Surviving the early loss of a mother: daughters speak,by Anne Tracey

The purpose of this study is to empirically evaluate a coping response that is thought to be unique among older Catholics–suffering in silence. Two hypotheses are examined. The first predicts that older Catholics will be more likely than older Protestants to suffer in silence when ongoing economic difficulty is encountered. The second hypothesis specifies that the potentially deleterious effects of financial problems on depressive symptoms will be offset for older adults who prefer to suffer in silence. Data from an ongoing nationwide survey of older people in the United States provide support for both hypotheses.     

Effect of Amount and Percentage of Reinforcement on Resistance to Extinction in Preschool Children

A correlational study of parental assimilation patterns revealed greater paternal compliance and greater maternal compliance and internalization in a sample of teacher-judged adjusted boys than in a comparison sample of unadjusted boys. Adjusted boys were more similar to their fathers in terms of their personal orientations toward child behavior. The generalized expectations of these boys were also more similar to their mothers' expectations. Data on intrafamilial perceptions were reported to illustrate the greater parental assimilation by the adjusted boys. These results lend additional support to the theorized importance of parental identification in the early development of behavior disorders.     

Reducing overselective stimulus control with differential observing responses

Overselective stimulus control refers to discriminative control in which the number of controlling stimuli is too limited for effective behavior. Experiment 1 included 22 special‐education students who exhibited overselective stimulus control on a two‐sample delayed matching task. An intervention added a compound identity matching opportunity within the sample observation period of the matching trials. The compound matching functioned as a differential observing response (DOR) in that high accuracy verified observation and discrimination of both sample stimuli. Nineteen participants learned to perform the DOR and two‐sample delayed matching accuracy increased substantially for 16 of them. When the DOR was completely withdrawn after 10 sessions, accuracy declined. In Experiment 2, a more gradual withdrawal of DOR requirements showed that highly accurate performance could be maintained with the DOR on only a proportion of trials for most participants. The results show that DOR training may lead to a general improvement in observing behavior.     

Judgment Difficulty and the Moral Intensity of Unethical Acts: A Cognitive Response Analysis of Dual Process Ethical Judgment Formation

This study analyzes cognitive responses to explore a dual processing perspective of ethical judgment formation. Specifically, the study investigates how two factors, judgment task difficulty and moral intensity, influence the extent of deontological and teleological processing and their effects on ethical judgments. A single experiment on 110 undergraduate research participants found that judgment task difficulty affected the extent of deontological and teleological processing. Although moral intensity affected ethical judgments, it did not produce effects on either deontological or teleological cognitive responses. Results did not support the hypotheses that deontological and teleological cognitive responses would mediate the relationships between the experimental factors and ethical judgments. Overall, the results support continued research of factors that affect the nature of information processing in ethical decision situations and the use of cognitive response analysis as a tool for conducting this research.     

Fetal behavioral responses to the touch of the mother’s abdomen: A Frame-by-frame analysis

The aim of the present study was to examine whether fetuses respond to the touching of the mother’s abdomen, and if they do, whether they differentiate based on familiarity and the source of the touch, utilizing 3D real-time (4D) sonography.Behavioral responses of 28 fetuses (20th to 33rd week of gestation; N = 15 in the 2nd and N = 13 in the 3rd trimester) were frame-by-frame coded using a coding system comprising 20 codes and were analyzed in four conditions, during the touch of the (1) mother, (2) the father, (3) the stranger and in a (4) no-touch, control condition.Fetuses showed differential responses to the touch, in particular in the duration of their reaching out to touch the uterus wall in the four conditions, and self-touch, dependent on the gestational age of the fetus. Fetuses in the 3rd trimester touched the uterus wall significantly longer than fetuses in the 2nd trimester did, when the mother touched compared to the control condition. At the same time, fetuses in the 3rd trimester also touched themselves less during the mother’s touch, compared when the stranger touched and also compared to the control condition.This differential response of the older fetuses might be due to the maturation of the central nervous system, and may indicate the emergence of a proprioceptive self-awareness by the 3rd trimester.     

