Parent attributions of emotion to their children and the cues children use in perceiving their own emotions

A number of studies have demonstrated stable individual differences in the cues that generate emotions and other feeling states. These differences are assumed to arise from the cues parents use to identify their children's emotional states. As children learn about their own emotional states, they come to rely on these same cues. To test one implication of their view, the facial expressions of children (N=41) were manipulated and their feelings assessed. Some children reported emotions consistent with their expressions, while others reported emotions appropriate to the situation. In a separate procedure, their mothers were asked to identify the emotional states of children whose expressions were inconsistent with an account of their circumstances. Mothers who paid more attention to their children's expressive behavior had children who were more responsive to their own expressive behavior. In contrast, the mothers who were more responsive to situational cues had children whose emotions arose from the situational cues as well.The authors would like to thank numerous teachers and administrators of the Worcester Public School system in Worcester, Massachusetts, for their assistance.     

A taxonomy of item response models

A number of models for categorical item response data have been proposed in recent years. The models appear to be quite different. However, they may usefully be organized as members of only three distinct classes, within which the models are distinguished only by assumptions and constraints on their parameters. “Difference models” are appropriate for ordered responses, “divide-by-total” models may be used for either ordered or nominal responses, and “left-side added” models are used for multiple-choice responses with guessing. The details of the taxonomy and the models are described in this paper. The present study was supported in part by two postdoctoral fellowships awarded to Lynne Steinberg: an Educational Testing Service Postdoctoral Fellowship at ETS, Princeton, NJ and an NIMH Individual National Research Service Award at Stanford University, Stanford, CA. Helpful comments by the editor and three anonymous reviewers are gratefully acknowledged.     

Cognition and metacognition at extreme altitudes on Mount Everest

The FACTRETRIEVAL2 test battery, which assesses both retrieval of general information from memory and metacognition about that retrieval, was administered to people before and after a recent expedition to Mount Everest and at extreme altitudes above 6,400 m (higher than any mountain in North America or Europe). The major findings were as follows: First, the same extreme altitudes already known to impair learning did not affect either accuracy or latency of retrieval, and this robustness of retrieval occurred for both recall and forced-choice recognition. Second, extreme altitude did affect metacognition: The climbers showed a decline in their feeling of knowing both while at extreme altitude and after returning to Kathmandu (i.e., both an effect and an aftereffect of extreme altitude). Third, extreme altitude had different effects than alcohol intoxication (previously assessed by Nelson. McSpadden, Fromme, & Marlatt, 1986). Alcohol intoxication affected retrieval without affecting metacognition, whereas extreme altitude affected metacognition without affecting retrieval; this different pattern for extreme altitude versus alcohol intoxication implies that (a) hypoxia does not always yield the same outcome as alcohol intoxication and (b) neither retrieval nor metacognition is strictly more sensitive than the other for detecting changes in independent variables.     

Values of Postpartum Women from the Inner City: An Exploratory Study

An exploratory study of the values of inner-city postpartum women was conducted. Subjects were largely single, with many on/or going on public assistance. Each subject was given the Rokeach Value Scale and asked to prioritize the terminal values (goals) in terms of herself and the instrumental values (means) in terms of what she would like to teach her child. Rankings were compared to corresponding rankings compiled by a national sample, considered a more traditional era, and by marital status within the postpartum mother sample itself. Economic values were ranked higher by inner-city mothers than by the national sample. The top terminal value was family security and the top instrumental value was responsible. When compared by marital status, the only significant difference was the higher ranking of mature love given by married women. Results suggests that the values of the inner-city single postpartum mother can be conceptualized as a mosaic incorporating values shared with the mainstream and values adapted to the conditions of poverty.     

A Windows program to assist in preparing reports of emergency psychiatry nursing assessments

The Emergency Psychiatry Nursing Assessment Report Framework (EP Nurse) is designed to guide the nurse through the interview-and-reporting process, and to produce a report of the nursing evaluation in emergency psychiatry in 5–10 min. Input includes identifying information, presenting complaints, substance-use history, medical history and vitals, psychiatric medications, treatment history, history of mental illness, last hospitalization, family history of mental illness, nursing diagnosis, and nursing intervention. EP Nurse is intended to be used by licensed nurses familiar with nursing assessment in emergency psychiatry. It is suitable for adult patients.     

A comparison of multiple versus single examples of the correct stimulus on task acquisition and generalization by persons with developmental disabilities

In teaching discriminations to persons with retardation, we often presume we will improve acquisition and generalization if we use multiple examples of boththe correct and incorrect stimuli. Two experiments were conducted to test this hypothesis. In the first experiment, 7 persons with moderate retardation learned to discriminate between functional words under two conditions. In one condition, Multiple Example of S- Only,1 example of the correct stimulus (S+) and 10 examples of the incorrect stimulus (S-) were used during acquisition. In the other condition, Multiple Examples of S+ and S-,10 examples of the S+ and 10 examples of the S- were used. Results showed that the condition which presented only a single example of S+ was superior 16 times and inferior 4 times during acquisition, generalization, and maintenance. A second experiment was conducted to (a) replicate the methodology and procedures in Experiment 1 with different participants, (b) determine whether the results were replicable, and (c) obtain efficiency data. Results replicated the findings of the first experiment. The condition which presented only a single example of S+ was superior on measures of (a) trials to criterion, (b) percent correct during acquisition, and (c) minutes to criterion. On measures of generalization, the two conditions were relatively equal. Thus, the condition which presented only a single example of the correct stimulus was more efficient and was just as effective in generalization as the condition which presented multiple examples of both the S+ and S-. These surprising results were discussed in terms of stimulus control, why students performed just as well during generalization when only one example of the S+ was used, why acquisition was also poorer for this condition, and how future studies might address these points.     

The empirical study of teenage work: A behavioral code for the assessment of adolescent job environments

Policy recommendations that adolescents supplement their experience in school with experience in the workplace have been made in the absence of objective data on the nature of most adolescents' activity on the job. This paper presents a coding system for chronicling a variety of microbehaviors in sequence, as they occur, in adolescent job environments. Three elements of each of approximately 100 behaviors performed by a targeted teenage worker are recorded by an on-site observer who enters appropriate code numbers into a portable event recorder: (1) the social context of the behavior; (2) the character of the behavior; and (3) the duration and concomitants of the behavior, when appropriate. Each of 97 working teenagers was observed continuously over a two hour period on the job. Interobserver agreement on the coding of worker behaviors and the social contexts in which they occurred averaged .86 and .97, respectively. In addition to its applicability in research on the effects of working on adolescent development, information obtained using the code can be helpful in the evaluation of youth employment programs, the vocational counseling of adolescents, and the validation of subjective worker reports of job attributes.     

Multifactorial assessment of bulimia nervosa

We investigated a multifactorial approach to the assessment of bulimia nervosa by means of hierarchical factor analysis. Two hundred forty-five bulimia nervosa patients and 68 patients with either anorexia nervosa or eating disorders not otherwise specified were administered a self-report battery that was organized into 21 dimensions relevant to eating disorder patients. When dimensions from this battery were subjected to hierarchical factor analysis, support for bulimia nervosa as a unique diagnostic category was obtained. However, the emergence of 3 secondary factors and 6 primary factors suggests that bulimia nervosa can also be described more complexly. The emergence of a multifactorial model of bulimia nervosa that incorporates several existing undimensional models suggests the potential for both divergent and complicated clinical presentation in bulimia nervosa patients.