Coping strategies and psychological distress in cancer patients before autologous bone marrow transplant

The increased use of bone marrow transplantation (BMT) to treat a variety of cancers has led researchers to study psychological functioning of BMT patients. The majority of studies conducted, however, has focused on adjustment after transplantation. Cancer patients' use of coping strategies before undergoing this procedure may also relate to levels of psychological distress. Our aims were (1) to provide normative coping data, controlling for situation-specific variables with a homogeneous sample, targeted stressor, and fixed time point, using the Ways of Coping Questionnaire; and (2) to identify coping strategies associated with distress before high-dose chemotherapy. Subjects were 49 patients scheduled to receive high-dose chemotherapy and an autologous bone marrow transplant. Consistent with previous coping research, we found that escape-avoidance was related to psychological distress on several measures. Item endorsement analyses of the escape-avoidance subscale suggest that patients may have used more passive than active avoidance strategies. Subsequent participation in a longitudinal study was not affected by initial levels of avoidant coping.     

Personality,Self-Efficacy and Functioning in Management Teams: A Contribution to Validation

The relationship between individual difference variables and the contribution to team functioning was examined in 58 members of management teams. Extraversion and self-efficacy for working in teams were related to attraction to the team, which in turn was related to a rating of team effectiveness. Extraversion was also related directly to team effectiveness. The relationship between conscientiousness and team functioning was not clear. The results are considered supportive for the validity of self-efficacy for teams and extraversion as indicators of the ability and propensity of individuals to contribute to the functioning of management teams.     

WHY NO GUIDELINES FOR BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION?

This paper reviews the guidelines for behavioral programs published by the National Association of Retarded Children. The review discusses a number of reasons why guidelines should not be enunciated for behavior modification, e.g., the procedures of behavior modification appear to be no more or less subject to abuse and no more or less in need of ethical regulation than intervention procedures derived from any other set of principles and called by other terms. The review recommends alternative methods for protecting the rights of clients who participate in behavioral programs. Specifically, behavioral clinicians, like other therapists, should be governed by the ethics codes of their professions; also, the ethics of all intervention programs should be evaluated in terms of a number of critical issues.     

The effect of head tilt on meridional differences in acuity: Implications for orientation constancy

Horn and Hill (1969) and others have reported that a small number of units in the cat visual cortex undergo changes in receptive field orientation associated with body tilt. Such units reportedly compensate for tilt and may represent a mechanism for human orientation constancy. To test this, we measured meridional differences in visual acuity for head-vertical and head-tilted viewing conditions. The results of Experiment 1 did not directly support or refute the involvement of tilt-compensatory units. The results of Experiment 2, in which we controlled for countertorsion of the eyes, showed that meridional acuity differences correspond to the retinal and not the spatial orientation of the stimulus. We conclude that tilt-compensatory cortical units are not involved in human orientation constancy. The physiological evidence indicating the existence of tilt-compensatory units in the visual cortex is also reexamined.     

Parental separation/divorce and adolescents: An examination of factors mediating adaptation

This study examined the relationship between differences in current adjustment as they related to a number of demographic, personal, and situational factors for 65 late adolescents/young adults who had experienced this life transition. Utilizing multiple regression analyses, several factors emerged as particularly salient mediators of the adolescents' postdivorce adjustment, including distance from home, coping style, family cohesion, conflict and organization, and the use of family members for support. The importance of clarifying the role of psychological and situational mediating factors in order to understand the consequences of parental divorce and to organize preventive and ameliorative efforts for this population is discussed.     

Stereotypes of traditional and nontraditional childbearing roles

Childless college students (135 male, 135 female) evaluated one of three childbearing orientations by means of an adjective check list (ACL) and multiple-choice questions. Participants read one of three paragraphs describing a hypothetical woman who was either pregnant and happy with the pregnancy, pregnant and not happy with the pregnancy, or intentionally childfree. Results showed favorable stereotyping of pregnant-happy, strongly unfavorable stereotyping of pregnant-unhappy, and no stereotyping of childfree. Implications for research on childbearing orientations are discussed, as are participants' own plans regarding marriage, employment, and parenthood.     

Dissociative effects of flooding on a multivariate assessment of fear reduction and on jump-up avoidance extinction

Two experiments examined the effectiveness of three different amounts of flooding on hastening extinction of a jump-up avoidance response and on reducing fear as assessed by the multivariate fear assessment techniques of D. P. Corriveau and N. F. Smith (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 1978, 107, 145–158). In Experiment 1, a 40-min flooding treatment significantly hastened jump-up avoidance extinction, 10 min of flooding had a marginal effect, and 5 min had no effect. In Experiment 2, flooding treatments of 5, 10, and 40 min duration were all effective in reducing fear of the grid floor as indexed by seven of our nine dependent measures, including approach latency, safety test latency, and amount of time spent on the grids. Flooded subjects that were dumped onto the grid floor once at the start of the fear observation phase were found to show somewhat more fear reduction than were flooded subjects that were simply placed on the ledge at the outset of the fear observation phase and never dumped. These results, i.e., less flooding is required to reduce fear than to hasten avoidance extinction, are contrasted with those of previous experiments indicating that more flooding may be required to reduce fear than to hasten shuttlebox avoidance extinction. Such differences are discussed in the context of SSDR theory.     

Child psychopathology and deviant family hierarchies

The association between child psychopathology and reversals in family hierarchies (where the child is seen as equal or higher in the hierarchy than the parental figures) were examined with the Madanes Family Hierarchy Test on a sample of 177 clinic-referred boys. Madanes' original findings of the association of substance use and deviant family hierarchy were replicated in this younger sample, (age 7 to 12). Boys diagnosed with Conduct Disorder reported significantly more deviant hierarchies while boys diagnosed with Overanxious Disorder reported significantly fewer deviant hierarchies. Follow-up results revealed some instability and lack of informant agreement, but the hierarchy measure was not confounded by age, race, SES, IQ, or parents' marital status.