When are AIDS patients to blame for their disease? Effects of patients' sexual orientation and mode of transmission

This study examined three factors affecting college students' attributions of blame for an AIDS patient's disease: sexual orientation of the patient, mode of HIV transmission, and the sex of the subject. 148 subjects read one of six vignettes describing an hypothetical AIDS patient who was described as either an heterosexual or an homosexual man who contracted HIV through one of three avenues: blood transfusion, sexual contact, or IV drug use. The homosexual AIDS patient was considered more to blame for his illness than the heterosexual AIDS patient, but only when mode of transmission was sexual contact. In addition, mode of HIV transmission was a significant factor in attributions of responsibility, as the patient who contracted HIV through a blood transfusion was rated as less responsible than the patient who contracted HIV through sexual behavior or IV drug use. Women consistently rated the AIDS patient as less responsible than did men.     

Autonomic determinism: the modes of autonomic control, the doctrine of autonomic space, and the laws of autonomic constraint.

Contemporary findings reveal that the multiple modes of autonomic control do not lie along a single continuum extending from parasympathetic to sympathetic dominance but rather distribute within a 2-dimensional space. The physiological origins and empirical documentation for the multiple modes of autonomic control are considered. Then a formal 2-dimensional conception of autonomic space is proposed, and a quantitative model for its translation into a functional output surface is derived. It is shown that this model (a) accounts for much of the error variance that has traditionally plagued psychophysiological studies, (b) subsumes psychophysiological principles such as the law of initial values, (c) gives rise to formal laws of autonomic constraint, and (d) has fundamental implications for the direction and interpretation of a wide array of psychophysiological studies.     

Polysemy and the acquisition of the cognitive internal state lexicon

Previous research (Hall, Scholnick, & Hughes, 1987) suggested that cognitive word meanings denote six increasingly abstract and complex cognitive processes. In this paper, we further investigated two interrelated aspects of this framework. A set of 36 conversations with children aged 4:5 to 5 provided the data. In Study 1, issues related to the optimal ordering of levels were examined by comparing the original sequence with a restructured model. In Study 2, the hypothesis that, in addition toknow, other polysemous cognitive internal state words would be hierarchically organized was tested. The findings lent support to the restructured model, but rejected the hypothesis that polysemous words within the domain were characterized by equivalent,hhierarchically organized levels. We conclude by proposing that cognitive internal state words were related by complementarity of levels rather than equivalence.The research on which this paper is based was supported by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York to William S. Hall. Data analysis was supported by the Computer Science Center at the University of Maryland, College Park.     

The influence on recognition of spoken words that are misperceived

Two experiments were performed that involved an initial word-identification task in which the acoustic signal was degraded by either 50% or 60% compression of the recorded words. A control group was tested at the original recording rate (0% compression). The compression manipulation was successful in increasing the number of identification errors. During the second stage of the experiments, words were read at a normal rate. In Experiment 1, the subjects indicated whether each word had appeared on the prior list, and in Experiment 2, the subjects estimated the number of times each word had been read on the prior list. The false-negative rate decreased and frequency ratings increased as a function of the number of prior presentations (one, two, or three) of the target words. The most interesting result was that the effect of repetitions was present even for words that had been misperceived.     

The specificity of the effects of stimulant medication on classroom learning-related measures of cognitive processing for Attention Deficit Disorder children

There appear to be beneficial effects of stimulant medication on daily classroom measures of cognitive functioning for Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) children, but the specificity and origin of such effects is unclear. Consistent with previous results, 0.3 mg/kg methylphenidate improved ADD children's performance on a classroom reading comprehension measure. Using the Posner letting-matching task and four additional measures of phonological processing, we attempted to isolate the effects of methylphenidate to parameter estimates of (a) selective attention, (b) the basic cognitive process of retrieving name codes from permanent memory, and (c) a constant term that represented nonspecific aspects of information processing. Responses to the letter-matching stimuli were faster and more accurate with medication compared to placebo. The improvement in performance was isolated to the parameter estimate that reflected nonspecific aspects of information processing. A lack of medication effect on the other measures of phonological processing supported the Posner task findings in indicating that methylphenidate appears to exert beneficial effects on academic processing through general rather than specific aspects of information processing.     

