Intracranial cannulation of small animals

Special difficulties are encountered when attempting to provide intracranial cannulation of small animals that have floating or fragile skull bones. The technique described was developed for mice but seems applicable to other species. The cannula system is inexpensive and easy to use. A wound clip anchor seems superior to either skull screws or bonded acrylic, producing less damage to the brain and no necrosis of bone or tissue on the wound margin. Patency data up to 25 days is presented, and the system is as efficacious as other techniques.     

Religion,psychology, and mental health: The problems of partnership

While a current and increasingly popular trend is toward partnerships between religion and psychology in the area of mental health, and especially toward the use of psychological ideas and techniques by pastoral counselors, modern psychology and traditional religion are divided in significant ways over several normative issues. Too often these issues are minimized or overlooked. But unless these issues—which carry significant sociocultural implications as well as implications for our definitions of individual well-being—are acknowledged and subjected to critical considerations, partnerships between religion and psychology must be far more cautiously constructed and must be subjected to far more systematic thinking about the differences which separate the two.This article is based on a paper delivered at the Seventh Annual Clinical-Community Conference on Psychology and Religion at the University of Maryland in November, 1978.     

A twin study of specific behavioral problems of socialization as viewed by parents

Our study focused on the etiology of specific behavioral problems rather than on a global syndrome such as hyperactivity. As a first step in studying specific behavioral problems, we revised the Conners (1970) Parent Symptom Rating questionnaire to improve its factor structure. Our revised instrument and the testretest reliabilities of its 12 scales are described. A classical twin analysis comparing intraclass correlations for 54 pairs of identical twins and 33 pairs of same-sex fraternal twins indicated substantial genetic influence on behavioral problems in schoolaged children. We wish to express our gratitude for the Spencer Foundation's support of this research.     

Focused memory search in fact retrieval

Several studies of fact retrieval have shown that the more facts a person learns about a concept, the longer it takes him or her to retrieve any of these facts. This result has been interpreted to mean that retrieval of a fact about a concept involves a search of all facts stored in memory with that concept. In the present study, it is suggested that retrieval involves not an unfocused search of all facts stored with a concept, but rather a focused memory search that examines relevant stored facts and ignores irrelevant information. This argument is supported by three experiments in which subjects first learned simple facts (e.g., “The banker likes horses”) and then made speeded true-false decisions for test probes le.g., “The banker likes elephants”). Specifically, results suggest that facts stored with a concept may be organized into subsets. For example, a person’s knowledge about Richard Nixon might be organized into subsets concerning Nixon’s resignation, his trips to China, his family, and so on. The data further suggest that a person attempting to retrieve a fact about a concept (e.g., the name of Nixon’s wife) may simply decide which subset is most likely to contain the desired fact (e.g., the subset concerning Nixon’s family) and search that subset. If the sought-for fact is found in this subset, the search process terminates. If, however, the desired information is not located, other subsets of facts may be searched before the retrieval attempt is given up. The notion that memory search focuses on relevant stored facts and ignores irrelevant information may help to explain why experts (i.e., people who know a large number of facts about a topic) do not experience great difficulty in retrieving facts in their areas of expertise.     

Implications for phonetic symbolism: The relationship between pure tones and geometric figures

In studies of phonetic symbolism, the most commonly cited attribute of speech relevant to the phenomenon has been frequency. The present study was conducted in order to examine the relationship between pure tone frequencies and geometric figures. A pure tone oscillator was constructed which produced tones in a continuous sweep from 40–12,250 Hz. Six geometric shapes were employed and varied along three binary dimensions (size, complexity, and density) producing a total of 48 stimulus figures. Twelve male and twelve female subjects adjusted pure tone frequencies until they best fit the visually presented geometric figure in a complete within-subject, block-randomization design of 48 trials. There was consistency in the assignment of pure tone frequencies to the dimensions of the geometric figures. Round figures (circles and ellipses) generally received lower frequency assignments than other figures, and the shape by size interaction was also found to be statistically significant. The results are interpreted in light of recent research in psycholinguistics and in particular to the hypothesis of a universal phonetic symbolism.This research was a portion of a Master's thesis submitted to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, by Michael W. O'Boyle, who is now at the University of Southern California.     

Individual and organizational correlates of promotion refusal

Individual and organizational correlates of employees who refuse seniority-based promotions in union lines of progression are examined. The sample consisted of 313 production employees of a large manufacturing complex. Correlational and discriminant analyses revealed that age, being female, and number of employees in the department related positively to promotion refusal, while years of education and pay showed a negative relationship. Of these variables, years of education was the strongest predictor. Potential explanations for the results relate to stress avoidance, perceived inabilities, and equity theory. Areas for future research are suggested.     

Taking DNA to market and regulatory default

The public debate on recombinant DNA research has ended even though significant issues of public interest remain undecided or untouched. The reason for the termination of other than muted public discussion is not simply the removal of an initial fear of catastrophic biohazards. With the cessation of public debate over such hazards came also the dissolution of most public forums. The ends to which recombinant DNA research and development ought to be directed are not matters of public debate. With the transfer of basic research knowledge to the private sector, that sector's proprietary interests and ownership prerogatives effectively deny any continued public participation in charting the future of genesplicing technology and its application.     

Isolating causal effects through experimental changes in parent-child interaction

A distinction is made between functionaland intentionalcontrol in parent-child interaction. These concepts are drawn, respectively, from opérant and cognitive models of interaction process. Experimental evidence is presented that cognitive factors such as expectations or hypotheses indeed affect the relations between parents and their own children. This necessitates a further distinction between long-termand short-termcausal effects: Since changes in parents' expectations for their children may lag behind actual changes in children's behavior, short-term effects inferred from observations of ongoing interactions may not reflect the long-term dynamics of the relationship.     

Determinants of competitive performance expectancies of young male athletes1

Although performance expectancies have been shown to be important mediators of achievement behavior, few specific determinants of personal expectancies have been identified, the ecological validity of previous results is limited, and factors influencing group performance expectancies have not been determined. Therefore, the purpose of this field study involving 11- and 12-year-old male soccer players was twofold. First, we examined specific intrapersonal and situational factors influencing players' pregame personal and team performance expectancies. Second, we investigated the effects of winning and losing a competitive soccer game on players' postgame team expectancies involving a hypothetical rematch with the identical opponent. The pregame findings revealed that (a) the intrapersonal factors of ability and self-esteem were related to personal performance expectancies while competitive trait anxiety was not, and (b) the situational factors of past win-loss record and a prior game win or loss against the same opponent influenced team performance expectancies. The postgame findings revealed that future expectancies were affected by the interactive effects of game win-loss and self-esteem.     

A procedural theory of eye movements in doing arithmetic

A procedural theory of eye movement that accounts for main features of the stochastic behavior of eye-fixation durations and direction of movement of saccades in the process of solving arithmetic exercises of addition and subtraction is presented. The best-fitting distribution of fixation durations with a relatively simple theoretical justification consists of a mixture of an exponential distribution and the convolution of two exponential distributions. The eye movements themselves were found to approximate a random walk that fits rather closely in both adult and juvenile subjects the motion postulated by the normative algorithm ordinarily taught in schools. Certain structural features of addition and subtraction exercises, such as the number of columns, the presence or absence of a carry or a borrow, are well known to affect their difficulty. In this study, regressions on such structural variables were found to account for only a relatively small part of the variation in eye-fixation durations.