Number Versus Contour Length in Infants' Discrimination of Small Visual Sets

This study examined infants' use of contour length in number discrimination tasks. We systematically varied number and contour length in a visual habituation experiment in order to separate these two variables. Sixteen 6- to 8-month-old infants were habituated to displays of either two or three black squares on a page. They were then tested with alternating displays of either a familiar number of squares with a novel contour length or a novel number of squares with a familiar contour length. Infants dishabituated to the display that changed in contour length, but not to the display that changed in number. We conclude that infants base their discriminations on contour length or some other continuous variable that correlates with it, rather than on number.     

Parent Care in the Context of Women's Multiple Roles

This article addresses the multiple roles held by women involved in parent care and the ways in which these roles affect the women's well-being. Research on women's roles (including that of caregiver) has been guided by two opposing perspectives, the scarcity hypothesis and the expansion hypothesis. Findings from our studies of role quality, role combinations, and role spillover have provided abundant evidence that the lives of these women cannot be easilycaptured by either the scarcity or the expansion hypothesis alone.     

The exact null distribution for radial maze statistics: A FORTRAN 77 program

Performance in the radial-arm maze may be assessed by comparing the number of correct responses or, alternatively, the number of repetition errors with that expected if a subject were simply selecting a location at random on each choice. Previous attempts to estimate the null distribution of correct responses or repetition errors have re-lied on computer simulation. In the present approach, a direct analytic argument is used to derive exact expressions for the probability density functions of these random variables. Knowledge of the exact null distributions provides the researcher with enhanced analytic capabilities. For example, it supplies the means of constructing an exact test of significance to evaluate performance at the level of a single subject A FORTRAN 77 program is provided to compute the null distribution of correct responses and repetition errors as well as their respective expectations and variances. Application of the technique to other situations is described briefly.     

Allowing for infeasible pairings in the matching paradigm

The objective of research in the matching paradigm is to determine whether a one-to-one pairing configuration between objects in two arrays contains more pairings of a particular kind than expected under the null hypothesis. The presence of infeasible pairings, that is, of particular pairings which can not possibly take place, has the effect of altering the null distribution that would otherwise obtain. To enable researchers to determine the appropriate null distribution, a generalization of classical rook methodology is developed which can accommodate infeasible pairings in the matching paradigm.     

The cyclopean eye vs. the sighting-dominant eye as the center of visual direction

In three experiments, competing hypotheses concerning the center of visual direction were examined with the stimuli used in the Card test which requires a subject to position the card with a hole so that a target can be seen. Each experiment used six right- and six left-sighting-eye subjects. In Experiment 1, the aperture and the target were collinear with the sighting eye. The mean apparent locations of the aperture when the target was fixated, and of the target when the aperture was fixated, were consistent with only the cyclopean-eye hypothesis; that is, the 95% confidence intervals of these means contained the predicted values from the cyclopean-eye hypothesis but not those from the sighting-eye hypothesis. In Experiment 2, subjects moved the card from the side of the nonsighting eye, and in 88% of the trials it was stopped when the nonsighting eye viewed the target. In Experiment 3, the target was viewed through the aperture with both the sighting and nonsighting eye in six different stimulus arrangements. The 95% confidence intervals of all 12 mean apparent locations of the targets contained the predicted values from the cyclopean-eye hypothesis but none of those from the sighting-eye hypothesis. These results are compatible with the cyclopean-eye hypothesis, and we therefore conclude that the sighting eye is not the center of visual direction.     

The Society for Research in Child and Adolescent Psychopathology

The Society for Research in Child and Adolescent Psychopathology     

Problems of recall and misclassification with checklist methods of measuring stressful life events

The prevalent use of life event category checklists to facilitate event recall may be one reason that previous studies find that life events play only a small and ambiguous role in the development of health problems. In this study, 136 persons with temporomandibular pain disorder syndrome (TMPDS) and 131 healthy controls reported the occurrence of life events in 10 monthly interviews, using an event category checklist. At the end of the study, they reported retrospectively and in detail about life events over the previous monthly periods. Only one quarter of the event categories appeared in both the monthly interviews and retrospective report for the same period. Detailed analyses revealed problems of inaccuracy inherent in checklists that exacerbate problems of recall. The findings indicate that checklist category approaches should not be used when the goal is to understand the role of stress in adverse health outcomes. Suggestions are made about more adequate methods.     

Manufacturing multiple meanings of addiction: Time-limited realities

This article explores how clinicians, patients, and addiction as a youthful science manufacture meaning. Explanations of addictive behavior and addictive disease are viewed as constructs, ideologies, or ways of making meaning. This analysis considers the controversy—over whether addiction qualifies as a disease—to be primarily a matter of epistemology and social perception. Since there is no widespread agreement about what isease means in general, it is not possible to determine whether or not addiction is a disease in particular. The discussion also envisions how treatment for addicted clients might be reformulated as a transactional process utilizing the range of relevant theoretical models as time-limited reframes of addictive reality instead of dichotomizing addiction as either a disease or not.The authors extend thanks to Michelle Bowdler, Nancy Costikyan, Blase Gambino, Teri Loughead, Janet Mann, Peter Monius, Arthur Robbins, and Mitchell Young for their helpful assistance, suggestions, and comments on earlier drafts of this article.