Morphologic agrammatism following a right hemisphere stroke in a dextral patient.

There is evidence of two major components of grammatic function in the brain: (1) morphologic, probably based in the postcentral perisylvian cortex, encompassing the selection of individual words and inflectional endings according to the rules of grammar; and (2) syntactic, probably based in the frontal lobes, encompassing construction of the overall structure of a sentence (syntax) to match the concept being considered. We present a stroke patient with impaired morphology but, unlike Broca's aphasics, relative sparing of syntax. He omitted 43% of articles, 40% of complementizers, 20% of pronouns, 27% of semantically marked prepositions, 43% of purely grammatic prepositions, and 22% of auxiliary verbs, but his average sentence length was 9.8 words and 64% of his sentences contained embedded clauses. He frequently intermingled two sentences to convey a given concept, juxtaposing words in grammatically unacceptable ways. This intermingling may represent either a grammatic "conduite d'approche," or a failure of the filtering function of a defective morphologic processor. His great difficulty in completing syntactic frames suggests that a more general form of the processes underlying grammatic morphology may play an important role in phrase structure generation.     

Effects of chronic variable stress and antidepressant drugs on behavioral inactivity during an uncontrollable stress: interaction between both treatments.

Rats submitted to a chronic variable stress regime exhibited more inactivity during inescapable shock as compared with unstressed rats. Besides, chronic treatments with desipramine, imipramine, clomipramine, or phenelzine reduce the amount of inactivity exhibited during this aversive experience. Furthermore, the combination of both chronic treatments--stress and antidepressants--resulted in a potentiation of the antidepressant effect alone. This higher antidepressant efficacy may result from the interaction of the neural mechanisms triggered by chronic stress exposure and antidepressant drugs.     

Nifedipine blocks retention of a visual discrimination task in chicks.

Reports that the dihydropyridine Ca2+ channel antagonists may facilitate memory led to the present study of the behavioral effects of nifedipine. Ninety-two 4-day-old male chicks received 0, 100 nM, 100 microM, or 10 mM nifedipine. Drugs were administered in volumes of 2 microliters into the fourth cerebral ventricle 5 min before training on a visual discrimination task. Nifedipine did not produce any detectable changes in behavior during acquisition trials. Retention, however, was impaired 24 h after training in the 100 nM and 100 microM nifedipine-treated chicks, which made significantly more errors than controls. Nifedipine did not affect the amount of time required to complete the task. No effects on body weight gain were detected, suggesting that the memory impairment was not due to a change in feeding behavior. These data are discussed in terms of the role of calcium-dependent processes in memory.     

Attentional demands of processing shape in three-dimensional space: evidence from visual search and precuing paradigms.

The hypothesis that representation of projective shape is preattentive whereas representation of objective shape in three-dimensional space requires allocation of attention was tested in 2 visual search and 2 precuing experiments. In the visual search experiments, the slope for projective shape search was expected to approach 0 and that for objective shape search was expected to be a positive monotonic function of set size. In the precuing experiments, the effects of precuing were expected to be largely limited to the task requiring representation of objective shape. The overall pattern of results conformed to expectations. The findings are interpreted in the context of a model of shape-at-a-slant processing set out by Epstein and Lovitts (1985) and Epstein and Babler (1989, 1990).     

The associative basis of contingent color aftereffects.

According to a conditioning analysis of the orientation-contingent color aftereffect (McCollough effect, ME), orientation stimulus (grids) become associated with color. Contrary to this interpretation are reports that simple forms cannot be used to elicit illusory color and that the ME is not degraded by decreasing the grid-color correlation. The present results indicate: (a) Form stimuli can contingently elicit color aftereffects; (b) even a non-patterned stimulus--the lightness of a frame surrounding a colored area--can contingently elicit color aftereffects; (c) this frame lightness-contingent aftereffect, like the ME, persists for at least 24 hr; and (d) the frame lightness-contingent aftereffect can be used to demonstrate that correlational manipulations affect the ME, as they affect other types of conditional responses.     

Associative regulation of Pavlovian fear conditioning: unconditional stimulus intensity, incentive shifts, and latent inhibition.

Conditional stimuli (CS) associated with painful unconditional stimuli (US) produce a naloxone-reversible analgesia. The analgesia serves as a negative-feedback regulation of fear conditioning that can account for the impact of US intensity and CS predictiveness on Pavlovian fear conditioning. In Experiment 1 training under naloxone produced learning curves that approached the same high asymptote despite US intensity. Shifting drug treatment during acquisition had effects that paralleled US intensity shifts. In Experiment 3 naloxone reversed Hall-Pearce (1979) negative transfer using a contextual CS, indicating that conditional analgesia acquired during the CS-weak-footshock phase retards acquisition in the CS-strong-footshock phase. Experiment 5 used a tone CS in both a latent-inhibition and a negative-transfer procedure. Only negative transfer was blocked by naloxone. Therefore, negative transfer but not latent inhibition is mediated by a reduction of US processing.     

Patterns of coping with cancer.

We identified five patterns of coping in a sample of 603 cancer patients: "seeking or using social support," "focusing on the positive," "distancing," "cognitive escape-avoidance," and "behavioral escape-avoidance." Relationships of these coping patterns to sociodemographic characteristics, medical factors, stress appraisals, psychotherapeutic experience, and emotional distress were tested using correlational and regression techniques. Type of cancer, time since diagnosis, and whether a person was currently in treatment had few or no relationships to coping. The specific cancer-related problem (e.g., pain, fear of future) was also not associated with how individuals coped. Perceptions of its stressfulness, however, were related to significantly more coping through social support and more of both forms of escape-avoidance. Coping through social support, focusing on the positive, and distancing was associated with less emotional distress, whereas using cognitive and behavioral escape-avoidance was associated with more emotional distress. Implications of the results for understanding coping processes and intervention with cancer patients are discussed.     

TOWARD A FEMINIST UNDERSTANDING OF WOMEN AND POWER

Both psychologists and feminists believe power is an important and ubiquitous concept, yet its definition and scope eludes both groups. In this introduction to a special issue on women and power, we suggest three points to help organize and interpret research in the area. First, definitions of power should center around the distinction between "power-over," the domination and control of one person or group over another, and "power-to" or personal empowerment. Second, power can be analyzed at different levels—societal, organizational, interpersonal, and individual—and, importantly, these levels interact. Third, power differences frequently underlie what appear to be gender differences in behavior; as society is currently configured, power and gender are never independent. Although the articles in this special issue often ask more questions than they answer, the present volume adds a feminist perspective to the psychological study of power.     

By your attributions you shall be known: Consequences of attributional accounts for professional and gender identities

We demonstrate the power of a situated identity perspective for understanding the different attributional patterns of women and men in an academic setting and their differential experiences in the workplace. Two explanations for the gender difference found in attributions of success are considered. This difference may be due either to different identities being attributed to men and women employing the same explanations for success and failure, or to the inconsistency between actions that confirm a professional (academic) identity and women's gender identity. The results of this survey of senior social science faculty men support the latter explanation but not the former. An editorial acceptance was seen as more professional but less feminine than a rejection. In the eyes of senior colleagues, the modest account of success, typical of women academics, enhances femininity but detracts from professionalism. The self-serving account typical of men makes the offerer appear less feminine but more professional. Thus in their situated identity claims, successful academic women, but not men, must choose between their professional and gender identities. Despite the movement of women into university social science positions, the role of academic has a masculine face.Order of authors was determined by a coin toss.