Rhythmic motor behavior of preambulatory motor impaired,down syndrome and nondisabled children: A comparative analysis

The developmental course of rhythmic motor behavior was followed longitudinally for three groups of preambulatory children — normally developing, Down syndrome, and those with profound motor impairment. The groups differed in chronological age but were comparable with respect to motor age. The motor impaired subjects displayed significantly less rhythmic motor behavior than the nondisabled and Down syndrome groups. In comparing particular subtypes of rhythmic motor behavior, differences were found in both the average number of bouts and duration of subtypes among the groups. Longitudinal analyses of the data over the entire observation period revealed that the rhythmic motor behavior of the children with Down syndrome was more similar to that exhibited by the nondisabled children than was the rhythmic motor behavior of the children with motor impairment. However, there was considerable variability among the groups in several particular subtypes.This research was supported by grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD 17650 and HD 07226).The authors acknowledge the assistance of Robert E. Arendt, Grant Youngquist, Michael Hohn, and Charles Lowitzer in obtaining the observational data and thank the families of the subjects for their enthusiasm and dedication to the project.This study was presented at the 23rd Annual Gatlinburg Conference on Research and Theory in Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, April 21, 1990.     

Effects of background anger,provocation, and methylphenidate on emotional arousal and aggressive responding in attention-deficit hyperactivity disordered boys with and without concurrent aggressiveness

We investigated the effects of background anger, provocation, and methylphenidate on emotional, physiological, and behavioral responding in children with attentiondeficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) with and without concurrent aggression. Our study revealed that ADHD boys showed more emotional and physiological distress when exposed to an interaction in which an administrator chastised each boy's favorite counselor, compared to a friendly interaction between the two adults. The background anger manipulation did not affect the aggressive behavior of the boys against an opponent in an aggressive game. High-aggressive (HA) ADHD boys were more likely to respond to provocation with aggression than low-aggressive (LA) ADHD boys, but only LA boys showed increased physiological reactivity with increasing provocation. Methylphenidate resulted in increased heart rates under all conditions and did not interact with any of the other findings.This project was conducted while the first author had the support of National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism grant AA 06267.The authors wish to thank the staff members of the 1987 Summer Day Treatment Program who assisted in conducting this project. The authors also express their appreciation to Karen Guthrie for coordinating the medication assessment and to Hart Blanton for computer programming.     

Developmental and family milieu correlates of resilience in urban children who have experienced major life stress

Reports findings from interviews with parents of demographically-comparable groups of highly-stressed urban children with stress-resilient (SR) and stress-affected (SA) outcomes at ages 10-12. SR and SA children were compared on family milieu and child development variables assessed within a developmental framework. Compared to SAs, parents of SRs scored higher on variables reflecting parent perceptions of a nurturant caregiver-child relationship and self-views as effective caregivers, in the context of positive discipline practices, a child's positive early temperament, and support for primary caregivers. A discriminant function analysis identified seven variables that optimally differentiated the groups and correctly classified 86% of the Ss as SR or SA.     

Task dynamics and resource dynamics in the assembly of a coordinated rhythmic activity.

Task dynamics corresponding to rhythmic movements emerge from interactions among dynamical resources composed of the musculature, the link segments, and the nervous and circulatory systems. This article investigated whether perturbations of interlimb coordination might be effect over circulatory and nervous elements. Stiffness of wrist-pendulums oscillated at a common tempo and at 180 degrees relative phase was perturbed through the use of tonic activity about an ankle. Left and right stiffnesses, the common period, and the phase relation all changed. Stiffnesses increased with ankle torque in proportion to the wrist's inertial load. Despite different changes in stiffness at the two wrists, isochrony was preserved. The stability was shown to be consistent with the proportionality of changes in stiffness to the inertial loads. The phase departed from antiphase in proportion to the asymmetry of inertial loads. The size of departures decreased with increasing ankle torque. An account was developed in terms of muscular, circulatory, and nervous functions.