The traumatic element in the typical dream of feeling embarrassed at being naked

Material is presented from three cases, where analysis of repetitive dreams of feeling embarrassment at being partially or totally naked was an important feature of the treatment. The indifference by the other people in the dream to the dreamer's nakedness was initially linked to perceived transference slights at the hands of the analyst, and later to repeated episodes of actually being treated indifferently at the hands of the parents. This indifference was related to latency or adolescent attempts by the patients to gain love or attention from the parents by exhibitionistic means. The stereotypical presentation of the manifest content of these dreams is seen as evidence for their underlying traumatic roots. Such dreams are likened to the typical examination dreams described by Freud, which have also been noted by others to have traumatic roots. This finding is consistent with my own work with certain repetitive manifest dream configurations and with Freud's (1920) reevaluation of his theory of dreams in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, wherein he noted that dreams of patients suffering from traumatic neurosis often manifestly repeated the traumatic situation in an attempt to master it retrospectively.     

Factors associated with adolescent saving and spending patterns

This study examined the saving and spending behaviors of 1,619 employed high school seniors from over 1,000 private and public schools across the United States. Students were categorized as savers, necessity spenders, and discretionary spenders based on their responses to the question, "How do you spend the money that you earn?" Associations of student spending and saving patterns with individual and family factors were analyzed. Student savers were from families who saved and planned money use. Students who spent more for necessities were from families with fewer resources and greater financial difficulties. Discretionary spenders felt that money was important and were from families with higher income and socioeconomic status. Findings are discussed in light of the importance of families as socializing agents of their children.     

Age differences in skill acquisition and transfer in an implicit learning paradigm

Age differences in learning a complex cognitive skill are examined. The type of knowledge gained and levels of performance and transfer achieved, under different practice conditions, were compared in younger and older groups of trainees. The development of verbalizable knowledge about the task but not task performance itself varied as a function of age and practice condition. All trainees achieved transfer to novel versions of the task but older subjects appeared restricted to tasks drawn from the same semantic domain. The implications of these findings for developing training programmes for older workers are discussed.     

Psychophysiological responding as a function of age: The importance of matching

Few studies in the past which have employed psychophysiological measures have controlled for age. We have studied the effects of age on the heart rate, hand surface temperature, cephalic vasomotor response, and frontal electromyographic activity (EMG) of 73 normal individuals who varied in age from 18 to 68 years and were evenly divided into younger, middle, and older age groups. Comparisons were made between groups across eight conditions — baseline, relax body, warm hand, relax facial muscles, mental arithmetic, positive imagery, negative imagery, and cold pressor. Results indicated a direct linear relationship between age and electromyographic activity during relax facial muscles and mental arithmetic conditions. There was also a linear relationship between age and hand surface temperature during stressor conditions. Most important, significant interactions were found for both frontal EMG and heart rate measures with age. Post hoc analyses revealed differences on the frontal EMG levels between younger and older age groups during negative imagery, warm hand, and cold pressor conditions. Heart rate differences were found during positive imagery between the younger age group and the medium age group and during cold pressor between the younger age group and both the medium and the older groups. The implications of these findings are discussed.This research was supported in part by NINCDS Grant NS-15235.     

The role of semantic knowledge in retrieval from episodic long-term memories: Implications for a model of retrieval

Two experiments were conducted, using a paired-associate recall reaction time paradigm, to assess the role semantic knowledge plays in retrieval of long-term episodic memories. In Experiment I, word frequency and meaningfulness were manipulated; high-frequency stimuli led to significantly longer reaction times, while meaningfulness had no significant effect. In Experiment II, the role of the distribution of preexperimental associates of the stimulus was further investigated by comparing retrieval time when the stimulus had either a high- or low-strength primary associate; the former resulted in longer reaction times. The implications of these results for a model of retrieval were discussed. Exhaustive search models were found inadequate, but viable parallel and serial self-terminating models were developed. In both of these models, retrieval time is a function of strength of the correct associate, relative to total strength of a restricted set of semantic associates of the stimulus.     

An Experimental Computer-Based Educational and Career Exploration System

A major objective of the student guidance and counseling centers in high schools, junior colleges, and universities is to provide individualized aid to each student to help him reduce the uncertainty of his educational and vocational plans. Frequently, this objective is not fully satisfied because of information-handling problems. Two such problems are: (a) the fallibility of both counselor and student in memorizing, associating, and selectively recalling educational and vocational facts; and (b) the inability of the counselor and the student to devote sufficient time, patience, and energy to performing the enormous number of clerical steps involved in relating educational and occupational facts to pertinent information about the student. Computer-based information systems may be able to reduce these deficiencies considerably. This paper describes an experimental information system designed to be used by students as part of the total guidance services offered in schools. Such systems may aid both the student and the counselor.     

Responsibility diffusion and drive enhancement effects on risky shift1

Discussion produced expected risky and cautious shifts on choice dilemma items It was predicted from responsibility diffusion theory that, compared with low-anxious, high-defensive groups, high-anxious, low-defensive groups produce greater risky shift It was predicted from drive enhancement theory that, compared with low-anxious groups, high-anxious groups produce greater risky shift on risk-dominant items and greater cautious shift on caution-dominant items The results of two experiments failed to confirm either interpretation Surprisingly, significant shifts were obtained in a control condition     

Interference and facilitation effects of primes upon verification processes

Priming effects on sentence verification were investigated. The semantic relation of the prime and the probe, and the interval between prime and probe presentation (SOA), were varied for both ambiguous and unambiguous sentences. Reaction time to decide that a sentence was true or false was longer if the preceding prime was a word that was unrelated to the probe than if the prime was the word “blank.” In contradiction of Posner and Snyder’s (1975) claim that conscious processes develop slowly, this result was found at SOAs as short as 250 msec. Verification performance was facilitated for both sentence types when the prime word was the first of the to-be-presented probe sentence, but the magnitude of the facilitation effects depended upon the truth value of the probe, the associative strength of the subject and predicate of the probe sentence, and upon SOA. These findings indicate that priming affects the processing of relations among concepts in semantic memory, as well as the encoding of the probe.     

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF VERBAL INSTRUCTION ON TEACHING BEHAVIOR-MODIFICATION SKILLS TO NONPROFESSIONALS1

The effectiveness of a mastery criterion, lecture-based training program for teaching behavior modification to sheltered workshop personnel was evaluated. Staff performance was assessed in terms of: (1) verbal proficiency, as determined from a pre- and posttraining written exam, and (2) application proficiency, as measured by the frequency and appropriateness of staff responses to client behaviors. A direct count was made of the number of positive, negative, and neutral statements following client appropriate and inappropriate behaviors, and the number and type of client behaviors ignored. Thus, it was possible to determine the extent of generalization from classroom to applied settings, as well as the appropriateness of lectures for training specific performance skills. Lecture units introduced stimulus control procedures, shaping-chaining, and contingency management. Characteristic features of the training program were frequent testing, study objectives, immediate remediation, and contingent reinforcement. Verbal instruction was shown to be effective in improving subjects' verbal skills concerning behavior-modification principles, while only partially effective in improving application skills. There was an increase in the total number of staff-client interactions observed for all subjects, but only two of the response classes emphasized in the training program (reinforcing desirable client behavior and ignoring undesirable behavior) showed considerable improvement over pretraining levels. Despite this partial improvement, verbal instruction alone was shown to be insufficient for teaching the full range of behavior-modification skills required to function effectively in applied settings.