Interparental conflict and adolescent problem behavior: an examination of mechanisms

The purpose of the present study was to examine several competing hypotheses which have been utilized to explain the negative relationship between interparental conflict and child/adolescent problems. These mechanisms of operation have included modelling, genetic transmission, disrupted parenting, the role of perceptual/appraisal processes of the conflict, and an inhibition hypothesis. One hundred and forty-two young adolescents and their mothers served as subjects. Eighty were from intact families and 62 from recently divorced families. Data were collected from the perspective of the adolescent, mother, behavioral observer, and social studies teacher. The results indicated that intact and divorced samples had to be considered separately as different pathways contributed to adolescent behavior problems in the two samples. For externalizing problems, a direct path between interparental conflict and problem behavior existed for the divorced sample whereas an indirect path through the adolescent's perceptions of the conflict existed for the intact sample. The different context in which the interparental conflict occurred for the two samples was offered as an explanation of this difference. For internalizing problems a significant direct path existed between conflict and problem behavior for both samples; however, the indirect paths through the adolescent's perceptions and through poor parenting skills contributed only for the divorced sample. The results suggest that various mechanisms appear to operate in influencing how interparental conflict influences behavior problems of young adolescents. Both the type of problem examined and the marital status of the parents appear important in determining the relative impact of the mechanisms. Implications for the behavior therapist are noted.     

Applied tension, applied relaxation, and the combination in the treatment of blood phobia

Thirty patients with phobia for blood, wounds and injuries were treated individually with applied tension, applied relaxation, or the combination of these two methods for 5, 9 and 10 sessions, respectively. They were assessed on self-report, behavioral and physiological measures before and after treatment, and at a 6-month follow-up. All groups improved significantly on 11/12 measures, and the improvements were maintained at follow-up. Applying stringent criteria, 73% of the patients were clinically improved at the end of treatment and 77% were so at follow-up. Despite a failure to find between-group differences, on many measures there was a trend favoring applied tension. Since this method is as effective as the other treatments in only half the time, applied tension should clinically be the treatment of choice for blood phobia.     

Dynamic organization of intersensory function

Issues related to infant intersensory functioning are reviewed. The argument is offered that limitations of sensory inputs during early stages of development are necessary and provide structure and organization which determine behavioural characteristics at later stages. It is also suggested that infant organisms respond to the intensity of stimulation rather than organizational characteristics and that this is responsible for the form of sensory equivalence apparent during early development. A scheme for the investigation of sources of intersensory organization is presented which involves a prospective analysis of how consideration of the times of onset of sensory functions helps us to understand intra- and intersensory development. The advantages of this experimental approach are outlined.     

Visual search along the colour dimension

Subjects searched for a chromatic target among coloured background items. With low target-background chromatic similarity, response latencies remained uniformly short whether the target was present or not and whether the items were chromatically homogeneous or not. Latencies increased with increases in target-background similarity and were longest with heterogeneous backgrounds, with which the effects of trial type also became manifest. We employed Treisman's model of visual search to account for these findings. In particular, we suggest that similarity increases forced a shift from a preattentive to an attentive search, the latter being importantly shaped by the background's level of chromatic variance.     

Definitional deficit: a model of senile dementia in context

This article presents some general theoretical concepts that can be used to consider processes of reality construction in interpersonal contexts. I developed a model of family context that taps affective dimensions of reality construction and used this model to explore these processes as highlighted by the labeling of symptoms of senile dementia. Ethnographic observations of 45 families with aged members were used to sketch a dichotomous typology of family-context patterns that promote symptom identification versus patterns that do not. The model suggests that the categorization of behavior as symptomatic or normal in context may be related to the extent to which reality construction processes are shared among members.     

Dependency, self-criticism, and depressive attributional style

Dependency and self-criticism have been proposed as independent factors in depression. Investigated whether depressive individuals characterized by dependency and self-criticism, respectively, differ with regard to internality of causal attributions for negative events. Sixty psychiatric outpatients completed the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire, the Beck Depression Inventory, the semantic differential, and the Attributional Style Questionnaire. Dependency and self-criticism correlated positively with internality and with each other (p less than .0001). Findings did not support the specificity of dependency and self-criticism as subtypes of depression.     

A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY OF PERSONALITY: EGYPTIAN AND ENGLISH CHILDREN*

679 Egyptian boys and 696 girls completed the Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, translated into Arabic. Factor comparisons were moderately high for extraversion and social desirability but weak for neuroticism and psychoticism. Suitable item substitution produced a scoring key resulting in adequate reliabilities with the exception of a somewhat low reliability for the boys on extraversion and low reliabilities on psychoticism for both sexes. Sex differences on means of the dimensions were as usual, boys scoring higher than girls on extraversion and psychoticism, but lower on neuroticism and social desirability. Moreover, on comparing Egyptian with English means, using scales of items in common only, the English boys and girls scored higher than their Egyptian counterparts on extraversion but significantly lower on social desirability. British boys scored higher on psychoticism than did Egyptian boys but British girls scored lower than Egyptian girls.     

Cerebral laterality and depression: differences in perceptual asymmetry among diagnostic subtypes

Examined the influence of diagnostic subtype of depression on perceptual asymmetry for dichotic listening and visual tachistoscopic tasks. A total of 65 unmedicated patients with major depressive disorders and 30 normal controls were tested on a verbal and nonverbal task in each modality. Patients diagnosed according to the DSM-III with melancholia had abnormal perceptual asymmetry for dichotic nonsense syllable and complex tone tasks. In contrast, patients having a nonmelancholic "atypical depression" (reactivity of mood with preserved pleasure capacity and associated features) did not differ from normal controls on these tasks, but had an increased incidence of left handedness. Bipolar depression (history of hypomania) differed from unipolar depression in showing abnormal perceptual asymmetry for a tachistoscopic dot enumeration task. Alterations of perceptual asymmetry in melancholia and bipolar depression were consistent with hypothesized right hemisphere dysfunction.     

Sex differences on the revised Beck Depression Inventory for outpatients with affective disorders

The revised Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) was administered to 174 male and 276 female psychiatric outpatients diagnosed with affective disorders. The mean BDI scores, mean number of symptoms claimed, and corrected item-total correlations were comparable for both sexes, and the coefficient alpha for each sex was .88. Principal components analyses found four dimensions of depression underlying both sexes' BDI item-intercorrelation matrices. Although men and women had comparable dimensions with respect to weight loss, self-blame, and somatic-performance symptoms, men had affective and performance symptoms loading on the same factor, whereas women had affective and cognitive symptoms loading on the same dimension.     

Residential density and psychological health: the mediating effects of social support

People report excessive, unwanted social interactions, insufficient privacy, and are observed to be more socially withdrawn under crowded living conditions. If people socially withdraw from one another as a way to cope with crowding, this could lead to an unintended side effect of breakdowns in socially supportive relationships. A breakdown in socially supportive relationships could, in turn, account for some of the pathological consequences of chronic, high density living conditions. An empirical study of 175 male heads of household among inner city residents in India suggests that the adverse effects of residential crowding on psychological health are mediated by a breakdown of social support systems. The study also points to the value of examining social support as an endogenous variable in the stress and health process.