Rationale for Individualizing Interventions to Promote Adjustment to the Nursing Home

This study was designed to determine whether certain variables were predictors of nursing home residents' membership in groups representing qualitative categories of nursing home adjustment. Responses of 186 residents to an open-ended question about how they handled the change to nursing home life were coded as very good, fair, or poor; an adjustment variable was created on the basis of this classification. Analysis of variance of random samples from each adjustment group showed that affect and social support varied significantly with adjustment. However, when discriminant analysis was applied, the three groups could not be differentiated using measure of affect, life satisfaction, social support, participation in the decisions leading to admission, nursing home satisfaction, or health. Based on the conclusion that adjustment to the nursing home is a unique experience for each individual, strategies were proposed for individualizing interventions to enable adjustment.     

Teaching Contempt: the Jew through Christian eyes

The early Fathers, the mediaeval theologians and the architects of the Protestant Reformation are all guilty of denigrating Judaism by teaching contempt. This article explores the legacy of Christian anti‐Judaism by concentrating on the work of theologians, artists and sculptors, all of whom played their part in propagating the negative stereotype of the Jew. Three biblical texts have been chosen for detailed investigation in order to demonstrate how Christian teaching, based on a fanciful and erroneous interpretation of Scripture, has been reflected in modem anti‐Jewish attitudes. The evidence corroborates the view that much of Hitler's antisemitic propaganda was rooted in Christian thought.     

Sacred Violence: the dark side of God

The subject of this essay is the use to which biblical texts which sanction aggression in the name of God have been put by Jews and Christians over the past 2000 years. The divine injunction given to the Israelites to exterminate the Canaanites has been explained in various ways, but without much success. A literal reading of the Hebrew Bible by Jews and Christians, past and present, has led to its exploitation in support of particular ideologies. Given the appalling record of both faith communities in their relationship with those of a different nationality or religious persuasion, it is imperative that the biblical account of the barbarism inflicted by the Israelites on the people of Canaan be subjected to a searching critique.     

Genetic and environmental origins of verbal and performance components of cognitive delay in 2-year-olds.

The authors investigated the etiology of several measures of cognitive delay. Verbal (V) and performance (P) abilities were assessed in over 3,000 pairs of 2-year-old twins. Group-differences heritability for general delay (the lowest 5% of the V and P composite) was 35%. However, V and P delays considered independently showed large differences in group heritability (77% for V vs. 40% for P). Specific delays with comorbid cases eliminated showed an even greater difference in group heritability (78% vs. 22%, respectively). The small sample comorbid for both V and P delay also yielded high group heritability for both V (77%) and P (93%) scores. Shared environmental factors also differed in magnitude for V (20%) and P (41%) delays. Because the genetic and environmental origins of V and P delays in infancy differ, they are better considered separately rather than combined into a composite measure of general cognitive delay.     

Attentional Selectivity in Short-term Memory: Similarity of Process,Not Similarity of Content,Determines Disruption

Background sound substantially disrupts serial recall, even under conditions where participants are explicitly told to ignore it. Study of such a phenomenon may serve to illuminate the manner in which information from various sources interacts in memory, as well as the extent to which unattended information is processed. A review of the literature is presented that points to a number of conclusions. First, that interference occurs in memory, not on the basis of similarity of content between relevant and irrelevant material, but rather on the basis of similarity of process. Specifically, in a serial recall task, the key memory process is that of order retention, and therefore, order information in the sequence of auditory events interferes with the process of ordering within the rehearsal set. Second, that organisation and interference within memory are intimately connected with perceptual processes.     

Effects of presenting incidental information in consequent events on future learning

The effects of presenting future target stimuli in the consequent event following correct responses to current target stimuli were examined in two experiments teaching eight students with moderate handicaps to name photographs. In Experiment I, progressive time delay was used to teach two sets of photographs. During instruction, correct responses to one set of stimuli resulted in praise and presentation of the printed word for the person in the photograph (future condition). In the second set, a correct response was followed by praise alone (non-future condition). After establishing criterion level performance on both sets of photographs, students were taught to read the printed word from each of the two sets. Experiment II was a systematic replication of Experiment I. Four students from a different classroom also were taught to name two sets of photographs. An adapted alternating treatments design was used in each experiment. The results indicated that (a) all students learned to name the photographs; (b) presentation of future target stimuli (words) in consequent events resulted in seven of the eight students learning to read some of the words; and (c) the total number of sessions, trials, errors, and percentage of errors     

Effects of post-training ethanol and group housing upon memory of an appetitive task in mice

It has been shown that post-training ethanol's facilitating effects upon memory disappeared if the mice were kept isolated after training. Since ethanol-treated mice were attacked by their cagemates, it has been hypothesized that the improved retention induced by ethanol resulted from an interaction between ethanol and group housing which added aversive information to training. To investigate the correctness of this interpretation, ethanol effects upon memory of an appetitive task were studied. C57BL/6J mice (isolated the day before training) were individually trained to find a cheese pellet placed in a corner of an open-field. Mice were injected intraperitoneally immediately after training with saline, 0.5, 1.5, or 2.0 g/kg of ethanol. They were then returned to their home cage and left alone, with another mouse, or with five other mice for 2 h after training. All mice were tested 24 h later for retention. Reductions in the number of pellet approaches or in the latency to eat the pellet were taken as measures of learning. Post-training ethanol disrupted retention of the appetitive task in a dose-related manner. Moreover disruption was greater in mice group housed after training. The results support the hypothesis that ethanol's post-training facilitating effects upon aversive memory may be due to added aversive information to the stimulus complex, rather than, or in addition, to enhanced storage of memory traces.     

The syndrome of hyperlexia

Recent research on hyperlexic children is reviewed and criticized. A case study of a mute hyperlexic girl is presented, along with comments on the implications of this case for theories of hyperlexia. The hypothesis is put forth that hyperlexia in children suggests the existence of an innate written language capacity. The implications of this hypothesis for linguistic theory are discussed.