Senior citizens group: The supervisory process (A case of parallel processes in multiple systems)

As cost-effective treatment becomes mandatory, preventive psychiatry support groups in community settings offer one solution. The authors describe their experience establishing a group at a Senior Citizens Center. They focus on the supervision of the PGY III psychiatry resident who led the group and how the supervisory process reflected the conflicts in multiple systems: the group, the Senior Citizens Center, the hospital, and supervision. Guidelines are offered for establishing such groups.     

Sexual-discrimination learning in male Japanese quail (Coturnix coturnix japonica)

We investigated how male Japanese quail (Coturnix coturnix japonica) learn through extensive social and sexual experience to discriminate between male and female conspecifics. Opportunity for heterosexual copulation was important for this learning, but even extensive copulatory opportunity was not sufficient to produce a sexual discrimination; subjects also required exposure to other males. Exposure to females after copulatory opportunity did not produce a sexual discrimination but facilitated its acquisition. Time or exposure to only the visual features of male birds (provided by taxidermic models) after copulatory opportunity did not result in differential responding to male and female conspecifics. Finally, presenting stimulus birds one at a time proved to be a more sensitive test of sexual-discrimination learning than presenting two stimulus birds at the same time. The results indicate that sexual-discrimination learning is similar to conventional associative learning.     

An Exploration of Right-Hemisphere Contributions to the Pragmatic Impairments of Autism

This study examined the potential contribution of the right hemisphere to the communicative impairments of autism. Pragmatic language measures sensitive to right-hemisphere damage were administered to nonretarded adults with autism and to controls matched on age and intellectual ability. The experimental battery included measures of humor, inference, and indirect request comprehension. Autistic subjects performed significantly less well than controls on all measures, replicating results of an earlier investigation by Rumsey and Hanahan (Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology,12,81, 1990). The performance of the autistic group on the three tasks was also similar to that of right-hemisphere stroke patients reported previously (Molloy, Brownell, & Gardner, in Y. Joanette and H. M. Brownell (Eds.),Discourse ability and brain damage: Theoretical and empirical perspectives,New York: Springer-Verlag, 1990, pp. 113–130). Generalizability of these results and implications for the neuropathology of autism are discussed.     

Local crime as a natural hazard: Implications for understanding the relationship between disorder and fear of crime

Summary We have suggested the following: Local crimes and natural hazards share several objective similarities and similarities in how they are perceived. Although local crimes and natural hazards are clearly different in numerous respects, these points of analogy suggest that in several ways responses to local disorder may be similar to responses to hazards. If this is the case, processes used to explain how persons respond to disasters may help explain a recurrent puzzle in the responses to disorder literature: the loose linkages between local disorder levels and fear levels.Future research needs include developing a fuller understanding of how other contextual factors mediate or moderate the processes discussed here, how these processes are related to and may mediate behavioral responses to crime, and how these behaviors in turn influence perceptions. We have suggested here that anticrime behaviors may result in some disadaptation to the threat, thereby elevating fear, and have provided evidence to that effect. In addition it is important to ascertain how the points of analogy between crime as a natural hazard and crime as an environmental stressor may be melded to develop more insight than afforded by either perspective considered singly. The heuristic developed here suggests some additional considerations for policy makers involved in anticrime or fear reduction programs.Irv Altman, Paul Bell, Joan McCord, Aaron Podolefsky, and Carol Werner provided helpful and encouraging comments on earlier drafts.     

The transition from expectancy to parenthood: Impact of the firstborn child on men and women

In this short-term longitudinal study, 31 middle-class primigravidae and their husbands were seen once during the last trimester of pregnancy and again when their infants were 6 months old. At both times, a common core of self-assessment instruments was administered: mood scales, social change ratings, anticipation/experience of parenthood, and a modified Bem satisfaction scale. Some additional items were given at parenthood. For both men and women, expectancy was marked by optimism and contentment, despite some emotional and physical strain. Similarly, as parents of an infant, subjects rated the experience as highly positive. However, the transition to parenthood involved major role upheaval with both more positive and more negative changes reported by women than men. Despite these changes, women displayed considerable stability in mood and self-satisfaction over time and situation. In contrast, measures of the anticipation and self-reported experience of parenthood revealed no consistency for women; the types of mothers they turned out to be were unrelated to their expectations. Men successfully predicted their parenting behavior on more than half of the dimensions measured. The results were discussed in terms of the stresses inherent in role changes encountered during transitions from one stage of life to the next.This research was supported by funds from the Boystown Center for the Study of Youth Development at Stanford University. Special thanks to Barbara Aschenbrenner for her assistance in all phases of the research.     

Ontogeny and adult behavior of mice with congenital neural tube defects

Effects of abnormal neural tube development were studied in immature and adult mice. The behavior of affected adult mice was found to resemble that of mice that exhibit the "waltzer syndrome." Behavioral ontogenetic studies indicate that effected mice are deficient in labyrinthine responses as shown by the late development or lack of negative geotaxic behaviors and the delayed loss of pivoting behavior. Retarded maturation of neural responses was indicated by a delay in the appearance of the startle response. Evidence that circling behavior in adult mice of the "waltzer syndrome" may be a result of central nervous system disorders alone, or in concert with abnormalities of the inner ear, was provided by the fact that open field activity was increased in affected mice that exhibit circling behavior as adults.     

Ear asymmetry in a dichotic detection task

Pairs of consonant-vowel (CV) syllables were presented dichotically to Ss who were instructed to monitor for the presence of a target CV which could occur in either ear. Ss responded by depressing a response button ; reaction time (RT) was also recorded. Right ear targets were detected 6.2% more frequently, on the average, than left ear targets and had an average RT 50 msec quicker than their left ear counterparts. These results demonstrate the existence of a right ear superiority in dichotic listening when a nonverbal motor response measure is used, supporting the contention that the ear asymmetry phenomenon is truly perceptual in nature and not merely due to the lateralization of verbal output. Two alternative explanations of the RT difference between left and right ear targets are offered. One attributes this difference to the time necessary for intercortical transfer of right hemisphere information, while the second holds that it is due to the longer times needed by the right hemisphere to process information projected to it.     

Young children's processing of asymmetrical and symmetrical patterns

Dot patterns varying in type of symmetry (double symmetry, vertical symmetry, horizontal symmetry, and asymmetry) were presented tachistoscopically for 200 msec, followed by a patterned mask, to kindergarten, second-grade, and fourthgrade children. All subjects reported symmetrical patterns more accurately than asymmetrical patterns. Double symmetry patterns were reproduced more accurately than vertical symmetry patterns, and vertical symmetry patterns were reproduced more accurately than horizontal symmetry patterns. These results stand in marked contrast to previous research by demonstrating that the ability to process symmetrical relationships evolves early in perceptual development. There was a suggestion that subjects of all ages perceived information about the type of symmetry presented in the display, but there were agerelated differences in subjects' abilities to use this knowledge in constructing their responses. Additionally, analyses revealed no age-related biases toward imposing symmetrical responses on asymmetrical patterns.