Self-Reported Delinquency,neuropsychological deficit,and history of attention deficit disorder

This study was designed to evaluate the possibility that a pattern of cognitive deficit is associated with delinquent behavior, while avoiding some of the methodological problems of previous research. The Self- Report Early Delinquency instrument and a research battery of neuropsychological tests were administered blindly to an unselected cohort of 678 13- year- olds. Because the diagnosis of attention deficit disorder (ADD) was found at markedly elevated rates in the backgrounds of these delinquents, the possibility was examined that the neuropsychological deficits of delinquents might be limited to delinquents with histories of ADD. Although delinquents with past ADD were more cognitively impaired than non-ADD delinquents, both groups scored significantly below nondelinquents on verbal, visuospatial, and visualmotor integration skills. In addition, ADD delinquents scored poorly on memory abilities. Subjects with ADD who had not developed delinquent behavior were not as cognitively impaired as ADD delinquents, suggesting that it is the specific comorbidity of ADD and delinquency that bears neuropsychological study.This work was supported by USPHS Grant 1 R23 MH-42723-01 from the Antisocial and Violent Behavior Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health. The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Research Unit is supported by the Medical Research Council of New Zealand. Appreciation is expressed for the methodological advice of Prof. Sarnoff A. Mednick, and for the data collection efforts of Mrs. Pat Brasch, Mrs. Kathleen Campbell, Mr. Rich Poulton, and the psychometrists who administered the WISC-R.     

Poverty,state, and the family: A challenge for family therapy

Much family therapy writing has focused on work with discrete presenting problems in circumscribed clinical practice settings. This paper takes a broader focus of poor families which do not fit easily into the one-hour therapy schedule, in the context of the powerful forces of politics and economics. If the prevailing political attitudes and economic realities are ignored, direct practice with families may fail to meet them at their point of experience. Examples of political views, and therapeutic and research thinking which do not pay attention to these aspects, are used to highlight the author's point of view.     

The relationship of extraversion,neuroticism, and sensation-seeking to questionnaire-derived measures of nervous system properties

Five obliquely rotated factor analyses were performed on items from Eysenck and Eysenck’s (1975) EPQ, Zuckerman’s (1975) Sensation-Seeking Scale, and Strelau’s (1972) temperament inventory (STI), administered to 277 subjects (Ss). The analyses were used to examine the relationships between the personality dimensions E, N, L, P and Sensation-Seeking, which pertain mainly to social situations, attitudes and feelings, and questionnaire-derived measures of nervous system properties, which, while validated on experimental indices of nervous system properties derived from Nebylitsyn’s (1972) model, are expressed as characteristic features of social behavior, work style and activity. Four factors were identified—extraversion/strength of excitation/mobility; self-control of affect/stability/caution; strength of inhibition/verbal control/motor expressiveness/ nonmanipulativeness; and sensation-seeking/nervousness. The results offer support for Eysenck’s claim of some identity between excitatory strength and E, for the reported relationship between E and mobility, and for Eysenck’s conditioning postulate. They also suggest that similar temperamental variables underlie individual differences in both social and occupational/motor activity. Since Strelau’s STI items are validated on experimental indices of nervous system properties, it follows that typological characteristics may be inferred from questionnaire data derived from both behavioral categories.     

Point of view in personal memories

A structural aspect of personal memories was examined in four studies. In some memories, one has the perspective of an observer, seeing oneself “from the outside.” In other memories, one sees the scene from one's own perspective; the field of view in such memories corresponds to that of the original situation. The existence of “observer” and “field” memories was confirmed in Study 1, using a recall questionnaire. In Study 2, the similarity structure of a specified set of eight to-be-recalled situations was established: the significant dimensions were “emotionality” and “self-awareness.” Study 3 related these dimensions to the observer-field distinction; situations involving a high degree of emotion and selfawareness were most likely to be recalled with an observer perspective. Recall set was varied in Study 4: a focus on feelings (as opposed to objective circumstances) produced relatively more field memories. Studies 3 and 4 also showed that events reported as more recent tend to be recalled in the field mode. Thus a qualitative characteristic of personal memories—the perspective from which they are experienced—is apparently related to characteristics of the original event, to the individual's purpose in recalling that event, and to the reported recall interval.     

Language-dependent recall of autobiographical memories

Two studies of autobiographical memory explored the hypothesis that memories become more accessible when the linguistic environment at retrieval matches the linguistic environment at encoding. In Experiment 1, Russian-English bilinguals were asked to recall specific life experiences in response to word prompts. The results supported the hypothesis of language-dependent recall: Participants retrieved more experiences from the Russian-speaking period of their lives when interviewed in Russian and more experiences from the English-speaking period of their lives when interviewed in English. In Experiment 2, the language of the interview was varied independently from the language of the word prompts. Both variables were found to influence autobiographical recall. These findings show that language at the time of retrieval, like other forms of context, plays a significant role in determining what will be remembered.     

Effects of Fixed-Time Reinforcement Delivered by Teachers for Reducing Problem Behavior in Special Education Classrooms

The effects of fixed-time (FT) reinforcement schedules on the disruptive behavior of 4 students in special education classrooms were studied. Attention provided on FT schedules in the context of a multiple-baseline design across participants substantially decreased all students’ challenging behavior. Disruptive behavior was maintained at levels lower than baseline throughout reinforcement thinning and follow-up phases. The results extend existing literature on the use of FT schedules of reinforcement and provide evidence that FT schedules of reinforcement can be practical to implement in special educational classroom settings.