The GRIMS. A psychometric instrument for the assessment of marital discord

Research in marital therapy has been disadvantaged by the lack of a good, short and recent psychometric questionnaire to objectively assess the state of a marriage for research, demographic and clinical purposes. The Golombok Rust Inventory of Marital State (GRIMS) is a companion questionnaire to the Golombok Rust Inventory of Sexual Satisfaction (GRISS), and concentrates on aspects other than the sexual in a dyadic relationship between two adults living together. It is a 28 item psychometrically constructed inventory designed to produce a single scale along which changes in a marriage may develop as marital therapy progresses. It has been shown to be valid for this purpose, and to have a good reliability.     

Values and Recovery From Alcoholism Through Alcoholics Anonymous

This report reviews the literature on the values of alcoholics and addicts in treatment and presents data that suggest a shift in values is involved in recovery from alcoholism through participation in Alcoholics Anonymous and that values clarification and value therapy may be useful in chemical dependency treatment.     

Testosterone and personality among college students and military veterans

Relationships of serum and saliva to personality were examined among 401 college students in four laboratory studies and 5,236 military veterans in one archival study. Among the students, there were few relationships between testosterone and traditional personality measures. Among the veterans, MMPI scores and DSM-III diagnoses showed testosterone related to drug and alcohol abuse, antisocial and generally intemperate behavior, and effective disorders. Consistent with social control theory, correlations were higher among veterans who were lower in socioeconomic status. It appears likely that testosterone has innate effects that are socially undesirable but can be attenuated by bonds between the individual and society. Effect sizes were small, suggesting that testosterone will have noticeable effects only in large populations or individuals who differ markedly from the population mean. Further research should focus upon antisocial correlates of testosterone and conditions that produce marked changes in testosterone levels.     

Laws,chances and properties

The paper develops a unified account of both deterministic and indeterministic laws of nature which inherits the merits but not the defects of the best existing accounts. As in Armstrong's account, laws are embodied in facts about universals; but not in higher‐order relations between them, and the necessity of laws is not primitive but results from their containing chances of 0 or 1. As in the Ramsey‐Lewis account, law statements would be the general axioms and theorems of the simplest deductive theory of everything; but because laws are not so defined, simplicity of statement is not a criterion of law‐hood.     

Efficacy of behavioral management and patient education on vascular access cleansing compliance in hemodialysis patients

Compared four treatment conditions to test their ability to enhance compliance with vascular access cleansing (VAC) procedures in a group of 56 hemodialysis patients. The conditions were patient education, behavioral management with monetary incentive, patient education/behavioral management, and attention control. Behavioral observers rated VAC behavior at pretreatment, posttreatment 1-month follow-up, and 1-year follow-up. Knowledge of VAC procedures was also assessed via a questionnaire at pretreatment and posttreatment. Data were analyzed using repeated-measures multivariate analyses of variance. Results indicated that the patients in the education/behavioral, behavioral, and education groups gave significantly more correct answers on our VAC knowledge questionnaires at posttreatment than did patients in the attention control group. Further, patients in the education/behavioral and behavioral groups completed significantly more VAC steps at posttreatment and 1-month follow-up than did patients in the education group and in the attention control group. Differences were not maintained at 1-year follow-up, although more than 50% of the patients were lost to follow-up. Implications of the present findings for behavioral and educational interventions are discussed.     

How far can attraction-caused misalignment account for the Morinaga misalignment effect?

Summary When a line (the pointer) is collinear with a dot, the addition of a second line (the induction line) contiguous with the dot or near it may cause the pointer to appear to be collinear with a point further along or nearer to the induction line. The geometrical relations upon which this effect, which we call attraction-caused misalignment, depends have been studied with the Obonai and Wundt-Loeb (Hotopf, 1981; Hotopf & Brown, 1988) figures. Drawing upon the studies of misalignment in the Morinaga figure carried out by Restle (1976), Day, Bellamy, and Norman (1983), and Day and Kasperczyk (1985), as well as upon two new experiments, we show that misalignment in the Morinaga figure is also attraction-caused misalignment, as previously defined. We conclude with a discussion of a number of theories that aim at accounting for attraction misalignment.     

Time courses in visual-information processing: Some theoretical considerations

Summary In the literature two different views with regard to the time course of activation of recognition units —hypothetical entities that represent identity information —are proposed. Both views are derived from a restricted set of phenomena in visual perception. The first view gets its intuitions from phenomena such as those summarized by Bloch's law; these phenomena show integration or summation of activation over time. This grow-and-grow view assumes that recognition units accumulate activation gradually over times The second view finds its inspiration in phenomena such as Mach-bands and simultaneous contrast; these phenomena show inhibition or steady-state suppression over time. This grow-and-shrink view assumes that the activation levels increase fast initially and then start to decrease.The perception literature strongly suggests that it may be light intensity that determines whether mainly integration (and phenomena such as Bloch's law) or inhibition (and phenomena such as Mach-bands) is obtained. So it is also likely that both information-processing views apply only to a limited range of intensity conditions; the grow-and-grow view to conditions of low-flight intensities, and the grow-and-shrink view to conditions of intermediate-and high-light intensities.It is argued that, to arrive at a complete view, a visual phenomenon that applies to the complete range of light intensities should be taken as a background for generating hypotheses about time courses in visual-information processing. The Broca-Sulzer effect is such a phenomenon. Starting from this phenomenon a simple, synthesizing, information-processing model is derived that is compatible with both the grow-and-grow view and the grow-andshrink view. It is shown that, besides the relevant temporal properties, this model also produces the appropriate spatial properties.     

Research on working women: A report card of 22 journals

The study was part of an official project of the Women in Management Division of the Academy of Management to examine the status of research in gender issues in organizations. It specifically looked at 22 major scholarly and trade journals plus the Proceedings of the Academy of Management for the six-year period of 1983–1988 to determine quantity, patterns, and trends in publication of research on issues of interest to the domain of the division. Results show a downward trend in gender-issue publication at a time when working women are becoming an ever-increasing percentage of the work force. This is particularly true of the so-called prestige journals. Psychology journals accounted for 64% of the total, management 13.4%, personnel 19%, and Proceedings 3.5%. Implications for research and careers are discussed.A shorter, less-complete version of this paper was presented in summary form at the annual meeting of The Academy of Management in Washington, DC, August 1989 as part of a symposium for the Women in Management Division.     

Sex role flexibility and prosocial behavior among preschool children

The relationship between sex role flexibility and prosocial behavior among preschool children was investigated. Subjects included 16 boys and 18 girls, ranging in age from 36 to 60 months, from intact families of the upper middle class. A nonhierarchical multiple regression analysis was undertaken to determine the contributions of the predictor variables of sex, age, IQ, and sex role flexibility, as well as their interactions with prosocial behavior (criterion variable). Results indicated that while the overall regression model was not significant, the variable of Sex × Sex Role Flexibility did contribute significantly to the model. Inspection of the correlation coefficients associated with this variable revealed that while sex role flexibility and prosocial behavior among boys were significantly and positively related, among girls no significant relationship was found.     

Adding new information to semantic memory: how much learning is enough to produce automatic priming?

A series of experiments investigated the integration of new vocabulary words into semantic memory and the creation of new associations between preexisting, but previously unrelated, words. The ability of the newly learned vocabulary words and associations to facilitate lexical decisions when serving as primes under conditions associated with automatic processing was used to index integration. The results indicate that very extensive study is necessary for such integration to occur and that it is easier to add a new word to semantic memory than to establish a link between two formerly unconnected words already in semantic memory. The implications of these results for models of semantic memory and the episodic/semantic distinction are considered.