Life stress and psychopathology: Progress on research begun with Barbara Snell Dohrenwend

This is a progress report on some of the research that was planned and begun with Barbara Dohrenwend before she died in 1982. The main focus is on two of the studies. One was conducted in New York City; the other is still underway in Israel. The New York study is a retrospective case/control study of social and psychological factors that may put people at risk for developing schizophrenic episodes and episodes of major depression. The Israel research consists of epidemiological, case/control, and family studies of these two disorders together with other types of psychopathology that are inversely related to social class. Preliminary findings from both studies are reported, and their implications for primary prevention are discussed.     

Gender roles,marital status,and urban-rural migration

The impact of gender and marital status on migration decision making and satisfaction with the relocation decision six months following the move, are examined. Previous research in the literature concerning gender role, quality of life, and environmental sociology provides the conceptual framework for the following hypotheses: (a) women are more likely to migrate for quality-of-life, rather than economic, reasons; (b) single migrants are more likely to experience satisfaction with the move than are couples; (c) among couples, satisfaction with the move will be greatest when the decision to move is an egalitarian one; and (d) migrants who relocate for economic reasons will be dissatisfied with the move if their economic aspirations are not satisfied. Data are from the first interview with a random probability sample of 390 recent migrants into the Gallatin Valley of Montana. The sample was identified through new telephone listings, and a combined questionnaire/interview format was employed. Log-linear analyses were utilized to test the hypothesized relationships between marital status, the migration decision-making process, subsequent satisfaction with the decision to move, and income change as a result of the move. Hypotheses (a) and (b) above were supported. The data did not support the hypothesized relationship between egalitarian decision making and subsequent family satisfaction with the move. There also was no support for the expectation that migrants seeking economic goals would experience lower levels of satisfaction if these economic aspirations were unmet. The implications of these findings are discussed and alternative hypotheses are suggested.     

Correlates of conformity in three cultures

The present study sought to investigate the correlates of conformity among two South African and an Australian sample. Employing paper and pencil measures, the following were found to be significant correlates of conformity across the three various groups: Conformers generally have a low level of education, are characterised by their authoritarian attitudes, but do not have authoritarian personalities as measured by the Ray (1976) Directiveness scale. Conformers can be of either sex. By contrast, self-esteem and patriotism were found to be unique correlates, that is, they reflect the cultural milieu of the individual.     

Improvement, learning and retention of skill at visual search

Three experiments examined factors responsible for improvement in visual search. In Experiment I three groups of subjects were each trained for 3000 trials to search for a particular set of target letters among a particular set of background letters. After intervals of 2, 4, or 6 weeks without further practice they were re-tested, either with the same displays or on new displays which they searched for the same target items among new background items. Negative transfer suggested that memory for specific cue-systems distinguishing target from background letters is retained for as long as 4 weeks.

Experiment II examined performance of three very highly practised subjects. After 25 days practice, variations in the size of the target set no longer affected search time. This could not be explained by learning of specific cue systems, since after this amount of practice subjects showed perfect transfer to displays which they searched for the same target items among new background items. Experiment III suggested that practised subjects achieve this high level of competence by learning to make two independent successive decisions, first to locate any member of the target set on the display and next to identify which particular member of the target set has been located.     

Development and validation of the Eating Behavior Inventory

The Eating Behavior Inventory (EBI) is a self-report instrument for assessing behaviors that have been theoretically implicated in weight loss, e.g., self-monitoring of food intake and of weight, refusing offers of food, eating at only one place, shopping from a list, eating in response to emotions. Thirty items were constructed in the form of first-person statements, e.g., I eat in the middle of the night. Each item was to be rated with a 5-point scale according to how often it was true for the respondent. Items were scored such that higher scores always reflected more appropriate (theoretically facilitative of weight control) eating patterns. Validity of individual items and total score was assessed in four studies. Twenty-six of the original items appeared valid and were retained. The resulting total score demonstrated validity in these studies and in two cross-validational comparisons. Internal consistency as measured by split-half reliability and correlations of item scores with total score was acceptable. One month test-retest reliability of item and total scores was satisfactory. Clinical and research applications of the EBI are discussed.An early version of this article was presented at the Taos International Conference on Treatment of Addictive Behaviors, Taos, New Mexico, February 1979.     

Processing differences between memory search and foveal visual search

The ability to detect small differences in the positions of two lines (vernier acuity) showed some improvement with practice in all eight subjects, even for subjects given no error feedback. The average decline in threshold with training (2,000–2,500 responses) was about 40%. We used three target orientations: vertical, horizontal, and right oblique. Orientational differences remained stable in only one subject. In five subjects, orientational differences present at the beginning of training diminished or disappeared with increased experience; in two, they increased.     

Sex-role and innovative major choice among college students

This study examined the relationship between sex-role and nontraditional major choice. The sample included 693 male and female students enrolled in traditional and nontraditional majors. In addition to exploring this relationship the study had a methodological intent: Could scales derived from previous factor analyses of the Bem Sex-Role Inventory delineate this relationship as readily as the traditional Bem scoring method. Results indicate significant distributional patterns in sex-role and choice of major, which vary by sex. Men tend to choose male-dominated majors, regardless of sex-role. Patterns for females are more complex. The factored scales used in cross-validated discriminate analysis procedures did demonstrate some power to discriminate students in the two majors, suggesting certain implications for sex-role transcendence in vocational settings.     

Construct validity of the psychopathic personality inventory two-factor model with offenders

Much of the research on psychopathy has treated it as a unitary construct operationalized by total scores on one (or more) measures. More recent studies on the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI) suggest the existence of two distinct facets of psychopathy with unique external correlates. Here, the authors report reanalyses of two offender data sets that included scores on the PPI along with various theoretically relevant criterion variables. Consistent with hypotheses, the two PPI factors showed convergent and discriminant relations with criterion measures, many of which would otherwise have been obscured when relying on PPI total scores. These results highlight the importance of examining facets of psychopathy as well as total scores.     

Written spelling to dictation: Sound-to-spelling regularity affects both writing latencies and durations

The authors examined the effect of sound-to-spelling regularity on written spelling latencies and writing durations in a dictation task in which participants had to write each target word 3 times in succession. The authors found that irregular words (i.e., those containing low-probability phoneme-to-grapheme mappings) were slower both to initially produce and to execute in writing than were regular words. The regularity effect was found both when participants could and could not see their writing (Experiments 1 and 2) and was larger for low- than for high-frequency words (Experiment 3). These results suggest that central processing of the conflict generated by lexically specific and assembled spelling information for irregular words is not entirely resolved when the more peripheral processes controlling handwriting begin.