Book Reviews

The Psychological Record -     

Contextual mood priming following left and right hemisphere damage

This research examined the influence of mood-congruent and mood-incongruent contexts on recognizing affective prosody after brain damage. Predictions stemmed from an associative network theory of learning and memory. Thirty-three male subjects, 11 each in right hemisphere damaged (RHD), left hemisphere damaged (LHD), and normal control groups judged moods from the prosody of semantically neutral phrases. In one task, the prosodic stimulus phrases were judged in isolation. In another task, the phrases were preceded by short paragraphs which were either congruent or incongruent in emotional tone with the prosodic stimuli. These paragraphs were designed to prime specific mood choices. As anticipated, LHD subjects' prosodic mood recognition was more accurate when given congruent rather than incongruent affective contexts. Congruent contexts facilitated, and incongruent contexts disrupted, their prosodic mood judgments to the same extent as normals. RHD subjects showed a partial context decrement. They were less accurate than normal or LHD subjects in the congruent condition, and were unaffected by incongruent contexts. When given congruent biasing paragraphs, however, RHD subjects did experience facilitation on a par with that found for the other groups, indicating spared sensitivity to certain contextual factors. The distinction between automatic and effortful processes is offered as a potential explanation for the RHD group's pattern of performance.     

Implications of memory and language dysfunction in the naming deficit of senile dementia

Young normals, elderly normals, and patients with either mild-to-moderate or severe senile dementia of the Alzheimer type (SDAT) were administered several tests of language function and remote memory. On all of the language tests examined, elderly normals exhibited a mild, nonsignificant performance decrement relative to the young normals. Advanced SDAT patients were markedly impaired on all of the tests. Early dementia patients were most impaired, relative to aged normals, on tests of object naming, category instance fluency, and remote memory. The deficit was smaller on the WAIS vocabulary subtest, on selecting the name of a visually presented object, and on recalling the function of an object. Early SDAT patients were least impaired in selecting the picture of an object after its name had been provided and in selecting objects that belong to a specified functional category. The results are consistent with the notion that the language dysfunction in early SDAT is due to a deficit in semantic memory function in which general, categorical information remains available whereas information about specific attributes becomes less accessible. The object naming test might be useful in the assessment of treatment effects upon SDAT because of its sensitivity and specificity to dementia, its high face validity, and its independence of recent memory.     

Work site group meetings and the effectiveness of a televised smoking cessation intervention

At the work site, smoking accounts for increased health care expenses and worker absenteeism due to smoking-related illness and reduced productivity and lost wages. Developing comprehensive and accessible smoking cessation programs at the work site is an important objective for health care professionals. In this study, employees of 43 corporations participated in a televised smoking cessation program accompanied by self-help manuals. The media component involved presenting a smoking cessation program on a network television affiliate station during the 4:30 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. news for 20 days. Employees at half the corporations also had access to semiweekly self-help group meetings. Adding self-help support groups to a program involving self-help manuals and the media reports was found to significantly increase abstinence and its maintenance over time. The implications of using the media, self-help groups, and work site locations in large-scale community-based interventions are discussed.     

Evaluating information for truthfulness: The effects of logical subordination

Research has shown that many individuals do not routinely evaluate new information for consistency with respect to what they already know. One factor that may affect the likelihood of critical evaluation is whether or not the information is the central focus of the message. Two experiments tested this possibility by establishing differential emphasis of false information within complex sentences. Half of the target sentences contained a false fact in the main clause and half contained a false fact in the subordinate clause. In Experiment 1 subjects verified 64 sentences presented orally as either true or false. In Experiment 2 subjects read and evaluated 20 paragraphs for the presence of false information. As expected, subjects were less likely to report the false information when it was conveyed as logically subordinate rather than central. The results suggest one explanation for deficits in comprehension monitoring and have implications for understanding susceptibility to persuasive communications.     

The effects of commitment to threats and promises upon bargaining behaviour and outcomes

The course of bargaining is determined in part by interdependent individuals exchanging messages so as to influence other's behaviour, and thereby to increase the likelihood of achieving outcomes consistent with their own goals. The communication of threats and promises are two major message strategies that are employed to influence the behaviour of others in a bargaining relationship. The present study examines the effects of players' level of commitment to these forms of message strategies upon behaviour in a duopoly bargaining task. Past research has oprationalized commitment in terms of the consistency with which an individual has followed through on threats or promises in the past. In the present research, Becker's (1960) concept of a side-bet is employed to provide an alternative means for defining and manipulating commitment. A side-bet obtains when either a threatener or a promiser posts a valued resource, say a bond, which they forfeit if they do not follow through on their stated threat or promise. The main expectations of the present study were that increased commitment to threat meassages would lead to more competitive behaviour and outcomes within a duopoly bargaining task, whereas increased commitment to promise messages would produce more cooperative behaviour and outcomes. Partial support for these major expectations, as well as confirmation of a number of secondary expectations, was obtained.     

“The story says that” operator in story semantics

In [2] a semantics for implication is offered that makes use of stories — sets of sentences assembled under various constraints. Sentences are evaluated at an actual world and in each member of a set of stories. A sentence B is true in a story s just when B s. A implies B iff for all stories and the actual world, whenever A is true, B is true. In this article the first-order language of [2] is extended by the addition of the operator the story ... says that ..., as in The story Flashman among the Redskins says that Flashman met Sitting Bull. The resulting language is shown to be sound and complete.     

Juvenile homicide: The need for an interdisciplinary approach

Most of the empirical literature on juvenile homicide has emerged from the clinical experience of mental health professionals who have diagnosed and/or treated youngsters who killed. After a critical review of this literature, data on 787 juvenile homicide offenders are presented and discussed. These data indicate that intrafamilial killings represent but a small fraction of all homicides perpetrated by juveniles and that there are clear differences between intrafamilial and extrafamilial juvenile homicides.