A Tribute to James Gordon Kelly

During the June 2001, eighth biennial meeting of the Society for Community Research and Action in Atlanta, a wide variety of community psychologists across generations attended a tribute in honor of James Gordon Kelly. What follows is an attempt to capture the spirit of the afternoon tribute as expressed through remarks made by colleagues and readings of letters sent by those unable to attend. The wide range of individuals represented here attests to the many additive ways in which Jim has cared about the field of community psychology and has contributed to its essence. Three additional invited contributions are included wherein Dick Reppucci, Rhona Weinstein, and Julian Rappaport reflect on the influence of Jim on their own career and on the development of the field.     

Priming effects for affective vs. neutral faces

Affective and Neutral Tasks (faces with negative or neutral content, with different lighting and orientation) requiring reaction time judgments of poser identity were administered to 32 participants. Speed and accuracy were better for the Affective than Neutral Task, consistent with literature suggesting facilitation of performance by affective content. Priming effects were significant for the Affective but not Neutral Task. An Explicit Post-Test indicated no conscious knowledge of the stimulus frequency that was associated with performance facilitation. Faster performance by female vs. male participants, and differential speeds and susceptibility to priming of different emotions were also found. Anger and shock were responded to most rapidly and accurately in several conditions, showed no gender differences, and showed significant priming for both RT and accuracy. Fear and pain were responded to least accurately, were associated with faster female than male reaction time, and the accuracy data showed a kind of reverse priming.     

The development of interpretations for novel noun-noun conceptual combinations during the early school years

This research investigates issues surrounding early school children's use of the similarity between head and modifier terms in deriving interpretations for novel noun-noun conceptual combinations. In these experiments, 6- and 9-year-olds and adults were asked to formulate interpretations of similar and dissimilar conceptual combinations. Both children and adults were sensitive to the similarity aspect of conceptual combinations, although the children had some difficulty with the property interpretations that high-similarity combinations require. Next, we examined 40 popular children's books for the presence of noun-noun conceptual combinations. Adult participants provided interpretations for these combinations and rated the similarity of the head and modifier nouns. Results indicated that there were few high-similarity combinations and few combinations requiring property interpretations, suggesting that children have limited exposure to highly similar combinations and property interpretations. Further analysis of children's interpretations indicates that they may have difficulty in selecting and integrating properties of the modifier onto the head, a process required by property interpretations.     

The science of public messages for suicide prevention: a workshop summary

There is minimal guidance for efforts to create effective public messages that increase awareness that suicide is preventable. To address this need, several agencies in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Annenberg Foundation convened a workshop consisting of suicide prevention advocates and persons with expertise in public health evaluation, suicide contagion, decision-making, and marketing. "Logic models" were used to define intended messages and audiences, assumed mechanisms of change, and outcomes. This summary describes some of the challenges and opportunities identified by workshop participants in evaluating public awareness campaigns in suicide prevention, technical assistance needs, and a proposed research agenda.     

Memory failures appraisal in younger and older adults: role of individual difference and event outcome variables

The authors examined the role of individual difference and event outcome variables in younger and older adults' memory failures appraisal. Participants read vignettes that described fictitious younger characters (in their 20s-30s) or older characters (in their 60s-70s) who had experienced a minor or severe consequence of their forgetfulness. The authors solicited attribution ratings on the potential causes of the forgetfulness and memory opinion ratings. Younger and older adults' ratings were largely similar, although age differences occurred on the effort and luck attribution scales. The consequences of the forgetting had a sizable impact on both the attribution and memory opinion ratings. Individual differences in self-reported memory had a relatively small impact on causal attribution and memory opinion ratings. These results suggested that people weigh their judgments of fictitious forgetful characters against event outcomes more so than ageist beliefs that portray a negative image of cognitive competence in later life.     

Body image ups and downs: prediction of intra-individual level and variability of women's daily body image experiences

This investigation assessed body image states in the context of everyday life among 108 college women. Participants initially completed measures of body image traits and eating attitudes and subsequently called an automated telephonic response system twice daily for 6 days to convey current body image experiences on the Body Image States Scale. The research examined the extent to which selected pretest variables predicted the level and variability of body image states. As hypothesized, less favorable body image state levels were associated with lower trait body image satisfaction, more body image dysphoria, more dysfunctional investment in appearance, more disturbed eating attitudes, and the use of less adaptive and more maladaptive body image coping strategies. Also as expected, body image variability was predicted by psychological investment in one's appearance, disturbed eating attitudes, and appearance-fixing coping strategies. Implications of the results and future research directions are discussed.     

