The prostitutes' syndrome

When female patients, at critical periods in their lives, receive suggestions regarding promiscuous and unacceptable behavior, they may at a later time in life act upon these suggestions. However, involvement in promiscuous sexual behavior results in guilt, which will often be seen clinically in the form of depressive neuroses or psychosomatic illness. Several case histories are presented, and implications for treatment are discussed.M.D. is a psychiatrist in private practice in Memphis, Tennessee, maintaining an active inpatient and outpatient practice of psychotherapy.With Dr. Sexton, he maintains a private practice in Memphis.     

Reactions to stigmatized others: Response amplification vs sympathy

Four experiments examined the conditions under which responses to handicapped persons are characterized by sympathy or response amplification. The first two experiments tested the hypothesis that contact with a handicapped person would lead to amplified positive and negative responses in comparison to contact with a nonhandicapped person. The results indicated that mere contact was not sufficient to elicit response amplification. Instead, contact led to more positive evaluations of the handicapped than of the nonhandicapped other, regardless of whether she behaved in a positive or negative manner—a “sympathy” effect. The third and fourth experiments indicated that amplified positive and negative responses to the handicapped will occur when the behavior of a handicapped person is highly relevant to the evaluator. A two-stage model of responses to stigmatized others is proposed to account for these results.     

Training school psychologists in neuropsychological assessment: Current practices and trends

Directors of school psychology programs at the Master's, sixth-year and doctoral levels were surveyed as to their program's degree of emphasis in neuropsychological screening and assessment. Despite variability according to program level, directors identified a need for training in these areas. This was particularly evident at the doctoral level, where greater flexibility exists in designing a student's program of studies. The results of this survey support the notion that training in neuropsychological screening and assessment techniques is appropriate in the preparation of specialists in the area of school psychology.     

“Principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others…”: The heritability of empathic concern for others1

The present research was conducted to explore genetic influences on empathic concern for others. First, an index of empathic concern was created by combining relevant items from Gough's Adjective Check List (ACL). This index was validated by correlating scores of 88 undergraduates on the index with their scores on a self-report measure of empathy, which has been related to prosocial behavior. Correlations were sufficiently high to accept the validity of the index. Next, previously collected ACL responses of 114 monozygotic (MZ) and 116 dizygotic (DZ) twins were reanalyzed in order to create an empathic concern score for each twin. The twins were middle-aged males initially raised together but living apart at the time they completed the ACL. Comparison of intraclass correlations for MZ and DZ twins revealed, as predicted by the genetic hypothesis, significant (p < .005) heritability in empathic concern scores. This finding suggests that there may, indeed, be a genetic influence on individual differences in empathic concern for others. Some limitations of the present data are also considered. How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him.     

Is the acquiescent response style problem not so mythical after all? Some results from a successful balanced F scale

It is shown that Rorer's exoneration of the F scale from acquiescent response style contamination is dependent on the finding-that various acquiescence measures fail to intercorrelate. When acquiescence is measured as the total score on adequate balanced scales scored without reversals, significant internal reliability is found. It is found, in fact, even with scales that are not particularly ambiguous. It is concluded that some scales are not responded to meaningfully by some people and if these people are not to be confounded with real high scores, balancing against acquiescence is still needed.     

Motion aftereffect with subjective contours

Stationary lines appear to move from left to right following exposure to lines moving from right to left. This aftereffect, which normally is generated by exposure to moving edges that are defined in terms of local luminance discontinuity, can also be induced by adaptation to displays containing subjective contours. In both cases, stereodeficient observers demonstrated reduced interocular transfer of the aftereffect relative to stereonormal observers. Since interocular transfer of the motion aftereffect entails binocular function within the visual system, these results suggest that the perception of subjective contours depends on excitation of neural feature detectors rather than simply on cognitive inference.     

Judgments of similarity and spatial models

Ss judged the similarity between all pairs of stimulus objects under 3 conditions: when the objects were (a) Munsell 5R color patches varying in value and chroma; (b) parallelorams varying in size and tilt; and (c) circles-with-radius varying in diameter and angle of radius. For each set of judgments, the pattern of deviations from the Euclidean model was used to diagnose the most appropriate spatial model. The results confirm previous findings that the Euclidean space is appropriate for judgments of color patches, but that the city block space is appropriate for judgments of geometrie forms which vary on perceptually distinct dimensions.     

Effects of class-interval size upon certain frequency distributions of interresponse times

Inter-response time distributions with class intervals of 0.05 and 0.04 sec revealed characteristics not observable with class intervals of 0.5 sec or greater. Bimodalities were clearly evident in the inter-response time distributions for two out of three pigeons. These modes seemed to correspond to two discrete response topographies.