Adolescents' problems and their relationship to self-esteem.

The Mooney Problem Check List and Rosenberg's Self-Esteem Scale were administered to 201 adolescents, ages 14 to 16 years. Sex differences in the number and nature of problems reported, and their relationship to self-esteem, were examined. Results indicated that, overall, girls reported significantly more problems and lower levels of self-esteem than did boys. Girls had more problems with interpersonal relationships, personal adjustment, health, and family issues. There were no significant differences between girls and boys in the areas of educational and vocational future. Surprisingly, neither boys nor girls were particularly concerned about their vocational/educational future. Relative to other areas, adjustment to schoolwork was identified as being of considerable concern for both sexes. There was a significant relationship between self-esteem and reported problems, and different problem areas were related to self-esteem for girls and boys. The findings of this study support previous research and provide further information concerning relationships between self-esteem and problems.     

Encouragement and Ethnicity in African American College Students

Encouragement and ethnicity were examined in 112 African American college students attending 2 historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and a predominantly White institution (PWI). Results indicated a positive relationship between Ethnic Pride and View of Others for the HBCU group and positive relationships between Ethnic Pride and the Encouragement Scale for the PWI group. Ethnic Worry was negatively correlated with the Encouragement Scale for both groups. In addition, Ethnic Discrimination was negatively correlated with Openness to Experience for the PWI group. The usefulness of conceptualizing encouragement and ethnicity together for African American college students and practice implications are discussed.     

Apes communicate about absent and displaced objects: methodology matters

Displaced reference is the ability to refer to an item that has been moved (displaced) in space and/or time, and has been called one of the true hallmarks of referential communication. Several studies suggest that nonhuman primates have this capability, but a recent experiment concluded that in a specific situation (absent entities), human infants display displaced reference but chimpanzees do not. Here, we show that chimpanzees and bonobos of diverse rearing histories are capable of displaced reference to absent and displaced objects. It is likely that some of the conflicting findings from animal cognition studies are due to relatively minor methodological differences, but are compounded by interpretation errors. Comparative studies are of great importance in elucidating the evolution of human cognition; however, greater care must be taken with methodology and interpretation for these studies to accurately reflect species differences.     

Behavioral Approach System (BAS) Sensitivity and Bipolar Spectrum Disorders: A Retrospective and Concurrent Behavioral High-Risk Design

In this article, we tested the vulnerability hypothesis of the behavioral approach system (BAS) hypersensitivity model of bipolar disorders. We examined whether self-reported BAS sensitivity predicts lifetime bipolar spectrum diagnoses as well as symptoms and personality characteristics associated with bipolar disorder using a retrospective and concurrent behavioral high-risk design. Participants with high (HBAS; n=28) or moderate (MBAS; n=24) BAS sensitivity were selected and given a lifetime psychiatric diagnostic interview and self-report measures of proneness to bipolar symptoms, current symptoms, and personality characteristics relevant to bipolarity. HBAS participants were significantly and substantially more likely to have a lifetime bipolar spectrum disorder diagnosis than were MBAS participants, but did not differ from MBAS participants in their likelihood of a unipolar depression diagnosis. Also, the HBAS group exhibited higher impulsivity and proneness to hypomanic symptoms than the MBAS group, and BAS-reward responsiveness predicted hypomanic personality characteristics. Finally, high behavioral inhibition system (BIS) sensitivity was associated with proneness to and current depressive symptoms.

Maintaining interpersonal and organizational relations through electronic mail by men and women

E-mail is used to maintain two primary human relationships, interaction between individuals and preserving relationships with organizations. 278 participants from a medium-size university in the southwest completed two measures developed to assess the quantity of e-mail used to maintain interpersonal and organizational relationships. Analysis indicated that men (M = 5.8, SD = 2.7) and women (M = 6.6, SD = 2.5) significantly differed in frequency of e-mail used to maintain interpersonal relationships, but not in reference to organizational maintenance.     

Interface Problems: Structural Constraints on Interpretation?

Five experiments investigated the interpretation of quantified noun phrases in relation to discourse structure. They demonstrated, using questionnaire and on-line reading techniques, that readers in English prefer to give a quantified noun phrase in (VP-external) subject position a presuppositional interpretation, in which the noun phrase limits or restricts the interpretation of an already available set, rather than giving it a nonpresuppositional or existential interpretation, in which it introduces completely new entities into the discourse. Experiment 1 showed that readers prefer a presuppositional interpretation of three ships over the existential interpretation in Five ships appeared on the horizon. Three ships sank. Experiment 2 showed longer reading times in sentences that are disambiguated toward the existential interpretation than in sentences that permit the presuppositional interpretation. Experiment 3 suggested that the presuppositional preference is greater when the phrase three ships occurs outside the verb phrase than when it occurs inside the verb phrase. Experiment 4 showed that Korean subjects marked with a topic marker received more presuppositional interpretations than subjects marked with a nominative marker. Experiment 5 showed that German subjects in VP-external (but nontopic) position received more presuppositional interpretations than VP-internal subjects. The results suggest the syntactic position of a phrase is one determinant of its interpretation, as expected according to the mapping hypothesis of Diesing (1992).This research was supported in part by grants HD-18708 and HD-17246 to the University of Massachusetts. Rayner was also supported by a Research Scientist Award (MH01255).     