From Benign Mirror to Demon Lover: An Object Relations View of Compulsion Versus Desire

This article addresses the terrifying power of the father as a dynamic force within the psyche of the female. Its particular focus is on how the psychodynamic form of father internalization within the female effects her creative process and her creative work. Two cases vignettes of female writers are used to illustrate the interaction of traumatizing parental behavior and the daughters incestuous desire on promoting compulsions and inhibitions in creative work. Writing blocks will be seen as a symptom of trauma and psychic conflict that has taken place in the oedipal and post oedipal years, as opposed to the creative compulsions that result from primal stage preoedipal trauma.Address correspondence to Susan Kavaler-Adler, Ph.D., ABPP, Object Relations Institute for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, 115 East 9th Street, 12P New York, NY 10003; e-mail: SUSKA674@aol.com.     

Environmental toxicants and developmental disabilities: a challenge for psychologists

Developmental, learning, and behavioral disabilities are a significant public health problem. Environmental chemicals can interfere with brain development during critical periods, thereby impacting sensory, motor, and cognitive function. Because regulation in the United States is based on limited testing protocols and essentially requires proof of harm rather than proof of lack of harm, some undefined fraction of these disabilities may reflect adverse impacts of this "vast toxicological experiment" (H. L. Needleman, as quoted in B. Weiss & P. J. Landrigan, 2000, p. 373). Yet the hazards of environmental pollutants are inherently preventable. Psychologists can help prevent developmental disabilities by mobilizing and affecting public policy, educating and informing consumers, contributing to interdisciplinary research efforts, and taking action within their own homes and communities to reduce the toxic threat to children.     

On the limits of infants' quantification of small object arrays

Recent work suggests that infants rely on mechanisms of object-based attention and short-term memory to represent small numbers of objects. Such work shows that infants discriminate arrays containing 1, 2, or 3 objects, but fail with arrays greater than 3 [Feigenson, L., & Carey, S. (2003). Tracking individuals via object-files: Evidence from infants' manual search. Developmental Science, 6, 568-584; Feigenson, L., Carey, S., & Hauser, M. (2002). The representations underlying infants' choice of more: Object files versus analog magnitudes. Psychological Science, 13(2), 150-156]. However, little is known about how infants represent arrays exceeding the 3-item limit of parallel representation. We explored possible formats by which infants might represent a 4-object array. Experiment 1 used a manual search paradigm to show that infants successfully discriminated between arrays of 1 vs. 2, 2 vs. 3, and 1 vs. 3 objects. However, infants failed to discriminate 1 vs. 4 despite the highly discriminable ratio, providing the strongest evidence to date for object-file representations underlying performance in this task. Experiment 2 replicated this dramatic failure to discriminate 1 from 4 in a second paradigm, a cracker choice task. We then showed that infants in the choice task succeeded at choosing the larger quantity with 0 vs. 4 crackers and with 1 small vs. 4 large crackers. These results suggest that while infants failed to represent 4 as “exactly 4”, “approximately 4”, “3”, or as even as “a plurality”, they did represent information about the array, including the existence of a cracker or cracker-material and the size of the individual objects in the array.     

Never getting to zero: Elementary school students' understanding of the infinite divisibility of number and matter

Clinical interviews administered to third- to sixth-graders explored children's conceptualizations of rational number and of certain extensive physical quantities. We found within child consistency in reasoning about diverse aspects of rational number. Children's spontaneous acknowledgement of the existence of numbers between 0 and 1 was strongly related to their induction that numbers are infinitely divisible in the sense that they can be repeatedly divided without ever getting to zero. Their conceptualizing number as infinitely divisible was strongly related to their having a model of fraction notation based on division and to their successful judgment of the relative magnitudes of fractions and decimals. In addition, their understanding number as infinitely divisible was strongly related to their understanding physical quantities as infinitely divisible. These results support a conceptual change account of knowledge acquisition, involving two-way mappings between the domains of number and physical quantity.