Little research has been conducted investigating family affective response to cerebrovascular accidents. This study examines the emotional sequelae suffered by the spouses and adult children of stroke victims along the dimensions of depression, loneliness, and locus of control. Subjects were classified into groups consisting of spouses of individuals suffering right hemisphere cerebrovascular accidents, adult children of right hemisphere stroke patients, spouses of patients suffering left hemisphere cerebrovascular accidents, and adult children of left hemisphere stroke patients. All subjects were administered the Beck Depression Inventory, the Rotter Internal-External Locus of Control Scale, the Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation-Behavior Scale and the UCLA Loneliness Scale. Results indicate no significant differences in levels of depression between spouses, children, or family members of right hemisphere stroke patients as compared to family members of individuals suffering left hemisphere cerebrovascular accidents. Similarly, no differences in loneliness scores were found between spouses and adult children in right versus left hemisphere groups. There also were no differences between groups along the dimensions of wanted control, expressed control, or locus of control. Finally, there were no differences between spouses in either group in terms of wanted affection. The lack of significant differences between groups is felt to be related to a number of factors. Data were collected two to four weeks post-stroke, and it is believed that family members may still have been in the denial phase of the adjustment process. Also, they may have been engaging in "selective gating" (i.e., they may have been processing the positive, encouraging feedback presented by staff and filtering the negative feedback). Additionally, family members (particularly spouses) received much social support during the acute phase of the illness which may have mitigated affective responses. The above, along with the fact that family members may not have had realistic expectations concerning the amount of care the stroke victim would require and the alteration in lifestyle that often occurs may have combined to ameliorate the family emotional response to cerebrovascular accident.

Six young and six old squirrel monkeys were tested on two different short-term memory tasks. One was a two-choice problem, the other a nine-choice problem. A baseline, or one-choice, problem was also included. A video camera recorded all behaviors displayed by the monkeys during testing. Behaviors coded were turning, aggression, displacement, exploratory, huddling, orienting, locomotion, screen activities, and visual scanning. Also recorded was correct or incorrect choice and whether the animal showed evidence of seeing the cue stimulus. Old animals committed more errors during both phases of the experiment. Older animals were also more likely to engage in active behaviors, such as turning, whereas young animals were more likely to manifest less active behaviors, such as visual scanning and orienting. Young animals were also more likely to see the stimulus. A path analytic procedure was used to determine direct effects of age on performance and indirect effects mediated through behaviors manifested prior to the choice. For the two-choice problem, approximately half of the age effects on performance were attributable to indirect effects. For the nine-choice problem almost three quarters of the age effects on performance were attributable to indirect effects. These findings indicate that age differences in short-term memory performance are not direct effects of age alone. The age effect also occurs because age affects the behaviors of the monkeys and that these behaviors have a large effect on subsequent memory performance.

This study was an empirical investigation to reveal the goddesses that women identify with over the life cycle. The approach was designed to reveal how women experience these images. Every subject was asked to indicate how much she experienced each goddess as representing herself or as representing something she has experienced in herself. The Coan Inventory of Masculine and Feminine Dimensions (1989) was utilized to assess: nurturance, emotional accessibility, aesthetic-imaginal orientation, piety, ascendance, concrete action, impulsivity, autonomy, orderliness, activity, expressiveness vs. reticence, and sensuality. The inventory scale scores indicated the qualities within each goddess that women were relating to. The study explored: (1) whether patterns of goddess identification varied with age, (2) whether dimensions of femininity and masculinity varied with age, and (3) how masculine and feminine dimensions related to goddess identification. The results indicated: Hestia and piety rose progressively with age; Demeter appeared in women of 30 and 40; Persephone and Aphrodite were repressed in the sample, although women wanted to develop Aphrodite more; Athena predominated in women of 30; and Artemis was the goddess women of 60 wanted to develop more. There is the suggestion from this research that the Women's movement with resulting cultural shifts in the 1970's and 1980's have produced strong Athenas. In the late 1980's, Hestia seemed to emerge as a spiritual archetype. A dawning archetype among women in the 1990's, as indicated by the subjects in this study, will be Aphrodite.

Two experiments designed to study the effects of hypnotic suggestions on tactile sensitivity are reported. Experiment 1 utilized 40 subjects selected and classified into four groups according to their scores on the Stanford Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility: Form C (SHSS:C). The effects of suggestions for anesthesia, as measured by both traditional psychophysical methods and signal detection procedures, were linearly related to hypnotic susceptibility. Experiment 2 employed the same methodologies in an application of the real-simulator paradigm, to examine the effects of suggestions for both anesthesia and hyperesthesia. A total of 19 undergraduate students were selected for their scores on the SHSS:C and classified into two groups: insusceptible simulators, who were given instructions to simulate the behavior of a highly hypnotizable person; and highly hypnotizable reals, who underwent a standard hypnotic procedure. Significant effects of hypnotic suggestion on both sensitivity and bias were found in the anesthesia condition, but not for the hyperesthesia condition. A new bias parameter, C', was derived which indicated that much of the bias found in the initial analyses was artifactual, a function of changes in sensitivity across conditions. There were no behavioral differences between reals and simulators in any of the conditions, though analyses of post-experimental interviews suggested the two groups had very different phenomenal experiences. Finally, a manipulation of response strategies induced different levels of sensitivity. The implications of these and other similar findings for signal detection theory are discussed in the context of implicit and explicit perception. Taken together, these results indicate that hypnotic suggestions can produce genuine decrements but not increments, in tactile sensitivity. The magnitude of these changes are partly a function of which perceptual system--the implicit or the explicit--is implicated in the assessment of sensitivity. Overall, these conclusions are consistent with 'neodissociation' accounts of hypnotic phenomena.