Detection of a Psychiatric Diagnosis in Heart Transplant Candidates with the MBHI

The utility of the Millon Behavioral Health Inventory (MBHI) in screening for the formal diagnosis of a psychiatric disorder was investigated in a sample of 90 heart transplant candidates, a population at risk for psychiatric disturbance. Psychiatric disorders were identified in 71% of patients, the majority being adjustment disorder. Sensitivity and specificity rates of >70% were determined in discriminant function analyses, for presence or absence of a psychiatric condition. When Axis I conditions were differentiated as mild (adjustment reaction only) or severe (all other Axis I conditions, including comorbid Axis II disorders), the MBHI correctly identified every severe case as a probable psychiatric diagnosis. The rate of clinically significant elevations on certain MBHI scales and severity of Axis I psychiatric condition was also significantly associated. These findings suggest that the MBHI may have potential utility in identifying high-risk patients with diagnosable psychiatric conditions and help justify mental health consultation referrals at a time when managed care entities are vigorously rationing ancillary services with medically ill populations.     

Perceptions of self-oriented and other-oriented help-providers

Two studies were conducted to assess the relationship between an individual's self-described motivation for being a help-provider (i.e., a lawyer in Study 1 and a physi-cian in Study 2) and college undergraduates' perceptions of, and desire to seek assis-tance from, that help-provider. The major findings were incongruent with the notion inferred from the helping literature that altruistically motivated help-providers would be consistently evaluated more favorably than, and preferred over, egoistically moti-vated help-providers. Specifically, whereas the other-oriented help-providers were rated as more likable, honest, and less devious than the self-oriented help-providers, the self-oriented help-providers were rated as more ambitious, competent, and as earning more money than the other-oriented help-providers. Moreover, although the participants' “desire to hire” a particular help-provider was found to be associated with: (1) their perceptions of the help-provider's characteristics (Studies 1 and 2), (2) their own self-reported characteristics (Study 1), and (3) their anticipated affective state prior to seeking assistance (Studies 1 and 2), no clear relation was found in either study between the help-provider's motivation and the participants' desire to seek assistance from that help-provider. In contrast to the ambivalence demonstrated in response to the altruistically and egoistically motivated professional help-providers in Studies 1 and 2, participants in a preliminary study of perceptions of “everyday” helpers demonstrated a clear preference for altruistically motivated assistance (al-though these participants' evaluations were found to be influenced by the closeness of the relationship between the helper and recipient, the type of help provided, the participants' gender, and the gender of the helper-recipient dyad). Considered to-gether, the pattern of results suggests the broad range of situational and individual difference variables that may affect perceptions of, and reactions to, self-oriented and other-oriented help-providers.     

Response-independent food delivery and behavioral resistance to change

Response-independent food was delivered during a dark-key phase between two multiple-schedule components to explore its disruptive effects on responding. Responding in components was maintained by separate variable-interval 120-s schedules, with a 2-s reinforcer in Component 1 and a 6-s reinforcer in Component 2. Across conditions the rate and duration of response-independent food presentations were manipulated. The results showed that response rates in both components decreased as a function of the duration and the rate of response-independent food presentations; moreover, the decrease in response rate relative to the baseline level was larger in Component 1 than in Component 2. These findings were consistent with expectations from behavioral momentum theory, which predicts that if equal disruption (response-independent food in this case) is applied to responding in two components, then the ratio of response-rate change in Component 1 versus Component 2 should remain constant, irrespective of the magnitude of that disruption.     

Constraint satisfaction as a theory of sentence processing

Various problems with the constraint satisfaction model are discussed. It is argued that the empirical evidence presented in support of the model does not concern predictions of the model that diverge from those of depth-first (one analysis at a time) models. Several methodological problems are also noted. As a theory of sentence processing, the model is inadequate. It fails to account for the assignment of local structure, global structure, structure involving discontinuous dependencies, long-distance dependencies, and adjunct phrases. It makes incorrect predictions about the timing of syntactic analysis. Further, because syntactic structure is available only through activation of syntactic projections stored in the lexical entry of words, the model leaves entirely unexplained the myriad psycholinguistic findings demonstrating independence of lexical and syntactic structure (in Event Related Potential studies, code-switching, pure syntactic priming, etc). Finally, the model is not restrictive or explanatory, providing an account that largely consists ofpost hoc correlations between frequency counts or subjects ratings of sentences and processing time data for the same sentences.The present paper is an excerpt from Sentence (Re-)Analysis presented at the 1994 CUNY Conference. It was supported by NIH Grant HD18708 to Clifton and Frazier and DBS9121375 to Rayner and Frazier. I am very grateful to Chuck Clifton and to an anonymous reviewer for comments on an earlier draft of this paper.