The More You Have, the More You Do: The Relationship Between Wife's Employment, Sex-Role Attitudes, and Household Behavior

This study explores the relationship between wife's employment, sex-role traditionalism, and the reported division of household tasks and decisions. Data were collected from three samples of currently married women between the ages of 18 and 49 in Los Angeles County. Sex-role traditionalism was positively related to wives' relative performance of feminine tasks, but generally unrelated to masculine task performance and decision-making between spouses. Employed or professional women took primary responsibility for relatively fewer feminine tasks than did nonemployed or nonprofessional women. The findings suggest that despite differences among women in sex-role traditionalism and employment status, most women say that they and their spouses divide tasks in a traditional sex-role fashion.     

EFFECTIVENESS OF FUNCTIONAL COMMUNICATION TRAINING WITH AND WITHOUT EXTINCTION AND PUNISHMENT: A SUMMARY OF 21 INPATIENT CASES

Functional communication training (FCT) is a frequently used treatment for reducing problem behavior exhibited by individuals with developmental disabilities. Once the operant function of problem behavior is identified by a functional analysis, the client is taught to emit an appropriate communicative response to obtain the reinforcer that is responsible for behavioral maintenance. Studies on FCT have typically used small numbers of participants, have reported primarily on clients for whom FCT was successful, and have varied with respect to their use of other treatment components. The main purposes of the present study were to evaluate the efficacy of FCT for treating severe problem behavior in a relatively large sample of individuals with mental retardation (N = 21) and to determine the contribution of extinction and punishment components to FCT treatment packages. FCT with extinction was effective in reducing problem behavior for the majority of clients and resulted in at least a 90% reduction in problem behavior in nearly half the applications. However, when demand or delay-to-reinforcement fading was added to FCT with extinction, treatment efficacy was reduced in about one half of the applications. FCT with punishment (both with and without fading) resulted in at least a 90% reduction in problem behavior for every case in which it was applied.     

Children's Narratives Following Traumatic Brain Injury: Linguistic Structure, Cohesion, and Thematic Recall

Narrative discourse and intellectual functioning were examined 3 years following traumatic brain injury (TBI) in children 1 to 8 years of age at the time of injury. The language-impaired TBI group (n= 9) had language deficits during the subacute stage of recovery; their performance was contrasted with that of a TBI comparison group equated on neurologic and demographic variables that did not show subacute language impairment (n= 8) and a sibling comparison group (n= 9). The language-impaired TBI group had lower Verbal and Full-Scale IQ scores and produced fewer words and utterances than the sibling group on a story retelling task; their stories were characterized by fewer complete referential and lexical ties and more referential errors, indicating difficulty conjoining meaning across sentences. The language-impaired TBI group recalled approximately one-third of the propositions needed to maintain the story theme and made more errors sequencing the propositions than either the TBI or the sibling comparison groups. Group differences were not obtained on the Performance IQ scores or on measures of rate or fluency of speech production, mazes, use of conjunctives, or naming errors. The discourse deficiencies of children with TBI and acute language impairment were most pronounced at the level of cognitive organization of the text reflecting text macrostructure and were least apparent at the level of lexical and sentential organization reflecting text microstructure. Results are discussed in terms of the vulnerability of developing language abilities to disruption by brain injury.     

Linguistic influences on visual memory

The Whorf-Sapir hypothesis has raised considerable controversy in the literatures of psychology and anthropology. Several misconceptions of the hypothesis are reviewed, and the hypothesis was experimentally supported in a visual reproduction paradigm. Subjects were first given label training for a set of figures, and were then asked to recall by drawing the shapes. Training with categorized labels resulted in a 25% improvement in recall when compared to a condition with nonword (paralog) labels. Even stronger evidence of linguistic influence on visual memory was obtained by examining the order of recall. The conceptual relationships among labels strongly influenced the sequence of reproductions.     

Relationship of visual and name similarity of visually presented letters

Pairs of letters were orthogonally varied with regard to the degree of their visual and name similarities. Each pair was repeatedly presented, alternating with a masking field, until the S gave an identification response. When similarity is high for one feature, the number of correct identifications increases as an inverse linear function of similarity of the other feature. When visual similarity is low, correct identifications increase as a direct linear function of name similarity. However, when name similarity is low, correctddentifications do not vary consistently with visual similarity. The results at high similarity of one feature are interpreted as a reflection of encoding processes, while the results at low similarity levels of the visual feature are interpreted as a reflection of decoding into response form.     

Post-retinal storage? Some further observations on Parks’ camel as seen through the eye of a needle

Parks recently reported observations with an apparatus in which successive slices of a stimulus figure could be entered on the same retinal locus. He reported that when this was done, a visual percept of the figure appeared, but one that appeared condensed in length. From this he argued that the slices, differing only in time of arrival, must be stored post-retinally and then reconstructed spatially to form the coherent figure again. In attempting to replicate this important conclusion, we found, contrary to Parks, that the appearance of the percept occurred only when the slices were spread out over the retina, and not when they were entered on the same spot. Thus, the percept is probably due to much more understandable poor temporal resolution, rather than spatial integration. Shape distortions were found corresponding to Parks’ reports, but only in the absence of any visual percepts. In spite of the failure to support all of Parks’ conclusions, the effects are seen as very intriguing ones, and may have critical theoretical ramifications.     

Beyond Ethics to Morality: Choices and Relationships in Bicultural Research Settings

As community and applied social psychologists, it is crucial that we know ourselves as cultural beings, appreciate the values and beliefs of those with whom we work and understand the history of relations among those in our work settings. In New Zealand, research by non‐Māori involving Māori has often mirrored the harmful colonising practices of the nation's wider history. In response, several frameworks have been developed setting out conditions and guidelines in which non‐Māori might conduct research in Māori settings responsibly and usefully. Nevertheless, views differ on the ways, and extent to which, non‐Māori might be involved. Most guidelines do not provide answers to ethical nuances that may arise. This article discusses the experiences of a non‐Māori community psychologist engaging in research in a predominantly Māori setting. It describes how the first author carefully negotiated entry into the setting, built relationships based on mutuality, sought expert guidance, exercised an ethic of caring, and ensured that the research was accountable to the community. We believe that there are important lessons here for researchers from dominant groups undertaking research in indigenous and minority communities. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Outpatient Clinic Identification of Trauma Symptoms in Children in Foster Care

As understanding of the impact of trauma on children has grown, there has been increasing interest in the use of screening the medical setting to identify which children at risk may be symptomatic. This study was undertaken to determine whether the use of a trauma assessment tool to screen for trauma symptoms in the setting of a foster care clinic was feasible and more sensitive than non-standardized approaches in the context of outpatient primary care. Using a chart review of trauma symptom identification before and after the implementation of the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children (TSC-C) and the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Young Children (TSC-YC), validated trauma assessment tools, we looked at the feasibility of use of this tool and likelihood of trauma symptom identification. 73 % (n = 204) of eligible patients had a trauma screening tool in the medical record following the introduction of the use of the TSC. Detection of trauma symptoms was higher in the screening period than in the baseline period for the entire population (78 vs. 46 %, p < 0.0001), and trauma symptoms were identified with more specificity following the introduction of, and likely due to, formal trauma screening. However, there were limitations as to feasibility in the outpatient medical clinic. In conclusion, the use of the TSC-C and TSC-YC in the setting of an outpatient foster care evaluation clinic increased rates and precision of identification of trauma symptoms, but had limitations to its feasibility of use in the outpatient clinic setting.