Individuals with chronic ankle instability compensate for their ankle deficits using proximal musculature to maintain reduced postural sway while kicking a ball

The aim of this study was to investigate anticipatory (APA), simultaneous (SPA) and compensatory (CPA) postural adjustments in individuals with and without chronic ankle instability (CAI) as they kicked a ball while standing in a single-leg stance on a stable and unstable surface. Electromyographic activity (EMG) of postural muscles and center of pressure (COP) displacements were calculated and their magnitudes analyzed during the postural adjustment intervals. Additionally, the COP area of sway was calculated over the duration of the whole task. The activities of postural muscles were also studied using principal component analysis (PCA) to identify between-group differences in patterns of muscle activation. The individuals with CAI showed reduced magnitude of EMG at the muscles around the ankle while around the hip the activity was increased. These were associated with a reduction in balance sway across the entire task, as compared with the control group. The PCA revealed that CAI participants assemble different sets of muscle activation to compensate for their ankle instability, primarily activating hip/spine muscles. These results set up potential investigations to examine whether balance control interventions enhance these adaptations or revert them to a normal pattern as well as if any of these changes proactively address recurrent ankle sprain conditions.     

Opposing effects of phonological similarity on item and order memory of words and nonwords in the serial recall task

This study shows that the classical phonological similarity effect (PSE) in immediate serial recall is critically affected by the lexicality of list items, the type of phonological similarity involved, and the scoring procedure. PSE was present in the serial recall score when phonologically distinct words were compared to words that share the middle vowel and end consonant (rhyming lists). PSE was absent in the serial recall score when phonologically distinct words were compared to words that share the initial and final consonants (consonant frame lists). There was a reversal of PSE in serial recall of nonwords when comparing distinct lists to both types of similar lists. Recall accuracy on the other hand was higher for distinct lists regardless of lexicality. Item errors dominated in relation to order errors in the case of nonwords, whereas order errors dominated in relation to item errors in the case of words. Furthermore, order errors were more common for phonologically similar lists, whereas item errors were more common for phonologically distinct lists. This may be the result of intra‐list and inter‐list interference, respectively. The dominance of the former error type may cause a classical PSE, whereas the dominance of the latter error type may cause a reversal of PSE. Finally, an item identification task yielded no evidence of an association between intra‐list interference and discriminability of items in a list.     

病耻感对于精神病患者的影响以及文化对策

本文分析三种类型歧视所造成的患者及其家属的痛耻感,论述我们应当如何利用适当的文化应对策略来消除歧视、减少病耻感,从而有效地克服病耻感对于患者及其家属的负面影响。文化差异与病耻感的形成直接相关,文化作为一个重要变量,影响着精神卫生问题以及相应的服务政策,深入研究和认识儒家文化的核心价值有助于减少对于精神病患者的歧视,帮助他们克服病耻感。中国道家文化推崇道法自然,无为而治,可以发展出有效的心理疗法,对于精神疾病是一剂对症的良药。     

Responding to negative health events: A test of the Bad News Response Model

People can respond to bad news in a variety of ways. The Bad News Response Model suggests that three aspects of bad news (the controllability, likelihood, and severity of negative consequences) predict which response (Watchful Waiting, Active Change, or Acceptance) people are likely to choose. This article presents an initial test of the predictions of the Bad News Response Model. College students (N = 234) and older adults (N = 116) read a scenario about a person with a suspicious mole that varied in the controllability, likelihood, and severity of the outcomes. Consistent with our predictions, people prefer Watchful Waiting when controllability, likelihood, and severity are low, Active Change when controllability and likelihood are high, and Acceptance when controllability is low. These findings provide support for the Bad News Response Model and suggest that responses to bad news may be foreseeable based on the type of news people receive.