Family predictors of the incidence of children's asthma symptoms: expressed emotion, medication, parent contact, and life events.

Self-report measures of both parents' expressed emotion, their time spent with their children, family life events, and children's medication compliance were obtained from 32 pairs of parents with a 5- to 12-year-old child with asthma and used to predict the number of the children's asthma-related medical contacts and school absences in the preceding year. Higher levels of fathers' expressed emotion, specifically critical comments, were associated with higher school absenteeism, and the amount of time fathers reported spending with their children on weekends was inversely related to the number of times children had an asthma-related medical contact. These findings were interpreted as reflecting the father's reactions to his child's asthma. Implications for intervention are discussed.

Parent reports of sleep disturbances in stimulant-medicated children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

In a study of the severity of sleep disturbances in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) who are taking stimulant medication, parents of 20 children diagnosed as having ADHD and on medication, 20 unmedicated children with some other psychiatric diagnosis (OPD), and 20 nonclinical control children responded to a 40-question structured interview to report the frequency of their children's sleep disturbances occurring during a 1-month interval. Parents of children in the ADHD group reported significantly more problems than parents of children in the other groups on variables within all three categories of behaviors: (a) settling and going to sleep, (b) disruptions during sleep, and (c) morning activities. From 25% to 50% of these parents reported very frequent difficulties in their children settling and going to sleep. These findings indicate that monitoring sleep-related behaviors and providing adjunctive therapies for sleep-related disturbances would be beneficial for many families with ADHD children who are taking stimulant medication.

Predictors of aggression in hospitalized adolescents.

Client records spanning a 14-month period were examined for an adolescent unit of a large state psychiatric hospital to identify client variables predictive of acts of physical aggression in hospitalized adolescents. Forty-two percent of the 43 girls and 55% of the 57 boys were classified as aggressive because they had committed at least one act of physical aggression during the data collection period. In logistic regression analyses, client characteristics were used to predict aggression classification and 79%, 81%, and 92% of the total sample, girls, and boys, respectively, were correctly classified. Aggression in the girls was associated with having a history of family violence, being of a minority race, and being on medication; for the boys, aggression was associated with a diagnosis of a conduct disorder, being on medication, and being previously hospitalized.

Veering in women: inconsistency of forward and backward progression.

In a large rectangular room, 13 blindfolded women attempted to walk in a straight line from one end of the room to a target centered at the other end of the room. On 12 trials, the women walked forward, and on 12 trials they walked backward. On half the trials under each of these conditions, they walked toward the north, and on the other half to the south. Performance errors were highly correlated for northward and southward progression, an indication of good reliability for this veering task. Veering during forward progression was not significantly related to veering during backward progression. Individual consistency in veering was demonstrated in several ways, and approximately half the participants veered in the same direction on nearly all trials. These results indicate that veering should be considered as an additional manifestation of lateral preferences in human motor behavior.

Directional preferences in the rotational play behaviors of young children.

In a day-care setting, 33 girls and 34 boys, ranging in age from 36 to 73 months, responded to 30 tasks to obtain conventional measures of laterality and to determine their directional preferences on behaviors requiring whole body movement in a circle (circling) or pivoting about the body's vertical axis. Significant counterclockwise preferences were found for both kinds of turning behaviors, and there were no gender differences in these preferences. Increasing age was weakly associated with stronger right-handedness and counterclockwise preference on the circling tasks. These results are consistent with those of other studies and suggest that humans exhibit a small left-turning population preference in rotational movements.

Parental conflict and male adolescent problem behavior.

Mothers in 30 clinical and 35 nonclinical families completed a behavior checklist for a target son and all other sons in the family who were between 13 and 17 years old. Each of these male adolescents completed two perceived parental conflict questionnaires for their biological parents. In each group, child behavior problems and parental conflict were correlated under two conditions: (a) using information pertaining to the target adolescent and (b) using information pertaining to the male adolescent experiencing the greatest behavior difficulties. Correlations increased in the nonclinical group when the information used was for the adolescent experiencing the greatest behavior difficulties.

Numbers of word associations to color patches and color names differ across two opponent pairs.

68 female undergraduate students completed word-association and semantic-differential tasks in response to stimuli which were patches or names of eight colors. The number of word associations for the group viewing color patches differed from that of the group responding to color names on the basis of four colors forming two of the three opponent pairs of the opponent-process theory of color vision.

Intestinal absorption and secretion of radioactive vanadium (48VO3-) in rats and effect of Al(OH)3.

Vanadium in the metavanadate form (VO3-) is a powerful inhibitor of Na+, K+-ATPase. Because of the similarity between the oxy anions of vanadium and phosphorus, it was of interest to see whether Al(OH)3 would restrict the intestinal absorption of vanadium, as it does that of phosphorus. VO3- was extensively bound to a suspension of Al(OH)3 at pH 5-8. Sprague-Dawley rats (180-300 g) were fasted overnight and gavaged with 5 mumol Na3 VO4 in 1.0 ml 0.9% NaCl containing 1 microCi 48V. Control animals (n = 12) simultaneously received 1.0 ml diluent and experimental animals (n = 12) received 1 ml Al(OH))3. Diluent and Al(OH)3 were then given daily for 4 d. Urine and feces were collected separately each day. In control animals total 48V recovery (stool and urine) over 4 d was 86.6 +/- 2.4% of the administered dose. Although Al(OH)3 insignificantly increased total 48V recovery (93.6 +/- 3.2%), it markedly increased excretion of 48V in the stool as compared to the urine (control: stool, 69.1 +/- 1.8%; urine, 12.5 +/- 1.3%; Al(OH)3: stool, 85.7 +/- 1.5%; urine, 7.9 +/- 1.8%). Animals were then sacrificed and tissue uptake of tracer measured. The pattern of unexcreted 48V in tissue of both groups was kidney greater than bone greater than liver greater than intestine greater than muscle, but the tissue levels were uniformly higher in controls than in Al(OH)3-treated animals. The ability of Al(OH)3 to remove endogenous VO3- was also examined. 48V was injected ip (n = 20). Half of the animals received diluent and half received 1.0 ml Al(OH)3 by gavage daily for 4 d. There were no differences in the pattern of 48V tissue distribution and excretion. It is concluded that Al(OH)3 may prevent tissue accumulation of VO3- from dietary sources by reducing intestinal VO3- absorption.

