Forgiveness: a review of the theoretical and empirical literature

This paper reviews the published literature addressing forgiveness as a therapeutic issue. The review revealed four major themes. These included: diverse attempts in the literature to define forgiveness; the presentation of models of intervention; resistance among theoreticians and therapists to examine forgiveness as a therapeutic construct, and empirical evidence of forgiveness intervention applied to clinical settings. These theoretical and empirical publications are described and critiqued. An evaluation is made as to the current state of the research, and suggestions for future directions.     

Satisfaction With Subordinates: A Neglected Research Issue Concerning Supervisors1

Satisfaction with subordinates, a relatively neglected facet of job satisfaction, was examined via questionnaires administered to both a sample of 37 retail store supervisors and a second sample of 58 bank supervisors regarding 274 of their subordinates. Functional relationships between supervisors and subordinates, in which subordinates help get things done in the workplace, were related to satisfaction with subordinates even after entity relationships (similarity between supervisors and subordinates on biodata and values) were controlled.     

Safer Sex Behavior: The Role of Attitudes, Norms, and Control Factors

A study was undertaken to assess the utility of revisions to the theories of reasoned action/planned behavior in the context of HIV-preventive behaviors. Revisions to the models incorporated the addition of group norm (behavioral norm and group attitude) to the nonnative component of the reasoned action model and the distinction among three aspects (self-efficacy, perceived behavioral control, and planning) of the control component of the theory of planned behavior. Respondents were 211 sexually experienced heterosexual undergraduates. The study employed a longitudinal design, with the proposed predictors of performing the behaviors under consideration (using a condom every time you have sexual intercourse during the next month and discussing whether to use a condom with any new partners during the next month) assessed prior to the measures of reported behavior. Consistent with expectations, group norm emerged as a distinctive predictor (in addition to attitude and subjective norm) of intentions to practice both safer sex behaviors. The data also revealed some support for the distinction among the different measures of control. The results of the study suggest that the normative component of the theories of reasoned action and planned behavior should be revised to incorporate more subtle influences of the referent group and that tests of theory of planned behavior should distinguish among the different aspects of behavioral control.     

Norms for words that rhyme

The use of rhyme in learning/memory and cognitive studies is extensive. However, there are very few normative studies for words that rhyme. The current study rectified this problem by collecting rhyme norms for 477 words from 545 subjects. Groups of subjects were given 40 words in serial order and requested, for each word, to generate as many rhymes as possible within a 30-sec interval. The data include several rhyme measures as well as measures of other word attributes that were taken from other sources. In addition, the rhyme responses to the target words were given along with their Thomdike and Lorge (1944) and Ku?era and Francis (1967) normative frequencies. Finally, the data were used to investigate various relationships including the spew hypothesis and the accessibility of rhyme sets.     

A comparison of children who receive and who do not receive permission to participate in research

In a study examining children's social competence in elementary school settings, the authors had the opportunity to compare children who received parental permission to participate to children who did not receive permission. Results indicated that children who were not involved in the study were more likely to be viewed by teachers as having unsatisfactory relationships with peers than children who were in the study. The present results suggest that investigators begin reporting the number of children who do not participate in a given study and begin examining whether minors who receive parental permission differ on important dimensions from minors who do not receive such permission. Ethical considerations of the present study are discussed.     

When is a question not answered? The understanding of young children of utterances violating or conforming to the rules of conversational sequencing

Knowledge of the conventional rules of conversational sequencing enables a speaker or listener to evaluate the pragmatic use of an utterance. This study explored young children's ability to discriminate among utterances that violated or conformed to these rules (Experiment 1), and ability to explain rule violations (Experiment 2). In both experiments children were read short episodes containing utterances that conformed to the rules in that the utterances were used appropriately in the episodic context of utterance, or utterances that violated the conversational rules of contingency, relevance, or informativeness. In Experiment 1, kindergarten, and first- and second-grade children (5, 6, and 7 years of age) were asked to discriminate among the conforming and rule violating utterances by assigning each utterance to one of two female conventional and unconventional speakers. The results showed that the first and second graders, but not the kindergarten children, generally discriminated among the utterances. In Experiment 2, first and third graders (6 and 8 years of age) were asked to explain the rule violations. The results showed that only the third graders consistently generated correct explanations. These results suggest that children can use the rules of conversational sequencing to evaluate the need for an inference to the speaker's intent in deliberately violating a rule by 6 or 7 years of age, but do not correctly infer that intent until they are 8 or 9 years old.     

Encoding specificity in the recall of pictures and words in children and adults

In this study, the modality of the retrieval cues (pictures or words) was varied in a cued recall task to determine how second and fourth grade children and college adults encode words (Experiment 1) and pictures (Experiment 2). According to the assumptions of the encoding specificity principle, cue modality should affect recall only to the degree to which subjects focus on modality specific (sensory) rather than nonmodality specific (semantic) information in stimuli. In both experiments, the results showed progressively smaller encoding specificity effects with increasing age. To ensure that differences in encoding activity were responsible for these effects, comparisons were made of recall patterns under intentional learn conditions, and under incidental conceptual and sensory orienting conditions. The recall patterns of the children in the conceptual orienting condition were similar to the adult patterns in the learn condition, and the adult recall patterns in the sensory orienting conditions were similar to those of the children in the learn conditions. These results suggest that there are developmental differences in encoding the sensory and semantic information in stimuli that may result from differences in the efficiency with which the semantic information in stimuli is processed. The results suggest that young children typically encode stimuli in a fashion that stresses the sensory aspects of the stimuli, and that recall suffers as a result.     

The understanding of young children and adults of the deictic adequacy of communications

When a communication is used in a discourse context, the deictic information in the communication may be important in achieving a successful speech act. This information includes the temporal and spatial coordinates of the speech act that locate the communication in a context. In the present study, first- and fourth-grade children (6 and 9 years of age) and college adults were read short stories and asked to evaluate the adequacy of deictically ambiguous or informative communications (Experiment 1) or situations (Experiment 2). The results showed that subjects in all the grades discriminated among the deictically adequate and inadequate communications and situations, though the first graders made fewer correct judgments than did the other subjects of the adequacy of the informative communications and situations.     

Use of a statistical significance criterion in drawing inferences about hemispheric dominance for language function from dichotic listening data

A dichotic listening test (composed of VCV nonsense syllables) was administered to 31 right-handed subjects. A χ² statistical significance criterion was then applied to the resulting ear differences in subjects. Fifteen subjects had ear differences significant at the p < .10 levels. Of these, 14 had right-ear advantages, an incidence consistent with the incidence of left-hemisphere language dominance derived from neurological data. Incidence for the total group of 31 subjects, however, showed the overabundance of left-ear-superior protocols typical of studies that report ear-dominance scores with no statistical criterion.     

Family therapy training—give the customers what they want

Family therapy training is an area of current interest and debate within the Association for Family Therapy. At a local level regional groups and branches have been promoting family therapy through a variety of sources and events (Bott, 1979; Haldane, 1980). The development of training has therefore been of a haphazard and ad hoc nature. More recently the Sub-Committee on Training for Family Therapy has addressed itself to establishing and co-ordinating formalized training programmes and to the attendant issues of course structure, content and accreditation.
The Workshop at Bangor looked at the rationale behind and organization involved in setting up introductory training in family therapy. Several introductory training schemes already in operation throughout the U.K. were described and the results of a recent consumer survey conducted in Northern Ireland were presented.