II. Genotype-environment interaction in the schizophrenia spectrum: qualitative observations

Previous reports from the Finnish Adoptive Family Study of Schizophrenia have documented significant interplay between genetics (G) and family rearing (E), leading to adoptee outcomes of schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Quantitative evidence for this interplay is significantly enhanced when both high genetic liability and severe environmental dysfunction are present. However, when either genetic liability is low or the rearing environment is healthy, the adoptees appear to be resiliently protected against a pathologic outcome. Nevertheless, exceptions to this pattern do occur. Six qualitative vignettes, together with quantitative measures and categorical diagnoses from the same families, illustrate how multiple methods partially confirm one another and also suggest where further exploration of gene-environment interaction is needed.     

On the equivalence of superordinate concepts

Psychological studies of superordinates have generally treated them as equivalent. However, many languages distinguish mass superordinates (e.g., clothing) from count superordinates (e.g., vehicle). In the present paper, experimental evidence is presented which suggests that the two types of superordinates are conceptually distinct as well. One study showed that the members of mass superordinates more often co-occur. A second study showed that people more often interact with the members of mass superordinates in temporal proximity whereas people primarily interact with single members of count superordinates on a specific occasion. Also, properties that characterize an individual are a more salient aspect of count superordinates. These findings imply that mass superordinates refer to unindividuated groups of objects, united by spatial and functional contiguity. Two other studies supported this hypothesis by showing that the class inclusion relation between a single object and a category is stronger for count superordinates. Taken together, the findings suggest that mass superordinates are not true taxonomic categories. We relate the findings to previous views of superordinates and to the count/mass distinction in general.     

Disciplinary sanctioning of students with intellectual disabilities: revisiting the status liability hypothesis

We examined the impact of disability status on disciplinary sanctioning of a student committing a minor versus severe behavioral infraction. We used the status liability hypothesis as a framework. This hypothesis suggests that individuals with a higher personal status receive sanctioning differentially based on the severity of offense. Specifically, individuals of high status are predicted to be sanctioned less severely than persons with lower status given a minor offense. The hypothesis also predicts that individuals accorded high status will receive more punitive sanctioning when the act of deviance from social norms is perceived as severe. Pre-service teachers were randomly assigned to judge the behavior of a student with or without an intellectual disability committing a behavioral offense. A student with an intellectual disability was seen as influenced by dispositional factors, regardless of the offense, while a student without a disability who committed a minor offense was seen as influenced by situational factors. The behavior of a student with an intellectual disability was judged as less severe, and the student was 50% less likely to incur an in-school suspension. When a student with an intellectual disability was sanctioned, the length of suspension was equal to that of a student without a disability.

Nomothetic science and idiographic history in twentieth-century Americanist anthropology

For over a century, Americanist anthropologists have argued about whether their discipline is a historical one or a scientific one. Proponents of anthropology as history have claimed that the lineages of human cultures are made up of unique events that cannot be generalized into laws. If no laws can be drawn, then anthropology cannot be a science. Proponents of anthropology as science have claimed that there indeed are laws that govern humans and their behaviors and cultures, and these laws can be discovered. Interestingly, both sides have the same narrow view of what science is. The same sorts of debates over science and history were played out in evolutionary biology over a half-century ago, and what emerged was the view that that discipline and its sister discipline, paleontology, were both history and science--hence the term "historical sciences." Anthropology and its sister discipline, archaeology, have only recently begun to realize that they too are historical sciences.     

Consensus Rorschachs and Related Procedures for Studying Interpersonal Patterns

A psychological "type" characterized by repetitive and compulsive action tendencies but not by obsessive thoughts was delineated. It was shown how this syndrome could be identified through differential inter-test patterning on projective techniques. The possibility of improving psychodiagnostic accuracy by stipulating expected configurations among tests in a battery was noted.     

Stimulus familiarity modifies perceived duration in prerecognition visual processing.

Three experiments further explored the Avant, Lyman, and Antes finding that, during prerecognition processing, differences in subjects' familiarity with letters, words, and nonwords generate differences in the apparent duration of tachistoscopic flashes. The results replicate and extend the earlier findings, showing apparent duration differences with a variety of verbal stimuli over a range of tachistoscopic exposure intervals. The results also suggest that exposures of stimuli on early trials of an experiment reduce differences in preexperimental stimulus familiarity such that unfamiliar stimuli come to be processed more nearly like familiar stimuli. Familiarity acquired on early trials appears to accumulate at prerecognition levels of processing and to reduce apparent duration differences among stimuli on later trials.