accuracy. Combined treatment with scopolamine and mecamylamine significantly decreased choice accuracy relative to either drug alone. This combination treatment lowered choice accuracy to chance levels. These data show that nicotinic and muscarinic blockade have at least additive effects in producing an anterograde memory deficit. Concurrent blockade of these two components of ACh systems may provide a better animal model of cognitive impairments due to the loss of cholinergic neurons, such as Alzheimer's disease.     

RegRand: Statistical software for the multiple-baseline design

RegRand (Version 1.0) is Macintosh-based software that enables a researcher to conduct a nonparametric statistical analysis of the data from Koehler and Levin’s (1998) recently described regulated randomization single-case multiple-baseline design. Regulated randomization design and analysis principles are reviewed in relation to an educational research application and a step-by-step illustration of them in relation to the RegRand program is presented.     

Information Processing at Successive Stages of Decision Making: Need for Cognition and Inclusion-Exclusion Effects

Levin and Jasper's (1995) phased narrowing technique for tracking changes in information usage across successive stages of the decision-making process was combined with Huneke's (1996) “pull-down menu” extension of Payne, Bettman, and Johnson's (1988) software package for generating measures of information processing. Because this technique provided considerable data for each individual subject at each stage, we were able to focus on individual differences in information processing across stages, most notably differences related to need for cognition (NC; Cacioppo & Petty, 1982). In a computerized information search and decision task, 60 college students were first asked to narrow their options for purchasing a notebook computer to form a consideration set and were then asked to make a final choice from this set. At the consideration set formation stage, half the subjects were instructed to adopt a mindset to include options while the other half were asked to exclude options. Especially in the inclusion condition where subjects showed greater narrowing of options, high NC subjects processed information in a more focused manner with greater depth and breadth than did low NC subjects, and the quality of their selections tended to be higher. There was no evidence of widespread shifts in strategy as individuals moved from set formation to final choice but, as a group, high NC subjects were more successful at adaptive decision making.     

Simultaneous factor analysis of several Gramian matrices

Given several Gramian matrices, a least-square fit to all the matrices by one factor matrix, with a predetermined number of factors, is shown to be the principal axes solution of the average of the matrices.