Skid-row rescue missions: A religious approach to alcoholism

The focus of this study is on the religious service at which many skid-row rescue missions require attendance to receive benefits. Data were obtained from an observation study of thirty-seven skid-row rescue missions in Los Angeles and Seattle, interviews with ten mission directors, and mission newsletters. The missions use material benefits to attract potential converts. The theme of spiritual conversion is predominant in the mission service (sermons, songs, testimonies). Mission personnel feel they have been called by God, often have backgrounds similar to the people they serve, and view the skid rowers' problems as primarily personal and spiritual. Skid rowers resent the use of religion as bait, view their problems as primarily structural, and use the missions only as a last resort. The missions need to be compared to other alcoholism rehabilitation and religious institutions. A key component to their continued existence is outside Christian supporters.     

Occupational and life stress and the family: conceptual frameworks and research findings

This article has two objectives: (1) to put research on work and family into a context or setting; and (2) to present recent findings from an ongoing research programme we began several years ago into the ways in which work experiences, and more general life experiences, influence individual well-being and family functioning.     

Duration of negative practice and the reduction of leg pounding of a traumatically brain-injured adult

This study evaluated the relative efficacy of long (1 minute) and short (15 seconds) durations of negative practice for reducing self-stimulatory leg pounding of a traumatically brain-injured adult. In individual social skill training classes, long negative practice and short negative practice were administered concurrently in an alternating treatments design. Generalization of treatment effects outside of training sessions was assessed during the client's lunch period. The results revealed that both durations of negative practice were equally effective in reducing leg pounding during training sessions. However, the effects of training did not generalize to settings in which the practice contingency was not enforced. Pounding was more frequent and negative practice somewhat less effective during periods of high social stimulation.     

Stress, externality, and depression

Previous research has found mixed support for the possibility that locus of control moderates the effects of life stress on depression. Two methodological choices may have influenced previous findings: the use of a unidimensional rather than a multidimensional locus of control scale, and reliance on linear statistical methods using median splits. We attempted to correct these choices by using the Levenson IPC scale (1974) and multiple regression analyses in a female undergraduate population (N = 158). The results supported use of a multidimensional scale, since Stress, Internality, and Powerful Others were found to have main effects on depression whereas Chance interacted with life stress. The question of whether locus of control refers to responsibility for causing an event, i.e., self-blame, or belief in control over future events, i.e., coping behavior, was discussed.     

Withholding medical care for religious reasons

Stimulated by publicity over lawsuits involving parents of children who had died from deprivation of medical care, this article is a survey of the beliefs of religious groups that refuse medical care on theological grounds and the legal principles designed to protect children from such abuse. Particular attention is given to whether or not child-neglect laws that carve out exceptions for spiritual healing groups are constitutional under the establishment clause of the First Amendment. Very recent cases, including some still in progress, are used for illustration.     

Feedback during exposure to inescapable shocks and subsequent shock-escape performance

In two experiments, we assessed the ability of a feedback stimulus during helplessness training to reduce the performance deficits common to inescapable shock. In each experiment, four groups of rats were exposed to either escapable shock (E), inescapable shock with a feedback stimulus following shock termination (Y-FS), inescapable shock with no feedback stimulus (Y-NFS), or no shock (N). The feedback stimulus eliminated the interference effects of inescapable shock when tested with an FR-3 lever press escape task (Experiment 1) or on an FR-1 task with a 3-s delay between the response and shock termination (Experiment 2). These results suggest that stress-induced biochemical changes may mediate the interference effects seen in inescapably shocked rats.     

Mental extrapolation in patterns constructed from memory

Finke and Pinker (1982, 1983) showed subjects an array of dots followed by an arrow in a blank field, and asked them to determine whether the arrow pointed to any of the previously seen dots. Response times were linearly related to the distance between the arrow and the nearest dot, suggesting that subjects spontaneously used an internal scanning or extrapolation process to perform the task. We replicate and extend this finding by varying the retention interval, and by employing a paradigm in which subjects’ eyes are closed and the arrows are described to them using a coordinate scheme. We also show that subjects are unable to predict the form of the data when the task simply is described to them. Results suggest that mental scanning along a straight path can be performed on images reconstructed from memory, and that it does not depend on the ongoing perception of a continuous surface, on physical eye movements, or on demand characteristics.