Demoralization and living alone: outcome from an urban community study.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate differences in demoralization between those who live in single-person households and those who live in households with others in a random sample of 8,634 urban adults. Responses to the 26-item Psychiatric Epidemiologic Research Interview did not substantiate that adults who live alone are more likely to be demoralized than those who live with others, until age and gender are considered. Men who live alone scored higher on demoralization than men who live with others, yet women who live with others scored higher on demoralization than those who live alone. An interaction for living arrangement and age group on demoralization was also observed.     

ASSESSMENT OF STIMULUS PREFERENCE AND REINFORCER VALUE WITH PROFOUNDLY RETARDED INDIVIDUALS

We evaluated a procedure for identifying potential reinforcers with profoundly retarded individuals. In Experiment 1, six persons were repeatedly exposed to 16 stimuli, and approach behaviors to each stimulus were used to identify preferred and nonpreferred stimuli. In Experiment 2, we examined the reinforcing properties of preferred and nonpreferred stimuli by delivering them contingently on the occurrence of arbitrarily selected responses. Results revealed that the preferred stimulus conditions typically produced higher rates of responding than did either the baseline or the nonpreferred stimulus conditions, suggesting that the procedure can be used to assess reinforcer value for individuals with limited behavioral repertoires.     

CLINICAL BEHAVIORAL PHARMACOLOGY: METHODS FOR EVALUATING MEDICATIONS AND CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT

We evaluated methods for comparing the effects of dextroamphetamine (Dexedrine), thioridazine (Mellaril), and contingency management in the control of severe behavior problems. A reversal design was used in which medications were systematically titrated and assessed in unstructured as well as structured settings with three clients. Subsequently, behavioral procedures including timeout, differential reinforcement of other behavior, and visual screening, were used in a multiple-baseline design across settings. The assessment and design methods were useful in comparing the interventions. Dextroamphetamine decreased inappropriate behaviors and improved academic behaviors in one client, but no reliable effects were observed in the other two clients. Thioridazine was variable across clients, settings, behaviors, and dosages. Contingency management produced consistent decreases in inappropriate behaviors and small improvements in academic performance.     

Self-esteem, attitude similarity, and attraction

Subjects evaluated three stimulus persons on several rating scales who were either 10%, 50%, or 90% similar to themselves in attitudes Subjects were divided into low, moderate, and high self-esteem groups on the basis of an earlier Q sort The results showed a strong positive relation between perceived similarity and positive attribution for each of the dependent variables, including liking, sophisticated, intelligent, sincere, happy, and a social distance scale A negative relation was obtained for two undesirable traits, arrogant and cynical Self-esteem interacted with similarity on several of the measures The difference between self-esteem groups was largely restricted to highly dissimilar stimulus persons Moderate esteem subjects were more favorable toward dissimilar persons than either of the other two groups, and the high and low groups tended to resemble each other more than either group resembled the moderate esteem group These results were discussed in terms of the relation between self-esteem and adjustment, and in terms of McGuire's (1968) theory that predicts a nonmonotonic relation between self-esteem and attitudes.     

Disruption of proofreading by irrelevant speech: Effects of attention,arousal or memory?

A series of five experiments examined the effects of irrelevant speech on proofreading and memory. Four of the experiments used a proofreading task and showed that the deleterious effects of irrelevant speech: (1) depend on the speech being meaningful, (2) are only present when the burden on short-term memory is low and (3) are manifested in a lower detection rate for non-contextual as opposed to contextual errors. Neither the spatial location of the speech (either in terms of spatial dispersion of sources or spatial movement of a single source) nor the intensity of the speech (in a range bounded by 50 dB(A) and 70 dB(A)) had any effect on proofreading. Late selection models of attention are favoured by the results in preference to models having arousal, short-term memory or early selection in attention as their basis. A final experiment showed serial recall for visual lists to be impaired by the presence of any speech-like sound (including reversed speech and speech in an unfamiliar language) which suggests a set of phenomena qualitatively different from those associated with proofreading. Throughout the article the practical consequences of the findings are emphasized.     

Families in China: an undervalued resource for mental health?

This article is based on 37 interviews with patients and family members in a psychiatric hospital in Hubei, the People's Republic of China. The main goal was to investigate the explanatory models that families used in understanding the causes of mental illness. Case material is provided to illustrate some of the issues concerning family dynamics and problems. Families use a holistic framework for understanding psychiatric disturbance. Doctors' explanatory framework is largely medical and they show no interest in family relationships. Equally, families make it clear that they need more information and support from medical practitioners, which is not forthcoming.     

Evaluations of Tests Used for Making Selection and Promotion Decisions

Participants (N= 212) rated the fairness, job relevance, appropriateness, and invasiveness of 16 tests that could be used to select or promote people into production or management positions. Fairness, job relevance and appropriateness were highly correlated, and were combined to form a composite evaluation scale. Evaluations and invasiveness ratings varied among the 16 tests, with the most positive ratings given to interviews and work samples and the most negative ratings given to astrology, graphology and polygraphs. Evaluations of four tests were affected by the position (manager vs. production worker). Evaluations of 11 tests and invasiveness ratings of two tests were affected by respondent experience with the test. Respondents who had experienced the tests evaluated them more positively and considered them to entail a smaller invasion of privacy. Responses were not affected by whether the test was to be used for selection versus promotion decisions.