Apractic agraphia in a patient with normal praxis

Most right-handed crossed aphasics are not apractic. They usually have agraphia characterized by misspellings but retain the ability to write well-formed graphemes. We describe a right-handed patient with a right parietal lesion who was aphasic and not apractic. He was unable to write any formed graphemes despite a relatively preserved ability to spell aloud. We postulate that praxis and writing are dissociated in this patient because the motor engrams for praxis were located in his left hemisphere and the engrams for writing were in his right hemisphere. In addition, he comprehended commands for limb motor activities (praxis) far better than he comprehended other speech. This suggests that in this patient the areas used to comprehend limb motor commands may be anatomically distinct from areas important in comprehending other aspects of speech.     

Primary influencers of initial vocational choices for college women

This study of 597 entering college women investigated the characteristics of people they named as the primary influencers for their initial choices of major. College major was considered analogous to vocational field since the sample of students overwhelmingly gave career goals as reasons for choosing a particular major. Characteristics of these primary influencers were compared with those of a sample of individuals influencing male choices. In addition, characteristics of influencers were compared between those influencing females choosing traditional and nontraditional majors. The results indicate that most students, regardless of gender, were influenced by males, particularly fathers. However, a notable percentage of female students, especially those in traditional fields, were influenced by females. Students whose primary influencers were in fields closely related to their own vocational choices reported being more certain of their choices than students citing influencers in unrelated fields. These findings have implications for model-observer similarity, and may necessitate distinguishing between influential people who provide reinforcement for a choice of major and those who provide specific vocational modeling as well as reinforcement for that choice.     

Perception of facial expressions

Three studies examined the nature of the contributions of each hemisphere to the processing of facial expressions and facial identity. A pair of faces, the members of which differed in either expression or identity, were presented to the right or left field. Subjects were required to compare the members of the pair to each other (experiments 1 and 2) or to a previously presented sample (experiment 3). The results revealed that both face and expression perception show an LVF superiority although the two tasks could be differentiated in terms of overall processing time and the interaction of laterality differences with sex. No clear-cut differences in laterality emerged for processing of positive and negative expressions.     

Male-female differences in occupational attitudes within minority groups

Few studies have considered sex differences in occupational attutudes in minority group samples. Evidence of interracial differences in occupational attitudes, coupled with probably interracial differences in socialization processes, suggests that patterns of sex differences in occupational attitudes may not be invariant across races. Any such variations could contaminate interracial comparisons within sexes. The current study examined sex differences in occupational attitudes in two samples of poor minority group members. Differences regularly isolated in studies of whites were not evident. In both samples, rankings of preferences for work-related outcomes of males and females were remarkably similar.     

Arousal and memory: phasic measures of arousal in a free recall task.

EEG alpha activity and skin potential were monitored during word presentation in a single trial free recall task. Phasic changes in EEG alpha and skin potential, co-occurring with word onset, were positively related to recall at an immediate retention interval (2 min) but not after a delay (45 min). The results were interpreted as supporting the extension of Routtenberg's (1968) two-arousal system hypothesis to human memory. Arousal was viewed as affecting memory during the attribute encoding stage of memory storage.