Attribution of control and teenage pregnancy

In rural Appalachia in Tennessee, data on 13 female adolescents who had experienced a pregnancy (mean age=16 years, 7 months) were compared with those on 38 female adolescents who had not experienced a pregnancy (mean age-16 years, 4 months) to test the hypothesis that teenagers who experience a pregnancy have external attributions of control over their life events. The Nowicki-Strickland Locus of Control Scale for Children was administered to determine their beliefs about causes of events in their lives. All the girls were white and matched for socioeconomic status, housing, and cultural background. The mean attribution of control to external agents score stood at 14.5 for girls who had experienced a pregnancy compared with 12.7 for those who had not experienced a pregnancy, but the difference was not significant (p=.08).54% of the cases exhibited external attributional orientation compared with 16% of the controls (p.02). This finding concurred with that of earlier studies. The fact that not all the girls who had experienced a pregnancy had external attributional orientation suggested that it is not the only factor linked to adolescent pregnancy. Studies have not identified whether external attributional orientation is a causal factor or consequence of adolescent pregnancy. A 1980 study found that women who had shown more external locus of control scores during pregnancy and tended to castigate themselves had a high probability of postpartum depression. Another study indicated that rises in depression among adolescents were linked to prechange orientations toward external attributions of control. Practitioners should selectively pay attention to teenagers who have extreme attributional orientations since many teenagers carry their pregnancies to term and choose to rear their infants. These orientations appear to pose risks for the adolescent mother and her children.     

On the limits of Kagan’s impulsive reflective distinction

A logical analysis is made of the Matching Familiar Figures (MFF) Test on the basis of which children have been classified as "impulsive" or "reflective." The reflective strategy is implicitly preferred to the impulsive because the reflective child makes fewer errors though generally taking longer to make his first response. We show that the test allows the choice of a number of "game plans" and speed-accuracy tradeoffs which in practice may not be very different. Error rates may not indicate perceptual sensitivity, in any case, since sensitivity and response factors may be confounded in the error rate. Using a visual running-memory-span task to avoid the inherent difficulties of the MFF test, we found that children previously classified on the basis of that test as impulsive or reflective did not differ in recognition accuracy but did differ in response bias and response latency. Accuracy and bias are estimated by way of Luce's choice theory (Luce, 1963), and the results are discussed in those terms.     

Strength of mind: Prospects and problems for a Humean account

References to strength of mind, a character trait implying “the prevalence of the calm passions above the violent”, occur in a number of important discussions of motivation in the Treatise and the Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals. Nevertheless, Hume says surprisingly little about what strength of mind is, or how it is achieved. This paper argues that Hume’s theory of the passions can provide an interesting and defensible account of strength of mind. The paper concludes with a brief comparison of Humean strength of mind with autonomy.     

Factors Affecting the Psychodiagnostic Significance of Color Perception

50 males, 17 and 18 years of age, and their natural parents were given the Blacky Defense Preference Inventory to determine if there are commonalities of defense preferences within families and within sex groups.

The results tended to support the hypothesis that male adolescents manifest defense preferences more similar to those of their father than to nonrelated adult males but failed to support a comparable hypothesis concerning the adolescent's similarity of defense preferences to his mother versus nonrelated adult females. The adolescent males did not reveal defense preferences more similar to those of their father than of their mother nor were sex differences in defense preferences observed. An additional finding suggested that the adult males are more heterogeneous in their defense preferences than are adult females.     

Book Reviews

The Advancement of Science: Science Without Legend, Objectivity Without Illusions Philip Kitcher, 1993 Oxford University Press pp. ix + 421, £30.00, ISBN 019 504628 5

Mind, Brain, Behavior. The Mind‐Body Problem and the Philosophy of Psychology Martin Carrier & JÜrgen Mittelstrass, 1991 Berlin, Walter de Gruyter pp. 314, £51.82, ISBN 3 11012876 4

Rewriting the History of Madness: Studies in Foucault's Histoire de la Folie Arthur Still & Irving Velody (Eds), 1992 Routledge pp. x + 225, £45, ISBN 0 415 06654 9

Economics and the Philosophy of Science Deborah Redman, 1993 Oxford, Oxford University Press pp. xiv + 252, £10.95 (paperback), ISBN 019 508274 5

The Disorder of Things John Dupré, 1993 Cambridge, MA/London, UK, Harvard University Press pp. viii+ 308, £27.95, ISBN 0 674 21260 6

The Philosophy of Vacuum Simon Saunders & Harvey R. Brown (Eds), 1991 Oxford, Oxford University Press pp. 291, £37.50, ISBN 0 19 824449 5

The Laboratory of the Mind James R. Brown, 1991 London, Routledge pp. xi+ 175, £11.99 (paperback), ISBN 0 415 095794

The Revision Theory of Truth A. Gupta & N. D. Belnap, 1993 Cambridge, MA, MIT Press pp. xii + 299, £31.50, ISBN 0 262 07144 4