Experiencing double-bind conflict: A semantic differential assessment of interaction perceptions

Four interaction-perception perspectives of the fictitious target of a double-bind conflict were provided by four groups of subjects. The perspectives included perceptions of a daughter about herself and her father (the double-bind source), and her estimates of his perceptions of both himself and her. As predicted, the target saw herself as weak but “good”, and as cooperative and highly frustrated, while attributing all the opposite characteristics to the source, who was seen as strong but “bad”, and uncooperative and not frustrated. Further, it was found that she believed he saw himself as strong and very good, but frustrated and moderately cooperative. These observations are consistent with a hypothesis that double-bind experiences result in frustration and mixed feelings toward one's self and the source of the dilemma. It was also concluded that the target's belief that her father would not recognize her weakness, nor her cooperativeness, nor her frustration, and would disinterestedly evaluate her as neither good nor bad resulted from the inconsistent and contradictory communications which had contributed to the double bind.     

The Daily Stress Inventory: Validity and effect of repeated administration

The Daily Stress Inventory (DSI) is a self-report measure of minor stressors which is administered daily. One test of the validity of a measure of daily stress is its sensitivity to the difference between the stressors of workdays and those of weekends. A second concern in establishing the validity of a test administered repeatedly is that self-monitoring may influence the obtained scores. The present study investigated these two issues using a sample of 70 community adults who reported full-time employment. These subjects provided a week of self-monitoring with the DSI. The results indicated that the DSI was sensitive to the difference between weekends and weekdays. The analyses of the effect of repeated administration suggested that the first day of self-monitoring may differ from the other days of self-monitoring. When the first day was eliminated, there was no significant difference among the days of self-monitoring, and the difference between the weekdays and the weekends remained. The data suggest that the DSI is a valid measure of the construct of daily stress and that any influence of repeated self-monitoring with the scale may be easily resolved.     

FACILITATING TRANSITION TIMES WITH HANDICAPPED PRESCHOOL CHILDREN: A COMPARISON BETWEEN PEER-MEDIATED AND ANTECEDENT PROMPT PROCEDURES

We examined the effects of a peer-mediated versus an antecedent prompt condition on the rate of independent movement and appropriate behavior of handicapped preschool children during three classroom transition times. Using an alternating treatments design, results showed that each treatment condition yielded increases in target behaviors; however, the antecedent prompt condition was superior during all three transition settings. In addition, teacher prompts to these children were significantly reduced during the intervention conditions, indicating that the children were making these transitions more independently.     

A honeycomb data array for simulating visual processes using the C programming language

A method of simulating visual processes is formulated as a C language program. The two-dimensional image array has a honeycomb structure, in which each cell has six immediate neighbors. A general iterative simulation method that represents changes in time is used. The method is illustrated with tests of Horn’s (1974) model of the retinex lightness process of Land and McCann (1971) and of a modified form of that model.     

On the time course of letter perception: A masked priming ERP investigation

In an experiment measuring event-related brain potentials (ERPs), single-letter targets were preceded by briefly presented masked letter primes. Name and case consistency were manipulated across primes and targets so that the prime was either the same letter as the target (or not), and was presented in the same case as the target (or not). Separate analyses were performed for letters whose upper- and lowercase forms had similar features (or not). The results revealed an effect of prime-target visual similarity between 120 and 180 msec, an effect of case-specific letter identity between 180 and 220 msec, and an effect of case-independent letter identity between 220 and 300 msec. We argue that these ERP results reflect processing in a hierarchical system for letter recognition that involves both case-specific and case-independent representations of alphabetic stimuli.     

Automatic activation of attachment-related goals

When people encounter threats, their attachment systems are activated and they become motivated to seek protection and support through proximity to their attachment figures. Theoretically, therefore, mental representations of attachment figures should be associated with goals related to attaining proximity and safety. The present studies explore this idea by examining the effects of a person's chronic attachment style and exposure to a particular attachment figure's name on the automatic activation of attachment-related goals. Studies 1 and 2 examine effects of exposure to the name of a security-providing attachment figure on willingness to self-disclose and seek support (two behaviors related to gaining proximity). Study 3 examines how exposure to names of different relationship partners (with whom a participant has felt secure, anxious, or avoidant) affects the mental accessibility of attachment-related goal words. Taken together, the studies support the idea that mental representations of attachment figures are associated with attachment-related goals.     

Making sense of sentences in schizophrenia: electrophysiological evidence for abnormal interactions between semantic and syntactic processing

Event-related potentials to critical verbs were measured as patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls read sentences word by word. Relative to their preceding context, critical verbs were (a) congruous, (b) incongruous and semantically unrelated to individual preceding words (pragmatic-semantic violations), (c) incongruous but semantically related to individual preceding words (animacy-semantic violations), or (d) syntactically anomalous. The N400 was modulated normally in patients, suggesting that semantic integration between individual words within sentences was normal in schizophrenia. The amplitude of the P600 to both syntactic and animacy-semantic violations was reduced in patients relative to controls. The authors suggest that, in schizophrenia, an abnormality in combining semantic and syntactic information online to build up propositional meaning leaves sentence processing to be primarily driven by semantic relationships between individual words.     

Brief functional analysis and treatment of tantrums associated with transitions in preschool children

A brief functional analysis was used to examine the influence of termination of prechange activities and initiation of postchange activitieson tantrums exhibited by 2 preschool children. For 1 participant, tantrums were maintained by access to certain (pretransition) activities. For a 2nd participant, tantrums were maintained by avoidance of certain task initiations. Although advance notice of an upcoming transition was ineffective, differential reinforcement of other behavior plus extinction reduced tantrums for both participants.