Effects of a structured behavior modification treatment program on locus of control in behaviorally disturbed children

The effect of a 10-day behavior modification treatment program on locus of control was investigated. The subjects were children (N = 130; 6 to 12 years old) with severe behavioral disorders who were predominantly from low socioeconomic backgrounds, from broken homes, and socially deprived. Pre- and post-testing was done with the Nowicki-Strickland Preschool and Primary Internal-External Control Scale (Nowicki & Duke, 1974) and the Nowicki-Strickland Locus of Control Scale for Children (Nowicki & Strickland, 1973). Children between the ages of 10 and 12 responded to therapy with a significant increase in internality, but younger children did not.     

Self-evaluation maintenance and the mediational role of emotion: the perception of friends and strangers

Two studies examined the causal role of emotional arousal in self-evaluation maintenance processes. In previous work, Tesser and Campbell (1982) found that Ss were most charitable in their perception of another's performance when self-relevance was low and the other was close. If emotional arousal mediated this pattern of behavior, then the pattern of behavior should be replicated when arousal is present but attenuated when arousal is misattributed or low. The misattribution hypothesis was tested in Study 1. Study 2 was a correlational study in which physiological arousal and misattribution were measured. The results supported the prediction that SEM processes would be attenuated when arousal was attributed to external sources. The misattribution effect was particularly pronounced among more highly aroused Ss. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for the SEM model and person perception.     

Sex difference trends in completed suicide

The recent suicide literature increasingly has contained statements suggesting that the differences in completed suicide between the sexes are lessening. A compilation of official suicide data for 1933-1980 verifies such a trend from the 1950s through 1971. However, increased differences (as measured by the ratio of male to female rates) were consistently observed from 1971 to 1980. These trends were found for data for the nation, for whites and nonwhites, for numbers of suicides, for crude rates, and for age-adjusted rates. Decreased sex differences were obtained for those 35-44, 45-54, 55-64, and for 65+ years of age, but increased sex differences were observed for those aged 15-24 and 25-34. Possible explanations for these findings are presented.     

Conceptualising,designing and drafting a monthly multi-family therapy programme and manual for adolescents with anorexia nervosa

The written transmission of therapists' expertise in manuals is an important issue which is highlighted in the literature. Manuals are essential for research, training and therapeutic guidance. However, the conceptualisation, design and drafting of therapy manuals have received little attention. Our team conceptualised and designed a 10-monthly session multi-family therapy programme for adolescents suffering from anorexia nervosa. This paper presents the methodology used to evolve from training and theoretical models to designing a programme and drafting the accompanying manual. We then describe how our team reached a consensus regarding the role to be attributed to food-related symptoms in the programme. These arduous tasks were rewarded by fruitful discussions among team members, which led to a shared theory of treatment. The methodology presented here is drawn from both the experience of specialised teams and from that of families in providing care to adolescents with anorexia nervosa.     

The role of marking when reward is delayed

Two-choice spatial discrimination by rats is enhanced if a salient stimulus marker occurs immediately after every choice response and again after a delay interval (Lieberman, McIntosh & Thomas, 1979). Three experiments further explore this effect. Experiment 1 found that the second marker is unnecessary. Experiment 2 found that a marker presented before a response is as effective as one presented after. Both effects could be explained in terms of markers focusing attention on subsequent cues. Experiment 3, however, found that markers after choice enhance learning even when no discriminative cues are present following the marker. Markers thus appear to initiate both a backward search through memory and attention to subsequent events; both processes help to identify events that might be related to the unexpected marking stimulus.     

The Role of Emotional Content and Perceptual Saliency During the Programming of Saccades Toward Faces

Previous studies have shown that the human visual system can detect a face and elicit a saccadic eye movement toward it very efficiently compared to other categories of visual stimuli. In the first experiment, we tested the influence of facial expressions on fast face detection using a saccadic choice task. Face-vehicle pairs were simultaneously presented and participants were asked to saccade toward the target (the face or the vehicle). We observed that saccades toward faces were initiated faster, and more often in the correct direction, than saccades toward vehicles, regardless of the facial expressions (happy, fearful, or neutral). We also observed that saccade endpoints on face images were lower when the face was happy and higher when it was neutral. In the second experiment, we explicitly tested the detection of facial expressions. We used a saccadic choice task with emotional-neutral pairs of faces and participants were asked to saccade toward the emotional (happy or fearful) or the neutral face. Participants were faster when they were asked to saccade toward the emotional face. They also made fewer errors, especially when the emotional face was happy. Using computational modeling, we showed that this happy face advantage can, at least partly, be explained by perceptual factors. Also, saccade endpoints were lower when the target was happy than when it was fearful. Overall, we suggest that there is no automatic prioritization of emotional faces, at least for saccades with short latencies, but that salient local face features can automatically attract attention.