Linking person and context in the daily stress process

In this study we combined daily diary data with interview data to investigate individual differences in the impact of stressful daily events on mood. Using a sample of 96 women in an urban community, we examined perceived neighborhood quality and major life events as possibly potentiating the effects of stressful daily events, and we viewed social supports as potentially buffering this daily process. Results confirmed that the presence of chronic ecologic stress (neighborhood perceptions) exacerbated the immediate effects of stressful daily events on mood and also increased the likelihood of enduring effects of daily stressors on next day's mood. Contrary to expectations, previous exposure to major life events decreased the impact of stressful daily events. The availability of social supports, although not buffering the impact of stressful daily events on mood, did mitigate the enduring effects of these events on next day's mood. This study also presents a method for analyzing daily time-series data, while correcting for potential problems of autocorrelated error terms. As such, this study represents a significant advance over previous analytic approaches to time-series data in the study of the stress process.     

Teacher ratings of children's problem and competence behaviors: Normative and parametric characteristics

Teacher-rated adjustment differences among young elementary school children from (a) a recent sample and a 1974 cohort, and (b) urban/suburban, male/female, and grade-level subgroups were examined. A problem behavior checklist (Classroom Adjustment Rating Scale) and a school competence measure (Health Resources Inventory) for 974 children from 5 urban and 5 suburban schools were completed by 101 first- to fourth-grade teachers. Children from the more current cohort were rated as significantly more maladjusted than those from the earlier sample on 8 of 10 adjustment variables. In the recent sample, girls and suburban children evidenced a greater number of school competencies and fewer problem behaviors than boys and urban children, respectively. The implications of these findings for the future use of the teacher rating scales are discussed.     

Lexical contribution to nonword-repetition effects: Evidence from event-related potentials

Two experiments investigated the modulation of event-related potentials (ERPs) by the repetition of orthographically legal and illegal nonwords. In Experiment 1, subjects silently counted occasional words against a background of nonwords, a proportion of which were repetitions of an immediately preceding legal or illegal item. ERPs to repeated legal items showed a sustained, topographically diffuse, positive-going shift. In contrast, repeated illegal nonwords gave rise to ERPs showing a smaller and temporally more restricted positive-going modulation. In an attempt to equalize depth of processing across legal and illegal nonwords, subjects in Experiment 2 were required to count items containing a nonalphabetic character against the same background of nonword items. ERPs to repeated legal items showed a modulation similar to, although smaller than, that found in Experiment I, but no effects of repetition were observed in the ERPs to the illegal nonwords. It was concluded that the effects of repeating nonwords, at least as manifested in concurrently recorded ERPs, differ as a consequence of whether items can access lexical memory, and that this is inconsistent with the attribution of such effects solely to the operation of episodic memory processes.     

The role of structural context in perception: Syntax in the recognition of algebraic expressions

Two character-identification experiments investigated the function of structural context during the processing of briefly exposed algebraic strings. Neither experiment prodded evidence to support the notion of an algebra-superiority effect, a contextually driven enhancement of the recognition of specific algebraic characters. However, the results of Experiment 2 indicate that the structure of algebra does provide information at the level of a character’s categorical denomination. These findings suggest that the parsing of an algebraic string includes a level of processing in which its structural context places restrictions on the denominations of its symbols. A processing model of algebraic perception is proposed that incorporates these syntactic constraints—constraints that appear to be independent of feature-based character identification processes.     

Social learning and collective choice

To be pertinent to democratic practice, collective choice functions need not apply to all possible constellations of individual preference, but only to those that are humanly possible in an appropriate sense. The present paper develops a theory of humanly possible preference within the context of the mathematical theory of learning. The theory of preference is then exploited in an attempt to resolve Arrow's voting paradox through restriction of the domain of majoritarian choice functions.     

J. M. Keynes' ‘theory of evidential weight’: Its relation to information processing theory and application in The General Theory

The conclusions derived by Keynes in his Treatise on Probability (1921) concerning induction, analogical reasoning, expectations formation and decision making, mirror and foreshadow the main conclusions of cognitive science and psychology.The problem of weight is studied within an economic context by examining the role it played in Keynes' applied philosophy work, The General Theory (1936). Keynes' approach is then reformulated as an optimal control approach to dealing with changes in information evaluation over time. Based on this analysis the problem of inductive justification, from a societal perspective, is not, What can we rationally believe will occur in the economic future, given our past experiences? but Can we make the future so as to attain specific economic goals with practical certainty? An answer requires that restrictions be placed on the methodological individualist approach and the acceptance of a restricted holistic approach.     

Predicting child behavior problems in maritally violent families

Previous research indicates that children from violent marriages are more likely to suffer from conduct problems and/or anxiety disorders than children from nonviolent, satisfactory marriages. However, knowledge regarding specific factors present in violent marriages relating to child problems is limited. The present study examined the relationships involving interspousal aggression, parent-child aggression, and child behavior problems in a sample of 45 children from maritally violent families. Mothers indicated how often their children witnessed interspousal aggression and were victims of parent-child aggression. Mothers also rated their children's problem behaviors while children reported on their own depressive symptoms. The witnessing of interspousal aggression was highly associated with parental aggression directed toward children. Parent-child aggression related to attention problems, anxiety-withdrawl, motor excess, and conduct problems in children. However, the witnessing of interspousal aggression was not significantly related to child behavior problems. These results are consistent with theoretical predictions linking marital problems to child behavior by virtue of their association with parenting.This research was supported in part by a Grant-in-Aid of Research awarded to the first author by Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society, and NIMH Grant No. MH35340 awarded to the third author. The authors wish to thank Martha Wray and her staff at VIBS for their help throughout this project.