Structural and strategic approaches to psychosomatic families.

Patterns of relatedness characteristic of psychosomatic families are discussed. A step-wise intervention procedure based on structural and strategic approaches is presented. The goals of the procedure are to establish symptomatic relief and modify concurrently the patterns of relatedness. The procedure is applied to a sample of families in which a child presents with psychogenic abdominal pain. This paper is intended as a detailed and practical guide to working with such families; a degree of generalization is possible, as well.     

The effects of alcohol and extreme provocation on the use of a highly noxious electric shock

Intoxicated and nonintoxicated subjects were given the opportunity to administer a potentially injurious level of shock to an opponent who behaved in either a provocative or an extremely provocative manner. The provocative opponent attempted to administer high-intensity shocks to the subject. The extremely provocative opponent attempted to administer high-intensity shocks and the potentially injurious level of shock. The intoxicated subjects in the extreme provocation condition evidenced the greatest increase in the use of the potentially injurious shock. It was concluded that aggression is a function of the interaction of alcohol consumption and level of provocation.     

Increasing Career Center Accessibility for the Blind

To improve career planning services for visually impaired persons, the career center at Florida State University developed a self-directed program. This article describes strategies for making career information materials and resources more accessible to the blind.     

Tune recognition with reduced pitch and interval information

Twenty subjects were tested on their ability to recognize simple tunes from which rhythm information had been removed. Only the first phrase of each tune was presented. The purpose of the experiment was (a) to determine whether stimuli containing only high harmonics can evoke a sense of musical pitch, and (b) to provide a set of data in normal subjects with which the performance of deaf subjects whose auditory nerve is stimulated electrically can be compared. Each subject was tested on five sets of stimuli presented in a counterbalanced order. These stimuli were (I) pulse trains high-pass filtered at 2 kHz, with repetition rates in the range of 100-200 p.p.s.; (2) as in (I) but high-pass filtered at 4 kHz; (3) sinusoids with musical intervals compressed, so that the “octave” was a ratio of I:I·3; (4) sinusoids with the musical intervals expanded, so that the “octave” was a ratio of I:4; (5) sinusoids of a constant frequency in which the normal frequency changes were translated into intensity changes, each semitone being represented by a 3 dB change in level. The results indicate that a pattern of intensity changes does not support tune recognition, and that, although the pitch contour alone allows reasonable performance, subjects do use musical interval information in recognizing tunes. Stimuli containing only high harmonics can provide such interval information, and thus can evoke a sense of musical pitch. Preliminary results from a deaf subject stimulated electrically with an electrode on the surface of the cochlea indicate that such stimulation can also evoke a sense of musical pitch. It is concluded that musical pitch information can be carried in the time-pattern of nerve impulses in the auditory nerve.     

Probabilities of homomorphic mappings from multiple graphs

Each partition of a population defines a homomorphic mapping of sociometric graphs onto a corresponding set of image graphs. For sets of images selected by substantive importance, the expected number of mappings is calculated when the array of sociometric graphs is drawn at random with equal probabilities. Upper and lower bounds are computed for the probability of finding at least one mapping from an array to the given images, and for the expected number of mappings given that there is at least one. Results of small Monte Carlo trials are reported.     

Independent effects of achievement motivation and overt attribution on achievement behavior

The cognitive attribution theory of achievement motivation was examined in a series of three studies. The persistence of performance under failure feedback was investigated, with improvement over trials on a digit-symbol substitution task constituting the measure of persistence. Although evidence was obtained relating overt causal attributions of failure to persistence, partial correlation statistics indicated that this relationship was independent of achievement motivation. Partial correlation statistics also revealed that the relationship between achievement motivation and persistence was independent of attributional variables. In addition, greater persistence was exhibited by high- than by low-achievement subjects in the absence of attribution differences between these groups. Additional evidence was collected suggesting that the act of overt attribution was an ego-involving operation that led to these achievement differences in improvement. In general, achievement classification and overt causal attributions had separate effects on persistence, precluding the interpretation of achievement-related behavior in terms of attribution theory. Overt causal attributions were found to be, in part, a function of the ego-involving character of the task instructions, as was improvement.Portions of this research were conducted while L. A. White was supported by a Purdue University David Ross Research Fellowship; Kay Deaux, principal investigator.     

Prediction of success or failure in birth planning: An approach to prevention of individual and family stress

Following the view that individual future time perspective is an outcome of the socialization process, it was hypothesized that good contraceptors would display significantly longer future time extension than poor contraceptors. In a Planned Parenthood agency, 25 subjects from each group, constituting nearly the whole clinic population in these categories for a 3-month period, were given the Future Events Test during their clinic visits. The major hypothesis was confirmed, and also a significant tendency towards viewing future events more negatively was found among the poor contraceptors. Demographic data did not discriminate clearly between the two groups, though the poor contraceptors were somewhat younger and had a somewhat higher weekly family income. Use of personality variables in predicting birth-planning success or failure seems more promising than continued reliance solely on the sociocultural approach. Implications for screening and prevention in the interest of the individual, the family, and the community are discussed.     

The effect of social feedback contingent upon a non-social response in seven- and ten-month-old infants

Summary Acquisition of a manipulative response under contingent and non-contingent maternal social stimulation was examined in seven- and ten-month-old infants. Response acquisition was reliably deomonstrated in the case of the ten-month-old infants, but not in the case of the seven-month-old infants. However, despite no acquisition, the performance of the younger infants did differ from that obtained under non-contingent scheduling Examination of visual behaviour to the manipulandum and the feedback source revealed comparable profiles for both ages. The findings are interpreted in terms of the greater difficulty of mixed social/non-social contingency situations and discussed in the context of cognitive constraints on response acquisition in infancy.The conduct of this study was supported by a grant from the United Kingdom Social Science Research Council to H.R. Schaffer, and undertaken whilst the author was a Research Fellow in Psychology at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland.The author is grateful to W.M. Cheyne for advice and to Norman Sharp and Margaret Hunter who assisted with the data collection and analysis.     

Variations of Bender-Gestalt constriction and depression in adult psychiatric patients.

The present study explored variations of Bender-Gestalt constriction and their relation to depression. 20 Ss showing constriction of drawings on the upper half-page and 20 Ss showing constriction of drawings on the left half-page were compared with regard to MMPI Depression scores. No significant difference was found between these groups. However, when the constricted groups were combined and then compared with 40 Ss who did not show constriction of Bender drawings, the constricted group had significantly higher (p less than .05) MMPI Depression scores. Thus, variations in Bender constriction are not differently related to depression, but presence of constriction is an indicator. However, its rate of occurrence is so infrequent, appearing in only 5% of the records examined, that its clinical usefulness in the detection of depression is quite limited.     

The effects of verbal labelling on recognition memory for schematic faces

Four experiments investigated the effects of labelling on the encoding and recognition of schematic faces. In Experiments I and II, hard-to-label (H) faces were recognized better after labelling than after observing, whereas easy-to-label (E) faces were not significantly affected. However, E faces were recognized better after labelling when subjects were instructed to attend carefully to all features of the faces during viewing. In Experiments III and IV, which dealt with each kind of face separately, both E and H faces were recognized better after labelling than after observing. An additional improvement in recognition all of faces was found when labelling subjects knew which label was relevant on each recognition trial and were instructed to use it. It was concluded that (a) a verbal label functions mainly to direct attention to specific facial features during viewing, (b)the effect of the label on recognition is positive or negative depending on whether or not it directs attention to features which are functional for the recognition test, (c) the label also forms part of the representation of the face in memory, and (d) a label may serve as a mediator at the time of testing, but only in the presence of specific cues.