The morphological asymmetry of the hemispheres and cerebral dominance for speech: A possible relationship

The asymmetry of the posterior Sylvian branches of the middle cerebral artery was examined on the carotid angiograms of 59 patients in whom the lateralization of speech representation was known from sodium amobarbital (Amytal) studies. The usual asymmetry of these vessels was found to be present in the group of patients with left-hemisphere speech representation but significantly reduced in patients with atypical cerebral dominance for speech. A model of the inheritance of handedness and cerebral dominance is extended to take account of these results.     

Regional cerebral blood flow response to recognition memory versus semantic classification tasks

Two randomly assigned groups, N = 7 each, of neurologically normal patients were composed. One group, RM, had regional cerebral blood flow measurements during a recognition memory probe test; the other group, SC, had rCBF measurements during a semantic classification task, using the same stimulus and response features as the RM task. Thus, the groups differed only in the cognitive instruction they were executing. The RM group showed a significantly lower change from resting baseline to activation, in mean left hemisphere initial slope index, than did the SC group. The RM group, but not the SC group, showed a significant inverse correlation between occipital flow and accuracy of memory performance as indicated by d′. Correlations between age and hemispheric initial slope index, and between homologous left and right hemisphere sites, were also described. The results are considered to support an anatomical basis for the distinction between episodic and semantic memory and to suggest that occipital flow may diminish with accurate memory performance because of an upstream demand of blood in the medial temporal lobes.     

Exposure to pornography,permissive and nonpermissive cues,and male aggression toward females

The present study examined the role of permissive and nonpermissive cues in mediating the relationship between exposure to erotica and aggression. Male subjects viewed either neutral slides with a silent female or erotic slides with a female who made permissive, nonpermissive, or no comments about the slides. The males rated the slides and subsequently rated the female confederate. Male subjects were then given an opportunity to administer their choice of several intensities of shock to the female in a competitive reaction-time task. Subjects in the permissive cues condition rated the erotic slides as more arousing, saw the female as more reasonable and accepting, and selected more intense shocks for the female than did subjects in the other conditions. One explanation of these results is that permissive cues in the presence of erotica led the male to believe that other normally inappropriate behaviors would be tolerated.     

Asymmetrical effects of positive and negative events: the mobilization-minimization hypothesis

Negative (adverse or threatening) events evoke strong and rapid physiological, cognitive, emotional, and social responses. This mobilization of the organism is followed by physiological, cognitive, and behavioral responses that damp down, minimize, and even erase the impact of that event. This pattern of mobilization-minimization appears to be greater for negative events than for neutral or positive events. Theoretical accounts of this response pattern are reviewed. It is concluded that no single theoretical mechanism can explain the mobilization-minimization pattern, but that a family of integrated process models, encompassing different classes of responses, may account for this pattern of parallel but disparately caused effects.     

AIDS-related factors predictive of suicidal ideation of low and high intent among gay and bisexual men.

AIDS-related stressors were studied in relationship to suicidal ideation and suicide intent among 778 gay and bisexual men (none with AIDS). Over the previous six months, 27% (n = 212) reported suicidal ideation. Subjects who reported suicidal ideation (compared to those who did not) were more likely to report recent (last 6 months) bereavement of partner, recent ARC diagnosis, and multiple close friends with ARC. Suicide ideators were divided by a median split on a self-report scale of suicide intent into low (n = 105) and high (n = 107) intent suicide ideators. News of HIV seropositivity was specifically related to low intent suicidal ideation. High intent suicidal ideation was associated with having a partner with AIDS or ARC, or multiple close friends with AIDS, or having ARC. Generally speaking, while temporally discrete AIDS-related events were associated the report of suicidal ideation, ongoing stressors which may more greatly challenge adaptational capacities were more associated with high intent suicidal ideation.     

ODAP: a stand-alone program for observational data acquisition

A software program written to collect real-time, observational data is described. The flexible program allows customized behavior codes and observational durations and simultaneously records both timed and counted events. The data are collected by means of single keystrokes, automatically stored to disk with 100th of a second resolution and summarized for each observational session. The program’s database files are dBASE III PLUS compatible and may be browsed, edited, or converted to ASCII files from the program’s main menu. Field testing demonstrated the efficiency and interobserver reliability of the program (for frequency,r=0.81; for durational behaviors,rs=0.89 and 0.96). The software operates on IBM XT/AT/PS 2s and most clones with PC/MS DOS version 2.0 or greater.     

Parent and child causal attributions during clinical interviews

Attributions made by children and their parents for the cause of the child's clinical problem were monitored during assessment interviews. Results support previously observed differences obtained through questionnaires, with parents making more attributions than their children to characteristics of the child. This pattern was affected by variations in interview format. Parents and children differed in the locus of their attributions when interviewed individually, but these differences were not present when families were interviewed with both parents and children present. Implications for the methodology of attribution research with child-clinical populations are highlighted.