Parental Communication Deviance as a Predictor of Competence in Children at Risk for Adult Psychiatric Disorder

Measures of communication deviance derived from three different Rorschach situations were obtained from parents of 62 children vulnerable to future psychiatric disturbance. The families were maritally intact, with one parent having a history of previous psychiatric hospitalization and a male index child, 7 or 10 years of age. Amount of parental communication deviance in one situation was not significantly related to amount of communication deviance observed in another setting. However, mothers who exhibited high levels of communication deviance in both the Individual and Family Consensus situations tended to have offspring who were judged as low functioning in multiple settings, based on teacher ratings, peer ratings, and parental report. Conversely, children judged as high functioning in multiple settings had mothers who were free of high levels of communication deviance in both Rorschach situations.     

AN EVALUATION OF THREE “ALTERNATIVE” SELECTION PROCEDURES1

A content-oriented strategy was used to develop three “alternative” selection inventories designed to reflect the content domain of positions held by attorneys employed with a large federal agency. These inventories and three “traditional” inventories were completed by 329 of the agency attorneys as part of a concurrent validation study. Criterion-related validities of two of the “traditional” inventories (a Background Inventory and an Interest and Opinion Inventory) and one of the alternative inventories (an “Accomplishment Record”_SM Inventory were shown to be both statistically and practically significant. The special features and advantages of the “Accomplishment Record” Inventory as an alternative selection procedure are discussed.     

Soft Meaning and Sincerity in the Family System

The concept of “sincerity” is often dismissed as being irrelevant to the understanding of families as systems, since sincerity is seen as a linear, intrapsychic construct. This paper makes the opposite argument. Much family communication involves a particular kind of “soft” meanings. Such meanings are flexible and open to varied interpretation, but their use is nevertheless framed by social rules. Sincerity rules function as social agreements to refrain from manipulating “soft” meaning in particular ways. The expectation that family members are (or are not) likely to communicate sincerely is a crucial systems property, altering both the interpersonal strategies and relationship structures that are likely to emerge within families. The analysis of soft meaning developed in this paper suggests new ways of understanding the rich, tangled, sometimes paradoxical communication typical of families. However, a number of premises frequently associated with family systems theory must be abandoned before a clear analysis of family communication can proceed.     

JOB-RELATEDNESS OF A POSTTRAINING JOB KNOWLEDGE CRITERION USE TO ASSESS VALIDITY AND TEST FAIRNESS

Significant job-relatedness was found for a posttraining job knowledge test criterion using an application of Lawshe's content validity method. The aide test was used as a criterion to assess the predictive validity of a vocabulary test and a civil service test with samples of black ( N = 43) and white ( N = 62) psychiatric aides. Significant validities were found on both tests, but a vocabulary test proved to be the better predictor of the criterion in both samples. The obtained validities were discussed in terms of differential validity, test fairness, and sample size. This study demonstrated that a content validity method could be applied to criteria as well as selection tests. It was concluded that content validity methods may be able to help solve the problem of criterion relevance in validation research by providing quantitative evidence of the job-relatedness of criteria.     

On Reasonableness

This essay argues that the concept of 'reasonableness'plays an important role in Scanlon's, Rawls's, and Barry's theories of justice (or morality). The relationship between moral motivation and reasonableness is critically analysed. Specifically, the paper questions whether it is plausible to impute to the agents of construction the desire 'to justify our actions to others on impartial terms'. It also argues that most of the work is done by the assumption that people are reasonable rather than by the contractarian formulation. Indeed, the paper argues, the argument could proceed entirely by making explicit and arguing for the moral assumptions embedded in the concept of reasonableness [1].     

THE MANAGEMENT OF FAILURE EVENTS: SOME CONTEXTUAL DETERMINANTS OF ACCOUNTING BEHAVIOR

This study sought to examine the impact upon actors' selection of strategies to manage failure events of several contextual factors: characteristics of the reproacher/actor relationship, communicative goal-orientation of the actors, severity of the failure event, character of the reproach for the failure event, and the actors' degree of expressed guilt. Results indicated that actors elected to make no response when they felt less guilt, when there was no overt reproach, when their instrumental goal (securing honoring) was unimportant, and when the failure event was a severe offense. Concessions were used when the reproachers said nothing or projected a concession, when the offense was severe, when the actors' instrumental goal was important, and when they felt guilty. Actors chose to justify their behavior in high intimate situations where their instrumental goal was less important. Refusal to account was most likely to occur when reproachers used an aggravating reproach form, when actors felt unjustly accused, and when reproachers were dominant. Excuses were fairly uniformly distributed across all contexts.