A developmental study of proverb comprehension

Growth in proverb comprehension was hypothesized to result from the gradual emergence of cognitive abilities reflected in a sequence of increasingly complex abilities: story matching, transfer of relations, desymbolization, proverb matching, and paraphrase. Items for these abilities for each of 10 proverbs of two structural types were administered in three test sessions to 438 students in grades three to seven. An analogy subtest was used to measure general intelligence. ANOVA yielded significant main effects for grade, tasks, and proverbs (all p's less than .01). A significant task x proverb interaction (p less than .01) revealed the difficulty of precise control over the language of the items. Proverb structure had no measurable impact on difficulty. Analogy score was a significant factor in performance (p less than .01) but not as potent as age (p less than .01). The sequential order of abilities received only weak confirmation, though tasks did correlate among themselves with medium strength (r's = .50-.70). Individual interviews added a qualitative dimension to the findings. The suitability of cognitive hierarchical models for proverb comprehension was questioned.     

Lateralized Increases in Cerebral Blood Flow during Performance of Verbal and Spatial Tasks: Relationship with Performance Level

Physiologic neuroimaging studies have shown lateralized regional increase in brain activity during cognitive tasks, but the hypothesis that such changes are correlated with task performance has not been tested directly. We examined cerebral blood flow (CBF) changes induced by cognitive tasks in relation to performance. CBF was measured with the ¹³³Xenon clearance method in 34 normal right-handed young (age < 30) volunteers during resting baseline and during the performance of a verbal analogies and a spatial line orientation test. Performance measures included "speed" and "power" estimates of both activation tasks. Resting CBF was moderately correlated with performance. The correlations were slightly higher with activated CBF for verbal but not spatial performance. The degree of increase (task-baseline) did not correlate with performance for either task. The highest and topographically specific correlations were obtained between laterality of CBF and verbal performance. Higher left hemispheric activation was correlated with verbal performance, and this correlation was significantly higher in the angular gyrus region. For the spatial task the correlations were with relatively higher right hemispheric activation but without regional specificity. The results underscore the importance of integrating behavioral performance data with physiologic measures in neuroimaging activation studies.     

Randomized controlled evaluation of an early intervention to prevent post-rape psychopathology

A randomized between-group design was used to evaluate the efficacy of a video intervention to reduce post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental health problems, implemented prior to the forensic medical examination conducted within 72 h post-sexual assault. Participants were 140 female victims of sexual assault (68 video/72 nonvideo) aged 15 years or older. Assessments were targeted for 6 weeks (Time 1) and 6 months (Time 2) post-assault. At Time 1, the intervention was associated with lower scores on measures of PTSD and depression among women with a prior rape history relative to scores among women with a prior rape history in the standard care condition. At Time 2, depression scores were also lower among those with a prior rape history who were in the video relative to the standard care condition. Small effects indicating higher PTSD and Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) scores among women without a prior rape history in the video condition were observed at Time 1. Accelerated longitudinal growth curve analysis indicated a videoxprior rape history interaction for PTSD, yielding four patterns of symptom trajectory over time. Women with a prior rape history in the video condition generally maintained the lowest level of symptoms.     

Sifting Through Tradition: The Creation of Jewish Feminist Identities

In recent decades, feminists have been questioning patriarchal religions. As a result, many find themselves ambivalent about their religious and spiritual identities. This paper presents a model of identity formation that addresses the processes by which potentially conflicted identities are integrated. This model is based on research about how women who identify themselves as both Jewish and feminist create unconflicted Jewish feminist identities. Through a process ofsifting through their available options, they have chosen to identify with only those aspects of Judaism and feminism that satisfy their feminist, religious, and perhaps most importantly, their spiritual, needs. Because these needs vary, what it means to be a Jewish feminist is not static. Three types of Jewish feminist identity—inclusionist, transformationist, and reinterpretationist—are identified.     

Breaking new ground in the mind: an initial study of mental brittle transformation and mental rigid rotation in science experts

The current study examines the spatial skills employed in different spatial reasoning tasks, by asking how science experts who are practiced in different types of visualizations perform on different spatial tasks. Specifically, the current study examines the varieties of mental transformations. We hypothesize that there may be two broad classes of mental transformations: rigid body mental transformations and non-rigid mental transformations. We focus on the disciplines of geology and organic chemistry because different types of transformations are central to the two disciplines: While geologists and organic chemists may both confront rotation in the practice of their profession, only geologists confront brittle transformations. A new instrument was developed to measure mental brittle transformation (visualizing breaking). Geologists and organic chemists performed similarly on a measure of mental rotation, while geologists outperformed organic chemists on the mental brittle transformation test. The differential pattern of skill on the two tests for the two groups of experts suggests that mental brittle transformation and mental rotation are different spatial skills. The roles of domain general cognitive resources (attentional control, spatial working memory, and perceptual filling in) and strategy in completing mental brittle transformation are discussed. The current study illustrates how ecological and interdisciplinary approaches complement traditional cognitive science to offer a comprehensive approach to understanding the nature of spatial thinking.     

Violence risk assessment in persons with mental illness

Mental health clinicians are often asked to determine an individual's risk of future violence. Dangerous assessments are required in a wide variety of situations that include involuntary commitments, emergency psychiatric evaluations, seclusion and restraint release decisions, inpatient care discharges, probation/parole decisions, death penalty evaluations, domestic violence interventions, fitness for duty evaluations, and after a threat is made. This article provides an overview regarding the assessment of dangerousness in both adults and juveniles and a summary of recent research regarding the relationship of mental illness to violence.     

Right of active duty military personnel to refuse psychiatric treatment

Under Federal Court precedents, mentally ill patients have a qualified right to refuse treatment. The amount of due process that may be required to override treatment refusals by active duty military patients is discussed. Due process for these individuals need not be judicial, since medical review satisfies federal requirements. Involuntary administration of medication to active duty military personnel is justified in some circumstances. Specific criteria for overriding treatment refusals are suggested. A sample protocol for overriding the treatment refusals of active duty personnel is offered.     

Changes with age in two components of visual search speed

Subjects aged 8, 10, 12, and 18 years participated in two visual search tasks. In one task the rate of visual search reflected the speed of preattentive localization processes, and in the other task it additionally reflected letter identification process speeds. The data revealed that localization processes become faster from ages 8 to 12 and remain stable thereafter, and that identification processes increase in speed primarily from ages 8 to 10. Performance on a subsequent recognition task indicated that subjects of all ages were employing a similar encoding strategy during visual search. Furthermore, subjects retained general information about the features of irrelevant background letters even though recognition accuracy for more specific information about letter names was not high. The finding that localization and identification processes have different rates of development confirms the hypothesized distinction between the two and implies that developmental studies of visual scanning speed must focus upon changes in the relationships among various processes or component skills throughout development.     

Psychopathology Following Interpersonal Violence: A Comparison of Risk Factors in Older and Younger Adults

A randomly selected sample of 549 women age 55 years and older and 2,669 women age 18–34 years was interviewed via telephone to determine prevalences of physical and sexual assault, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptomatology, and depression. Prevalences of sexual and physical assaults were lower in older compared to younger women. In addition, given a trauma, prevalences and proportionate risk of posttraumatic psychopathology and depression were also lower for older, relative to younger women. Specifically, multivariate analyses revealed that sexual assault predicted only PTSD avoidance in older adults, but all forms of PTSD symptomatology and depression in younger adult women. Similarly, physical assault predicted only PTSD re-experiencing symptoms in older women, but all forms of PTSD symptoms and depression in younger women. Self-reported health status was not associated with any increased risk of psychopathology, and low income predicted increased avoidance and depression only in younger women.