Young children's attention to dyadic conversation as modified by sociometric status

Forty-eight American children, 12 popular and 12 rejected children from Grades 3 and 6, were paired with same-sex friends and nonfriends on an interactive task. Children were videotaped and their interactions judged for the amount and type of attention each child in the dyad gave to each other and the conversation. Main dependent measures included mutual engagements, acknowledgement of the partner, getting the attention of the partner, attention to the conversation, and social impact of the utterances. Both rejected and popular children attended to the conversation and the partner, but rejected children appeared to overattend in several ways. The interactions of rejected children and their matches involved more mutual engagements, conversational initiators, facilitators, terminators, and nonverbal attention-getting devices. Sex and developmental effects were also found.     

Differential effects of high-level and low-level postpassage questions

This experiment compared the effects of high-level and low-level postpassage questions, when presented immediately after the passage segment containing the answer to the question, on college students' free recall of expository prose passages. Low-vocabulary subjects' recall of high-level information not specifically quizzed by the postpassage questions was significantly greater in the condition in which the questions quizzed a high-level unit than in the low-question and no-question conditions, p less than .05. These results are interpreted as being consistent with a direct-access explanation which assumes that questions presented in close temporal contiguity to the quizzed information directly access that information in memory and that fewer associative links have to be traversed in the spread of activation from high-level units to other related information in the hierarchy. The effect of type of question in this experiment was compared with that found in an earlier experiment (Wilhite, 1982) involving delayed question presentation.     

Sharing the holocaust experience: communication behaviors and their consequences in families of ex-partisans and ex-prisoners of concentration camps

This study concerns the manner in which the traumatic events suffered by the parent in the Nazi holocaust are communicated to the second generation born after the Second World War. Additionally we investigated the effects of differences in wartime experiences on subsequent communication behaviors. Communication behaviors in families whose parents had been prisoners in concentration camps were compared with those of families who had displayed active resistance (i.e., were partisans) during the Second World War. The data indicate greater legitimacy and openness in discussing holocaust-related issues in the homes of ex-partisans than in the homes of ex-prisoners in concentration camps. Also, sons and daughters of the former group have better knowledge of the holocaust and hold more favorable attitudes than do sons and daughters in the second group. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Our Personal and Professional Lives: Learning Positive Connotation and Circular Questioning

The work of the Center for the Study of the Family in Milan has had wide influence. We describe its influence on us--the positive connotation of many car journeys, our self-training, and changes in how we view, and function in, our personal and professional lives.     

From General Laws To Singularities

This article comprises several sections. The first is devoted to an explanation of a number of notions stemming from work by Ilya Prigogine and others on open systems far from equilibrium. As a result of this work, I have been able to stand back from the traditional approach employed in family therapy, that of open systems at equilibrium (the theory of Ludwig von Bertalanffy). The second section describes a clinical example based on elements close to Prigogine's theories. In the third part I develop an approach that--although continuing to draw on Prigogine's work--is much more closely linked to the research I have carried out with Félix Guattari over recent years. In this part I attempt to study a level that, in my view, has too often been left outside the field of inquiry: that of couplings between "singularities" of members of the family system and the therapist. A clinical case is presented in which this "semiotic" level, as Guattari terms it, is used together with that of the "intrinsic rules" of the system. Finally, I propose a few avenues of inquiry and research on the basis of the concepts presented.     

Suicidal thoughts and their relationship to family stress and personal problems among high school seniors and college undergraduates

This study investigated the incidence of serious suicidal thoughts (ST's) among 207 high school seniors and 901 college students, and the relationship between ST's and family stress, drinking and drug-abuse problems, and delinquency in these groups. Over 10% of the high school and over 6% of the college students reported ST's. Those considering suicide attempts in both groups were more likely than their classmates to view their parents as having many conflicts with each other, to think of their relationship with their father as poor, to see at least one of their parents as either angry or depressed much of the time, and to perceive themselves as having a drinking or drug-abuse problem. These findings support the call for comprehensive counseling programs at both the high school and college levels.     

Adolescent sexuality in a therapeutic community: staff countertransference issues

Issues connected with sexuality such as heterosexual relationships, homosexuality, sexual identity, and seductiveness, create conflict and countertransference dilemmas for staff who work with psychiatric patients in a therapeutic community. When the therapeutic community is composed of adolescents, these issues are exacerbated since sexual identity and sexual development are major concerns. The staff reacts strongly to the issue of self-determination and violation/infringement on a basic human need. These philosophical differences have their roots in countertransference feelings. Staff sometimes find it difficult to confront adolescents on emotionally charged issues that have a sexual coloring. A system is proposed for articulating and working through these feelings. A unique solution is posited for solving this conflictual attitude (based on object relations theory), whereby the residential treatment center serves as the analog of the home in order to allow adolescents to develop a sense of self before they can move on to the halfway house where heterosexual behavior is allowed (as part of the therapeutic process). This facilitates the meeting of the "self" with the "other." This procedure is explored in light of Sullivan's concept of intimacy.