Time-dependent recovery from electroconvulsive shock-induced amnesia.

To examine time-dependent recovery from ECS-induced amnesia, 44 hooded rats were trained to leverpress for food. On treatment day the first leverpress was followed by footshock and ECS or sham ECS (SECS). Animals in both treatment conditions then experienced a 10-min extinction session either 1 or 3 days following treatment. For both the 1-day and 3-day delay ECS groups, the latencies to the first response during extinction were lower than the latencies of the corresponding SECS groups. When extinction followed treatment by 1 day, the ECS rats also made more responses during the test than the SECS rats; however, when tested 3 days after treatment, the ECS and SECS groups did not differ on extinction response rate. In this operant setting, therefore, time-dependent recovery from amnesia can be demonstrated with response rate as the amnesia measure. In addition, since both groups of SECS animals exhibited significant interrelationships of measures following treatment and the same measures were not associated in the ECS groups, it was hypothesized that the proactive effects of ECS include a reduction in the stability of performance.

Lateral eye movements to verbal and spatial questions as a function of questioner location.

Fifty right-handed females thought about answer to verbal and spatial reasoning questions asked by a questioner seated either in front of or behind them. Ss in the questioner-in-front condition predominantly exhibited left lateral eye movements regardless of the question type, while the lateral eye movements of the questioner-in back Ss showed no directional trend in response to either question type. S's self-reported anxiety was not associated with lateral eye movements in either questioner-location condition.

Early social deprivation and the ontogeny of unrestricted social behavior in the laboratory rat.

The unrestricted adult social and nonsocial behavior of albino rats isolated from 21 to 70 days of age was compared with the behavior of rats receiving normal social experience. Isolated animals exhibited aberrant self-manipulative behaviors during the period of isolation, and both isolate-reared males and females were more aggressive than their group-reared counterparts. The hypothesis that females are buffered against the effects of social isolation received little support. Numerous gender differences and differences in the gender of the object of social response were found for both isolate- and group-reared rats. Gender and Rearing Conditions were relatively independent influences on behavior with few Gender x Treatment interactions reaching significance.

Effects of tasks interpolated during rest on reminiscence for pursuit-rotor performance and inverted-alphabet printing: a test of a consolidation theory of reminiscence.

As a test of a consolidation theory of reminiscence, 150 female college students practiced inverted-alphabet printing and the pursuit rotor for 5 min., rested for 20 min., and then practiced for 2 more min. During the rest period, some subjects rested while others performed reverse-cue rotary pursuit or mirror tracing. No reduction in reminiscence produced by tasks occurring during the rest period was found. While the failure to support a consolidation theory of reminiscence could not be explained, the possibility of sex differences in response to tasks occurring during the rest period was discussed.

Unilateral auditory stimulation and the visual perception of verticality: one more time.

The effects of varying conditions of unilateral auditory stimulation on the visual perception of verticality were examined in two experiments using 18 and 42 subjects, respectively. Significant effects of auditory stimulation and hand used to make the verticality adjustments were not found. With only one exception in Exp. 2, the starting position of the rod also had no influence on the ability of the subjects to adjust a rod to its vertical position. The literature pertaining to sensory-tonic field theory of perception was critically reviewed.

Sex-role identity, parental identification, and self-concept of adolescent daughters from mother-absent, father-absent, and intact families.

The effects of divorce and resulting paternal or maternal absence on the sex-role identity, parental identification, and self-concept of 39 adolescent daughters were investigated. Differences among the mean sex-role identity scores and self-concept scores of the daughters of mother-absent (MA), father-absent (FA), and intact (IF) families were not found. Parental identification with the mother and the father in the IF group was greater than identification with the mother in the FA group. Fathers in the MA and IF groups did not differ on the sex-role identity measure; FA and IF mothers also did not differ on this measure. The sex-role identity scores of the daughters were not related to the sex-role identity scores of either their mothers or fathers. The results revealed no negative consequences of the father receiving custody of an adolescent daughter and, therefore, suggest that fathers of adolescent daughters should be given greater consideration in custody cases.

Ego identity status and values among high school females.

To test the hypothesis that adolescent females who are high in ego identity have high interests in religious and political values, the relationship between the ego identity status of 80 senior high school females and their response to the Allport-Vernon-Lindzey Study of Values was examined. Participants classified as being identity achievements, moratoriums, and foreclosures had higher religious value scores than did diffusions; however, the expected differences on political value scores were not found. Two-thirds of the identity achievers came from homes disrupted by divorce or death of one parent, while less than 20% of the members of the other three statuses came from broken homes.