Children and adolescents discharged from public psychiatric hospital: Evaluation of outcome in a continuum of care

Ninety children and adolescents admitted to two state-operated psychiatric hospitals were followed from the time of their admission through one year post discharge. Data were collected from the children and adolescents, their families and clinicians at three intervals (during hospitalization, three months post discharge, and one year post discharge) to identify demographic, clinical, and service history characteristics of the children and adolescents, as well as to track their placement and other dispositional status following discharge from the hospital. The data indicated that the children and adolescents were seriously emotionally and behaviorally disturbed, came from families which were economically disadvantaged, and did not typically live in two-parent families. While the majority of the children and adolescents received recommended aftercare services during the three months following discharge from the hospital, there was a decline in placement stability for the children at the one-year post discharge followup. The most important predictors of successful outcome at discharge were living with a family member at the time of hospitalization and the participation of the family in the treatment planning during hospitalization.     

Therapeutic and redemptive aspects of religious confession

Religious confession provides a forum for the expression of individual identity and relational needs. As a ritual that gives public sanction to personal transformation and redemption, confession also connects the faithful to the larger community. Greek Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish ways of confession are surveyed to examine their historical and contemporary significance. Religious confession not only reflects meaning; it also creates meaning filtered through our psychological understanding of what constitutes sin. Clinical examples illustrate the need for therapists to become more aware of the relationship of their own values and countertransference in spiritual disclosure.     

Attitude accessibility and biased information processing: The moderating role of self-monitoring

High and low self-monitors read and evaluated two studies relevant to the deterrent effects of the death penalty, one that supported its deterrent effects and one that did not. Low self-monitors’ evaluations of the studies were significantly related to the accessibility of their attitudes toward capital punishment. The more accessible their attitudes were, the more favorable, relatively, were their evaluations of the study that supported their personal attitudes toward capital punishment. In contrast, attitude accessibility was unrelated to high self-monitors’ relative evaluations. This research was supported by a Faculty Research Grant from Union College to the first author and by an Internal Educational Fund grant from Union College to the second author. We thank Alison King, Leslie Silver, and Alison Snyder for their help in data collection.     

A cosine approximation to the normal distribution

A cosine function is suggested to approximate the normal distribution as a device for simplifying algebraic manipulations of the latter. Numerical evaluations remain straightforward and employ only the commonly available trigonometric tables. A method of visual curve fitting requiring only an oscilloscope is also described.     

A factor-analytic study of reasoning abilities

A battery of 32 tests was administered to a sample including 144 Air Force Officer Candidates and 139 Air Cadets. The factor analysis, using Thurstone's complete centroid method and Zimmerman's graphic method of orthogonal rotations, revealed 12 interpretable factors. The non-reasoning factors were interpreted asverbal comprehension, numerical facility, perceptual speed, visualization, andspatial orientation. The factors derived from reasoning tests were identified asgeneral reasoning, logical reasoning, education of perceptual relations, education of conceptual relations, education of conceptual patterns, education of correlates, andsymbol substitution. The logical-reasoning factor corresponds to what has been called deduction, but eduction of correlates is perhaps closer to an ability actually to make deductions. The area called induction appears to resolve into three eduction-of-relations factors. Reasoning factors do not appear always to transcend the type of test material used.Under Contract N6onr-23810 with the Office of Naval Research. The views expressed here are not nesessarily shared by the Office of Naval Research. These studies are under the general direction of J. P. Guilford. P. R. Christensen is assistant director. A. L. Comrey was in direct charge of this study during its early stages and R. F. Green during most of its progress.     

Qualities and locations of stimuli and responses affecting discrimination learning of chinchillas (Chinchilla laniger) and pigeons (Columba livia)

Chinchillas and pigeons were used as subjects in separate experiments to study interactions among stimulus and response characteristics in discrimination learning. Both the stimuli and the responses could differ with respect to their "quality" and their "location." Bright versus dim lights and upper versus lower lights served as the stimulus qualities and stimulus locations for the chinchillas, respectively. Red versus green lights and upper versus lower lights served as the stimulus qualities and stimulus locations for the pigeons, respectively. Respond versus no-respond and respond-left versus respond-right served as the response qualities and response locations, for both species, respectively. In both experiments, response-quality performance was superior when the discriminative stimuli differed in quality than when they differed in location, whereas response-location performance was superior when the discriminative stimuli differed in location than when they differed in quality. These results were interpreted within the framework provided by a general law of learning, that is, the "quality-location hypothesis."     

The perception of speaking rate using visual information from a talker’s face

It has been well documented that listeners are able to estimate speaking rate when listening to a talker, but almost no work has been done on perception of rate information provided by looking at a talker’s face. In the present study, the method of magnitude estimation was used to collect estimates of the rate at which a talker was speaking. The estimates were collected under four experimental conditions: auditory only, visual only, combined auditory-visual, and inverted visual only. The results showed no difference in the slope of the functions relating perceived rate to physical rate for the auditory only, visual only, and combined auditory-visual presentations. There was, however, a significant difference between the normal visual-only and the inverted-visual presentations. These results indicate that there is visual rate information available on a talker’s face and, more importantly, suggest that there is a correspondence between the auditory and visual modalities for the perception of speaking rate, but only when the visual information is presented in its normal orientation.     

Differences in children's peer sociometric and attribution ratings due to context and type of aggressive behavior

Sociometric and attribution (internality and responsibility) ratings of boys performing different kinds of aggression (hostile and instrumental hitting and pushing) and of neutral behavior occurring in two contexts (provoked and unprovoked) were investigated in an analogue fashion. Thirty fifth- and sixth-grade boys viewed and rated 12 brief videotaped scenes of two unfamiliar male peers interacting, presented in one of six random orders. Provoked aggression resulted in less dislike, less worthiness of punishment, and greater attribution to external causes than unprovoked aggression. Instrumental and hostile aggression produced lower liking ratings and were viewed as more deserving of punishment than neutral behavior but did not differ from each other. Results support distinctions between provoked and unprovoked aggression but not between hostile and instrumental aggression, at least in terms of their functional impact on peer judgements.