University Campus Consultation: Opportunities and Limitations

Consultation on a university campus is an important adjunct mental health service to individual and small-group counseling. It serves as a preventive and an early identification resource for both emotional-social and educational-vocational problems. Interventions with faculty, staff, and campus organizations are made possible with a consultation service. Consultation projects have enhanced support networks for ethnic-minority students and increased the humanization of the campus for all students.     

Evaluation of the diagnostic interview for children and adolescents for use in general population samples

This article presents evaluative data on the use of the Diagnostic Interview for Children and AdolescentsRevised (DICAR) to classify DSM-IIIR disorders in the general population. Data for the analyses came from a probability sample (N=251) of parentchild/adolescent dyads aged 6 to 16 separately administered the DICAR on two occasions, 10 to 20 days apart, by trained lay interviewers and child psychiatrists. Data are presented on prevalence,testretest reliability, parentchild/adolescent agreement, and trained lay interviewerchild psychiatrist agreement. High prevalences of oppositional defiant disorder derived from parent assessments and overanxious disorder and dysthymia derived from adolescent assessments suggest that these disorders may be overidentified. Interview data provided by 6 to 11year olds to classify the internalizing disorders were too unreliable to be useful. Agreement between parentchild/adolescent dyads was generally low while agreement between trained lay interviewerschild psychiatrists was generally high.This work was supported by funds from the National Health Research and Development Program (grant number 6606-3760-42) and the Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services, and was carried out by the Child Epidemiology Unit, Department of Psychiatry, McMaster University and the Child and Family Centre, Chedoke-McMaster Hospitals, Hamilton, Ontario. Dr. Boyle is supported by a William T. Grant Foundation Faculty Scholar Award; Dr. Offord by a National Health Scientist Award, Health and Welfare Canada; Dr. Szatmari by a Research Fellowship, Ontario Mental Health Foundation; and Dr. Fleming by a NARSAD Young Investigator Award. The authors wish to thank the Hamilton Board of Education, particularly Mr. Keith Reilly and Mr. Owen Jackson; principals and teachers of the Board; and parents and students for their help on this project. Our appreciation also extends to Ms. Barb Hall who assisted in the analysis of the data.     

Dimensions of Problem Behavior in institutionalized retardates

A factor analysis of teacher ratings of 55 items of deviant behavior in a sample of 252 institutionalized retardates resulted in the emergence of three interpretable factors. Two factors clearly represented the broad-band dimensions of conduct disorder and anxiety-withdrawal, while the third reflected psychotic behavior. Only conduct disorder was related to age, sex, trace, or intellectual level.     

Attitudes towards single women

Empirical studies of attitudes towards, and the sociopsychological characteristics of single women have been neglected by social scientists. As a minority group, subject to normative judgements of their sex-role behavior, single women are vulnerable to prejudicial evaluations by married people of both sexes. The present study investigated aspects of the social environment which have positive or negative consequences for single women. A survey was conducted of N=48 male and female married subjects in an Australian city. Major findings were that (a) married people have little or no contact with single women; (b) males tend to be more negative in their evaluations of single women than females; and (c) most females can allow for the possibility of a major sex role other than that involving marriage.     

Tactile conditioning of an autonomic and somatic response in young infants

Tactile classical conditioning of an autonomic reflex (pupillary dilation and constriction) and a somatic response (eyeblinking) was attempted in two separate experiments with one-month-old infants. The tactile CS was effective for conditioning eyeblinking but was ineffective for elaborating conditional pupillary reflex dilation or constriction. These differences were related to the interaction between stimulus and response in infant conditioning and the source of nervous system innervation of the CR as it relates to conditionability.     

Parent Toddler Play with Feminine Toys: Are All Dolls the Same?

Play with toys provides children with theopportunity to practice behaviors that have relevance togender role development. By 18 months, toddlersconsistently choose to play with sex-appropriate toys. This study was designed to investigate parents'and toddlers' initiation of play with baby dolls and astuffed clown to determine whether boys are providedwith the same opportunity for feminine play as girls are when playing with the same type oftoys. 42 parent toddler dyads from Caucasianmiddle-class families were observed playing with twobaby dolls and a soft stuffed clown for four minutes.Parent toddler play was coded for doll appropriate andinanimate object-type play. The baby dolls and the clownelicited different play behaviors from both the parentsand the toddlers. Same-sex dyads engaged in different types of play than opposite-sexparent toddler dyads. Findings of this study lendevidence that not all dolls are alike. Consequently,parents who provide their toddlers with baby dolls are providing different experiences from parentswho provide soft stuffed toys. Implications for genderrole development are discussed.     

Inglehart's Materialism-Postmaterialism Concept: Clarifying the Dimensionality Debate Through Rokeach's Model of Social Values1

This paper addresses an ongoing debate concerning the dimensionality of Inglehart's (1971, 1977, 1981, 1990) concept of materialism-postmaterialism. According to Inglehart, this concept is unidimensional, distinct from the traditional left-right political belief continuum, and central to explaining the changes taking place in the values of advanced industrial societies. To date, the debate has sought answers in different item sets, factor analytic solutions, and rotations. This paper approaches the problem through psychological models of social values. Materialism-postmaterialism, it is argued, involves a prioritizing of values from two orthogonal value orientations which have grown out of the work of Rokeach (1973): national strength and order and international harmony and equality.     

Psychological consequences of involvement in a new religious movement or cult

It has frequently been suggested that the psychological consequences of involvement in new religious movements or cults can be profound for those who come into contact with them. To explore this further a study was carried out to investigate the relationship between personality, group membership of The Family (a new religious movement or cult) and mental health. Sixty six subjects (22 males, 44 females) in three different groups took part in this study. Group 1: Ex-members who felt negative about their involvement with The Family. Group 2: Present day members of The Family. Group 3: Ex-members who felt positive about their involvement with The Family. They completed two personality inventories (The Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire combined with the psychoticism scale of the Short Form of the Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire and the Beck Sociotrophy-Autonomy Scale). The results from this study were consistent with previous research indicating that experiences within the group increase social dependency and decrease autonomy for those who leave, whilst increasing the need for autonomous or individualistic achievement and lessening social conformity for present day members. This study suggests that some of the psychological difficulties which people have reported experiencing on leaving these groups are likely to be alleviated, to a degree, by time and from contact with a support group.     

What makes a task difficult?

Summary This study explores the relationship between different task requirements and children's task performance and ratings of task difficulty. Four hundred and sixty five children (9 to 13 years old) read texts and answered questions, involving well-defined or ill-defined goals and requiring different thought operations. It was found that rated difficulty and performance were highly related for questions involving a well-defined goal. A simple modus ponens inference was easiest, checking most difficult, and recall of the text ranked in the middle. A question, involving an ill-defined goal was rated to be most difficult, whereas performance was quite high. The results confirm the assumptions that judgment of difficulty relies on two sources of information: 1) perception of goal, and 2) perception of processing effort.     

The social impact of emotional tears

The question what specific functions the production of emotional tears fulfills has received only limited attention of behavioral scientists. We report the results of two studies on the social impact of emotional tears. In Study 1 (96 Dutch females), perceived helplessness and felt connectedness predicted the willingness to help a person depicted as crying tearfully, while perceived friendliness did not. In Study 2 (US sample, 128 males, 68 females) all three of these variables mediated the effect the display of tears had on the willingness to help. Our results replicate and extend previous work and add to current knowledge by showing that tearful crying facilitates helping behavior and by identifying reasons why people are more willing to help criers. These findings help to put forth novel predictions on the impact of tearful crying on others.