Family therapy in a community mother and toddler project

A home centred family therapy approach is described based on the McMaster model. This approach was applied in a controlled trial of three forms of intervention for mother and toddler problems. In this paper the experience of applying the approach is reported.     

Retrospective coding in pigeons' delayed matching-to-sample

In this study we examined how coding processes in pigeons' delayed matching-to-sample were affected by the stimuli to be remembered. In Experiment 1, two groups of pigeons initially learned 0-delay matching-to-sample with identical comparison stimuli (vertical and horizontal lines) but with different sample stimuli (red and green hues or vertical and horizontal lines). Longer delays were then introduced between sample offset and comparison onset to assess whether pigeons were prospectively coding the same events (viz., the correct line comparisons) or retrospectively coding different events (viz., their respective sample stimuli). The hue-sample group matched more accurately and showed a slower rate of forgetting than the line-sample group. In Experiment 2, pigeons were trained with either hues or lines as both sample and comparison stimuli, or with hue samples and line comparisons or vice versa. Subsequent delay tests revealed that the hue-sample groups remembered more accurately and generally showed slower rates of forgetting than the line-sample groups. Comparison dimension had little or no effect on performance. Together, these data suggest that pigeons retrospectively code the samples in delayed matching-to-sample.     

Categorical shape and color coding by pigeons

Categorical coding is the tendency to respond similarly to discriminated stimuli. Past research indicates that pigeons can categorize colors according to at least three spectral regions. Two present experiments assessed the categorical coding of shapes and the existence of a higher order color category (all colors). Pigeons were trained on two independent tasks (matching-to-sample, and oddity-from-sample). One task involved red and a plus sign, the other a circle and green. On test trials one of the two comparison stimuli from one task was replaced by one of the stimuli from the other task. Differential performance based on which of the two stimuli from the other task was introduced suggested categorical coding rules. In Experiment 1 evidence for the categorical coding of sample shapes was found. Categorical color coding was also found; however, it was the comparison stimuli rather than the samples that were categorically coded. Experiment 2 replicated the categorical shape sample effect and ruled out the possibility that the particular colors used were responsible for the categorical coding of comparison stimuli. Overall, the results indicate that pigeons can develop categorical rules involving shapes and colors and that the color categories can be hierarchical.     

Stress and coping in early adolescence: relationships to substance use in urban school samples

Measures of stress and coping were obtained from two cohorts of urban adolescents during the seventh- to eighth-grade period and were related to indices of cigarette smoking and alcohol use. Predictions were derived from a stress coping model of substance use. Stress was indexed by measures of subjective stress, recent events, and major life events; coping was assessed by behavior-based and intention-based methods. Concurrent and prospective analyses were consistent with predictions, indicating that stress was positively related to substance use, and four coping mechanisms (behavioral coping, cognitive coping, adult social support, and relaxation) were inversely related to substance use. Two types of predicted interactions, Stress X Coping and Positive X Negative Events, were found. Measures indexing peer support, distraction coping, and aggressive coping were positively related to substance use, independent of other predictors. Implications for substance use theory and prevention research are discussed.     

The relationship between eye movements and spatial attention

Most previous studies of the attentional consequences of making saccadic eye movements have used peripheral stimuli to elicit eye movements. It is argued that in the light of evidence showing automatic “capture” of attention by peripheral stimuli, these experiments do not distinguish between attentional effects due to peripheral stimuli and those due to eye movements. In the present study, spatial attention was manipulated by varying the probability that peripheral probe stimuli would appear in different positions, while saccades were directed by a central arrow, enabling the effects of attention and eye movements to be separated. The results showed that the time to react to a peripheral stimulus could be shortened both by advance knowledge of its likely position and, separately, by preparing to make a saccade to that position. When the saccade was directed away from the most likely position of the probe, the targets for attention and eye movements were on opposite sides of the display. In this condition, the effects of preparing to make a saccade proved to be stronger than the effects of attentional allocation until well after the saccade had finished, suggesting that making a saccade necessarily involves the allocation of attention to the target position. The effects of probe stimuli on saccade latencies were also examined: probe stimuli that appeared before the saccade shortened saccade latencies if they appeared at the saccade target, and lengthened saccade latencies if they appeared on the opposite side of fixation. These facilitatory and inhibitory effects were shown to occur at different stages of saccade preparation and suggest that attention plays an important role in the generation of voluntary eye movements. The results of this study indicate that while it is possible to make attention movements without making corresponding eye movements, it is not possible to make an eye movement (in the absence of peripheral stimulation) without making a corresponding shift in the focus of attention.     

A comparison of three predictors of an individual's memory performance: the individual's feeling of knowing versus the normative feeling of knowing versus base-rate item difficulty

Distinctions are drawn between different predictors of an individual's memory performance, with emphasis on the notion of privileged access to idiosyncratic knowledge. Research is reported in which undergraduates attempted to recall the answers to general-information questions, then made feeling-of-knowing judgments on nonrecalled items, and subsequently had a criterion test (relearning, perceptual identification, or one of two versions of recognition). For predicting an individual's criterion performance, the individual's own feeling-of-knowing predictions were intermediate between two kinds of normative predictions: The individual's feeling-of-knowing predictions were more accurate than predictions derived from normative feeling-of-knowing ratings but were less accurate than predictions derived from base-rate item difficulty (normative probabilities of correct recall). Subsidiary analyses showed that factors other than unreliability are responsible for the partial inaccuracy of the individual's feeling of knowing. Ramifications are discussed for possible ways to improve the accuracy of an individual's feeling-of-knowing predictions.     

Cue depreciation: when word fragment completion is undermined by prior exposure to lesser fragments

The ability to think of a previously studied item has often been shown to be impaired when, in one way or another, the extraitem context is changed from study to test. In a series of five experiments, such impairment is induced in a somewhat different way. A fragment (e.g. r-i--rop) of a just-studied word (raindrop) is shown to be less readily completed if it is presented bit by bit (r------p, r----r-p, r-i--r-p, r-i--rop) rather than all at once (Experiments 1, 3, 4, and 5). No such effect is found if the word has not been studied beforehand (Experiments 2, 3, 4, and 5). This pattern of results occurs even when fragments of studied and nonstudied words occur in the same test and under conditions in which subjects cannot tell whether a given fragment is of a studied or nonstudied word (Experiments 4 and 5). In addition, for words that have been studied beforehand, the impairment is shown to increase systematically with the number of steps involved in the presentation of the word fragment (Experiment 3) and also to persist when the time allowed for completion of the final version of the fragment is increased from 4 s to a full minute (Experiment 5).