Coordination of knowledge in communication: effects of speakers' assumptions about what others know.

Two pairs of studies examined effects of perspective taking in communication, using a 2-stage methodology that first obtained people's estimates of the recognizability to others of specific stimuli (public figures and everyday objects) and then examined the effects of these estimates on message formulation in a referential communication task. Ss were good at estimating stimulus identifiability but were biased in the direction of their own knowledge. The amount of information in a referring expression varied inversely with the perceived likelihood that addresses could identify the target stimulus. However, effects were less strong than anticipated. Although communicators do take others' knowledge into account, the extent to which they do so involves a trade-off with other sorts of information in the communicative situation.     

Spatial cognition and neighborhood use: the relationship in older adults.

Measures of spatial cognition, neighborhood knowledge, and neighborhood use from the research described by Walsh, Krauss, and Regnier (1981) were examined to determine if laboratory tests of spatial cognition were significant predictors of older adults' use of their neighborhoods. The overall results show that laboratory-based measures of spatial cognition and subjects' knowledge of their neighborhoods are both significant predictors of their use of neighborhood goods and services. The ability to learn and remember the location and orientation of objects, when contextual cues were not provided at test, was more predictive of the participants' neighborhood use than either the participants' number of years in the neighborhood or their mobility. Spatial memory as measured by the Educational Testing Service Building Memory task predicted neighborhood knowledge, which was predictive of neighborhood use.     

Social adjustment in the offspring of parents with bipolar affective disorder

The social adjustment of the adolescent offspring of parents with bipolar affective disorder (n=41) was compared to that of the offspring of parents with nonaffective psychiatric disorders (n=22) and the offspring of normal controls (n=26). In addition, the relationship between social adjustment and cyclothymia in offspring was determined. Social adjustment was assessed using the Life Activities Inventory, a new measure developed to assess social functioning in adolescents and young adults. Cyclothymia was assessed with the General Behavior Inventory. As a group, the offspring of bipolar parents did not differ significantly from either control group on social adjustment. However, the cyclothymic offspring of bipolar parents exhibited significantly poorer social adjustment than the noncyclothymic offspring of bipolars and the offspring of psychiatric and normal controls. These findings suggest that poor social functioning in the adolescent offspring of parents with bipolar illness may be associated with the early manifestations of affective disorder. In addition, these data indicate that despite its subsyndromal intensity, cyclothymia can result in significant social impairment.This study was supported in part by National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Research Grant MH-39782 to Daniel N. Klein and NIMH Grants MH-33083 and MH-37195 to Richard A. Depue.     

Self-control: An integrative framework

Research on self-control has flourished within the last two decades, with many researchers trying to answer one of the most fundamental questions regarding human behaviour—how do we successfully regulate desires in the pursuit of long-term goals? While recent research has focused on different strategies to enhance self-control success, we still know very little about how strategies are implemented or where the need for self-control comes from in the first place. Drawing from parallel fields (e.g., emotion regulation, health) and other theories of self-regulation, we propose an integrative framework that describes self-control as a dynamic, multi-stage process that unfolds over time. In this review, we first provide an overview of this framework, which poses three stages of regulation: the identification of the need for self-control, the selection of strategies to regulate temptations, and the implementation of chosen strategies. These regulatory stages are then flexibly monitored over time. We then expand this framework by outlining a series of growth points to guide future research. By bridging across theories and disciplines, the present framework improves our understanding of how self-control unfolds in everyday life.     

Conflict play and its modification in the course of treating children

The authors report their experience with a special form of psychodrama for the treatment in small groups of neurotic children aged five to fifteen. The acting out of ambivalent, partly unconscious and restrained tendencies and inclinations by playing, i.e., by taking roles in spontaneous performances, is followed by alternation of identification in the group and, possibly, careful indirect verbalization by the therapeutist and/or group, of which the purpose is to arrive at a reorientation of the attitudes of patients and a consolidation of the newly won attitude.     

Perceived Parameters of Christian Pharmacy Students’ Faith-Sharing in Clinical Settings

Journal of Religion and Health - Our interdisciplinary team (which included professionals from nursing, pharmacy, allied health, and psychology) conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with...     

Re-exposure to reinforcement in Context A during treatment in Context B reduces ABC renewal

Previous work from our laboratory showed that intermittently re-exposing rats to reinforcement for lever pressing in a training (A) context, while eliminating lever pressing in a second (B) context, increased ABA renewal of lever pressing relative to rats that experienced only Context B during response elimination. In the current study, we replicated these procedures while assessing renewal in the presence of a novel context (i.e., ABC renewal). Unlike the findings described above, renewal was reduced in the group that experienced re-exposure to Context A during lever-press elimination relative to rats that experienced only Context B. These findings suggest that alternating between contexts associated with reinforcement and extinction during treatment reduces the probability that organisms will respond in novel contexts. These outcomes may be the result of discrimination and/or generalization processes. Moreover, this training procedure may offer a potential mitigation strategy for ABC renewal.     

Muscular Activity in the Arm during Lexical Retrieval: Implications for Gesture-Speech Theories

The origin and functions of the hand and arm gestures that accompany speech production are poorly understood. It has been proposed that gestures facilitate lexical retrieval, but little is known about when retrieval is accompanied by gestural activity and how this activity is related to the semantics of the word to be retrieved. Electromyographic (EMG) activity of the dominant forearm was recorded during a retrieval task in which participants tried to identify target words from their definitions. EMG amplitudes were significantly greater for concrete than for abstract words. The relationship between EMG amplitude and other conceptual attributes of the target words was examined. EMG was positively related to a word’s judged spatiality, concreteness, drawability, and manipulability. The implications of these findings for theories of the relation between speech production and gesture are discussed.This experiment was done by the first author under the supervision of the second author in partial completion of the Ph.D. degree at Columbia University. We gratefully acknowledge the advice and comments of Lois Putnam, Robert Remez, James Magnuson, Michele Miozzo, and Robert B. Tallarico, and the assistance of Stephen Krieger, Lauren Walsh, Jennifer Kim, and Jillian White.     

Social science as dialogue: narcissism,individualist and collectivist values,and religious interest in iran and the united states

This investigation most importantly sought to illustrate the use of social science to promote cross-cultural dialogue. Fukuyama (1992) explained contemporary cultural trends in terms of a triumphant individualism that would overcome all other forms of social life, including what he described as the “fundamentalist resentment” of Iran. Lasch (1979) more pessimistically diagnosed Western social arrangements in terms of an emerging “culture of narcissism.” In this study, Iranian and American university students responded to measures of narcissism, individualist and collectivist values, religious interest, and psychological adjustment (identity, self-actualization, and self-consciousness). Variables related to a sense of community (collectivist values, religious interest, and identity) correlated negatively with narcissism in both societies, as did self-actualization. These data supported a moderate position between the polarized extremes of Fukuyama and Lasch and more importantly demonstrated how social scientific methods might be useful in creating a “space” for conducting a “dialogue between civilizations.”