小学儿童对习俗时间的时距判断

本研究选取“星期”这种习俗时间系统作为实验材料,通过让被试完成范畴性的时距判断任务,即让被试判断某一给定的日期是否属于某一参照日期之后３天中的某一天,探讨了小学儿童对习俗时间的认知加工过程的发展。结果表明,小学儿童对习俗时间的认知加工成绩随年龄的增长而不断提高,在认知加工过程中,具有显著的“距离效应”和“边界效应”,随着两个日期之间时距的增加,反应时逐渐增大,正确率逐渐降低,当两个日期之间的时距为３天时,反应时最长,正确率最低。而且,儿童可以直接运用数字系统来解决习俗时间的问题,他们的认知加工策略包括数字计数、数字运算和表象判断。     

儿童心理折叠能力的发展

本研究主要考察儿童心理折叠能力的发展。结果表明：（１）一般情况下,学生的心理折叠能力随年级（年龄）的上升而提高;（２）智力高的学生的心理折叠能力显著高于常态学生,而且,智力与年级之间存在较强的交互作用说明,智力是影响心理折叠能力发展的主要因素;（３）在本文所涉及的条件下,就总体而言,男生的心理折叠成绩高于女生。但这种性别差异主要不是来自常态组,而来自超常组;（４）不同被试组儿童的心理折叠能力具有不定全一致的发展曲线。     

模拟互变问题解决认知策略的实验研究

本实验通过对模拟互变问题解决认知策略的定性和定量分析,研究认知策略的类型及其信息加工程序。结果表明,存在尝试性策略、分析性策略和直觉性策略三类策略。最佳策略属于分析性策略。     

换位棋问题规则的表征与解题正确率间关系的研究

本研究通过对被试求解换位棋过程的记录与分析,重点研究了问题表征在换位棋求解过程中的作用。实验结果表明：（1）正确表征问题规则是解题的必要前提.对问题规则信息的误解和遗漏,是影响解题正确率的重要因素。其中对非隐含问题规则的错误表征也占全部错误表征的很大比率。（2）“关键结构”的发现是解决换位棋的必要条件,对问题规则的错误表征影响“关键结构”的发现.（3）前置问题的解决经验对目标问题的正确表征无显著的影响作用。     

Tasteful Solutions: Solution-Focused Work with Groups of Immigrants

Solution-focused family therapy is well established as a method in the therapeutic field. Less is written regarding solution-focused thinking and practice in preventive work, providing health information. Informed by the work of Insoo Kim Berg and Steve de Shazer, a workshop of primary health care was established in an inner city area of Oslo, Norway in 1994 with a major task of developing methods for providing information about health issues for immigrants as well as the native population. Results from an evaluation of this work are presented and some issues are related to empowerment work and especially Paulo Freires' liberating dialogue.     

Forgiveness in adolescents, young, middle-aged, and older adults

The evolution of the propensity to forgive an offense was studied in a sample of 236 people from various age groups. The effect of a number of circumstances connected with the offense was considered: intent to harm, severity of consequences, cancellation of consequences, social proximity to the offender, apologies from the offender, and the attitude of others. The method was an application of information integration theory. A global increase in the propensity to forgive from adolescence to old age was observed. Several interactions between age and circumstances were found: (a) The effect of the cancellation factor was higher in young adolescents and in the very old than in the middle-aged, (b) the attitude of others and the restoration of harmony factors were important only in adolescents. Finally, the structure of the Forgiveness schema was shown to be an additive one, regardless of the age of the participants.     

A Logic for Information Systems

A conception of an information system has been introduced by Pawlak. The study has been continued in works of Pawlak and Orlowska and in works of Vakarelov. They had proposed some basic relations and had constructed a formal system of a modal logic that describes the relations and some of their Boolean combinations. Our work is devoted to a generalization of this approach. A class of relation systems and a complete calculus construction method for these systems are proposed. As a corollary of our main result, our paper contains a solution of a Vakarelov's problem: how to construct a formal system that describes all the Boolean combinations of the basic relations.     

Information processing in chronic pain disorder: A preliminary analysis

Researchers have alternately suggested selective attention, impaired stimulus filtering, and affective language deficiency models as accounting for multiple somatic complaints in persons with chronic pain disorder. The purpose of the present study was to establish the comparative usefulness of these three models for explaining somatic focus in a chronic pain population. Nine chronic pain patients evidencing high somatic focus (somatizing chronic pain patients), 10 chronic pain patients evidencing low somatic focus (nonsomatizing chronic pain patients), and 10 healthy control subjects were administered a computerized version of the emotional Stroop test as a test of these models. A total of 105 pain-, depression-, and neutral-content words were used as Stroop test stimuli. Stroop test color-naming response latencies were submitted to a two-way Group × Word Type mixed-model ANOVA, with Word Type as the repeated measure. Results reveal that neither the selective attention model nor the affective language deficiency model adequately explain Stroop test performance in somatizing chronic pain patients. Findings provide tentative support for the impaired stimulus filtering model, with somatizing chronic pain patients evidencing similar Stroop test response delays across all words. These results suggest that chronic pain sufferers misinterpret bodily sensations. Findings are discussed in terms of a bilevel approach for treatment of somatizing chronic pain patients that would include assisting the patient in accurate appraisal and interpretation of physical symptoms.     

Affective information processing and the assessment of anxiety

A conceptualization of anxiety as comprising three loosely coupled response systems of overt behavior, verbal report, and physiological activation has proven useful in clinical and theoretical work. With this framework as a starting point, an information-processing approach to the study of emotion is described. Emotions are conceived as affective programs within the brain, with information coded as propositions organized into associative networks. Affective expression results when such a network is accessed and processed, which can occur when a sufficient number of propositions are activated by environmental stimuli and/or internal associations. It is hypothesized that information about the expressive physiology is an integral component of the associative structure, and that processing of the network accordingly results in measurable psychophysiological response. Data from studies of emotional imagery, as well as other areas of research, are reviewed in support of these theories. The utility of this approach for the assessment of anxiety disorders is discussed, and results of clinical studies are presented to suggest that individual differences in accessing and processing emotional information may bear significant implications for prognosis and treatment selection. It is speculated that differences among the anxiety disorders could be interpreted in terms of the degree of cognitive organization of the network, leading to potential refinement of current diagnostic categories. In conclusion, cognitive psychology paradigms are discussed in terms of their application to the assessment and treatment of anxiety disorders.The authors' research is supported in part by NIMH Grant MH 37757. Portions of this paper were presented at the NIMH Conference on Anxiety, Tuxedo, NY, September 1983. Several of its themes were developed there at more length, and this material may be found in the publication of the conference proceedings (Tuma & Maser, 1985).