Self-esteem,personal traits,and college women's life goals

Questionnaires that assessed self-esteem, life goals, and selected personal characteristics were completed by 118 women enrolled at a selective liberal arts college. The women were remarkably nontraditional in terms of their educational goals and career goals, and relatively traditional in terms of plans for marriage and motherhood. Using stepwise multiple regression analyses to determine the traits that predict nontraditional goals, the data indicate that age, grade, religious upbringing and affiliation, college major, enrollment in Women's Studies courses, and mothers' educational attainment are all significant predictors. Fathers' educational attainment, parents' occupations, and women's birth order and self-esteem are not related to the goals assessed.     

The affective experience of the analyst in the extra-analytic moment

This exploration of the extra-analytic moment focuses on the analyst’s affective experience of encountering her patient outside the boundaries of the consulting room. Two complex interactions are presented in which the analyst is challenged to confront known and unknown aspects of herself and negotiate her next move. The authors discuss the value of examining oneself beyond the traditional boundaries, and highlight the potential for personal and professional growth in moments when the analyst’s fallibility and humanity are unwittingly revealed. In allowing the unpredictable to become less of an unwanted event and more of an opportunity to express that which makes us human, our analytic work is enriched.Janet Rivkin Zuckerman, Ph.D., is Visiting Instructor at the Westchester Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, Adjunct Clinical Supervisor at the Derner Institute, Adelphi University, and Ferkauf Graduate School, Yeshiva University, and Faculty Member and Supervisor at The Center for Preventive Psychiatry, White Plains, New York.Lisa Horelick, Psy.D., is Faculty Member and Supervisor at the Suffolk Institute for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, Adjunct Clinical Supervisor at the Ferkauf Graduate School, Yeshiva University, and Supervisor at the Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, Derner Institute, Adelphi University, New York.     

Visual Reinforcement Signals Interfere with the Effects of Reinforcer Magnitude Manipulations

Three experiments examined the effect of reinforcement magnitude on free-operant response rates. In Experiment 1, rats that received four food pellets responded faster than rats that received one pellet on a variable ratio 30 schedule. However, when the food hopper was illuminated during reinforcer delivery, there was no difference between the rates of response produced by the two magnitudes of reward. In Experiment 2, there was no difference in response rates emitted by rats receiving either one or four pellets of food as reward on a random interval (RI) 60-s schedule. In Experiment 3, rats responding on an RI 30-s schedule did so at a lower rate with four pellets as reinforcement than with one pellet. This effect was abolished by the illumination of the food hopper during reinforcement delivery. These results indicate that the influence of magnitude is obscured by manipulations which signal the delivery of reinforcement.     

Broad or narrow affect scores for the Multiple Affect Adjective Check List? Comment on Hunsley's “dimensionality of the Multiple Affect Adjective Check List-Revised”

Hunsley's paper constitutes the second independent replication of four of the five factors in the Multiple Affect Adjective Check List-Revised (MAACL-R), even though he used the trait instead of the state form used to construct the scales and a more stringent factor loading criterion than Zuckerman and Lubin. Hunsley also did a two-factor analysis (positive and negative affects) of the MAACL items and concluded on the basis of the scree test that this was a more optimal solution than the five-factor one. This conclusion is questioned on the basis that the scales were devised to improve discriminant validity of the subscales, which they have done, particularly if standard scores are used. Since four of the five factors are replicable in state and trait versions of the MAACL-R and clinical studies show discriminant validity for the subscales, there is no reason to ignore the components of the two broader affect factors. Such factors can be assessed through use of the two standard summary scores for the MAACL: Dysphoria (A + D + H) and Positive Affect plus Sensation Seeking (PA + SS).     

The importance of conduct problems and depressive symptoms in predicting adolescent substance use

The current study assessed the relative importance of conduct problems and depressive symptoms, measured at two ages (11 and 15), for predicting substance use at age 15 in an unselected birth cohort of New Zealand adolescents. Among males, when the relative predictive utility of both conduct problems and depressive symptoms was assessed, only pre-adolescent depressive symptoms were found to predict multiple drug use 4 years later. No predictive relation was found between early symptomatology and later substance use among females. The strongest association between predictors and substance use emerged between age 15 multiple drug use and concurrent conduct problems for both males and females. Finally, both conduct problems and depressive symptoms at age 15 were also found to be associated with concurrent self-medication among females.This work was supported by USPHS grants MH-43746 and MH-45070 from the Antisocial and Violent Behavior Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health to Terrie Moffitt. Bill Henry was funded by a Fulbright Travel Award. The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Research Unit is supported by the Medical Research Council and Health Research Council of New Zealand. Appreciation is expressed to the interviewers who collected the data, and to the young New Zealanders who were members of the sample.     

Revaluation manipulations produce emergence of underselected stimuli following simultaneous discrimination in humans

Stimulus overselectivity occurs when only one of potentially many aspects of the environment controls behaviour. In four experiments, human participants were trained and tested on a trial-and-error simultaneous discrimination task involving two two-element compound stimuli. Overselectivity emerged in all experiments (i.e., one element from the reinforced compound controlled behaviour at the expense of the other). Following revaluation (extinction) of the previously overselected stimulus, behavioural control by the underselected stimulus element emerged without any direct training of that stimulus element. However, while a series of extinction manipulations targeting the revaluation of the overselected stimulus produced differential extinction of that stimulus, they did not result in differential emergence of the previously underselected stimuli. The results are discussed with respect to the theoretical implications for attention-based accounts of overselectivity.     

Manipulating Games by Sharing Information

We address the issue of manipulating games through communication. In the specific setting we consider (a variation of Boolean games), we assume there is some set of environment variables, the values of which are not directly accessible to players; the players have their own beliefs about these variables, and make decisions about what actions to perform based on these beliefs. The communication we consider takes the form of (truthful) announcements about the values of some environment variables; the effect of an announcement is the modification of the beliefs of the players who hear the announcement so that they accurately reflect the values of the announced variables. By choosing announcements appropriately, it is possible to perturb the game away from certain outcomes and towards others. We specifically focus on the issue of stabilisation: making announcements that transform a game from having no stable states to one that has stable configurations.