Several measures were used to investigate age differences in metamemory, and to examine the relation between metamemory and frontal lobe function in the elderly. Three age groups were included in the study to address these issues: a Young Control group (18-30 yrs); a Young-Old group (60-75 yrs); and an Old-Old group (76-90 yrs). Metamemory was assessed in two ways. Subjects completed the Metamemory in Adulthood questionnaire (MIA; Dixon, Hultsch, & Hertzog, 1988), and subjects were asked to predict their performance on a variety of memory tasks that provided information both about awareness of their own memory functioning and knowledge of general memory processes. The relation between frontal lobe function and metamemory was assessed by administering a number of neuropsychological tests of frontal lobe abilities, and performing statistical analyses to determine how well these frontal measures predict metamemory performance. Results of the MIA questionnaire revealed that elderly subjects view their memory abilities as declining with age, whereas young subjects perceive their memory abilities to be relatively stable. On most other questionnaire dimensions, the three age groups did not differ. Age differences in metamemory were observed on the task performance predictions component of the study. Although no age differences in predictions were found for the majority of memory tasks, the elderly subjects demonstrated a significant decline in actual memory performance, particularly on the recall tasks. Significant differences in prediction-performance relations were only found between the Old-Old group and the Young Control group, reflecting a tendency for the Old-Old to overestimate their memory abilities and the Young Controls to underestimate their abilities. All subjects appeared sensitive to the effects of various manipulations on memory, indicating equivalent knowledge of general memory processes. Regression analyses demonstrated a significant relationship between frontal lobe measures and prediction-performance relations on most of the memory tasks, suggesting that a degradation in frontal lobe function with age may play a role in altered metamemory performance. The results of this study are discussed in terms of a breakdown in metacognition associated with frontal lobe dysfunction in the elderly that prevents them from updating knowledge about their own memory functioning.

A significant literature has developed which examines the relationship between auditors' expertise and their work experience. Much of the expertise paradigm literature centers on (1) whether a link between experience and task performance exists, and (2) describing the nature of the cognitive changes associated with the link. A significant, but largely unresearched component of this link is the impact of auditors' industry specialization on audit judgment. Industry specialization is currently receiving considerable attention from practitioners and academics alike. This paper examines the effects of industry specialization on auditors' inherent risk (IR) assessments, and on auditors' uncertainty in specifying such assessments. For several constructed audit cases, two groups of auditors (banking specialists and nonbanking specialists, both with approximately the same amount of CPA firm auditing tenure) from a "big-six" accounting firm were requested to provide planning-stage IR assessments and related second-order uncertainty (SOU) assessments. The results support several conclusions. First, consistent with the notion that industry experience facilitates the development of an industry-distinct knowledge base pertinent to IR assessment and that auditors who lack such experience lack such knowledge, nonspecialists experienced significantly more uncertainty about their IR assessments, relative to specialists. This result was observed for IR assessments pertinent not only to the loans account, but also to the premises and equipment (P&E) account, although the effect was not as pronounced for the P&E account which has a more similar analog in most other types of clients. Second, and also consistent with the notion that specialized experience leads to the development of specific knowledge pertinent to the risk assessment task, nonspecialists' IR assessments were generally significantly higher for a financial statement account unique to the industry--than industry specialists' IR assessments, indicating a conservative bias when industry knowledge is lacking. This result has potentially important implications regarding audit testing; given that IR assessments determine, at least in part, the extent of audit testing, it implies-holding all else constant--that the nonbanking group would be significantly more inefficient relative to the banking group in terms of audit effort expended in audit sampling. An example illustrates that the nonbanking group's risk assessments resulted in hypothetical samples sizes for the completeness assertion for the loans account (using the participating firm's sample size algorithm) that were on average J.2 percent larger than the banking group's, holding all else constant (t = 9.02, P < .01). Clearly this result has implications for audit policy; it indicates that specialization may provide some economy in the audit. This result helps to explain the trend toward industry specialization in general. Third, consistent with the notion that common experience standardizes knowledge bases pertinent to IR assessments, specialists exhibited significantly more consensus in their IR assessments for an account unique to banking clients. Nonspecialists and specialists exhibited similar levels of IR assessment consensus for an account common to most audits. Relatedly, the variance in uncertainty about IR assessments was significantly smaller for industry specialists. This result supports the assertion that common experience standardizes knowledge bases pertinent to IR assessments and reduces individual differences in perceptions about the adequacy of knowledge bases which support IR assessments. Given the results of the study, further investigation is warranted regarding questions about the effects of specialization on audit judgment. The findings presented have not been documented previously, and add to the literature on expertise in auditing. Several other avenues of research are advocated including additional questions about the effects of industry specialization on audit judgment. Addressing these issues may lead to further refinements in models of auditor expertise and serve to advance the literature and practice policy regarding industry specialization.

About half of new foster parents quit fostering in their first year, which contributes to the national shortage of foster parents. The purpose of this longitudinal project was to implement and then evaluate a brief motivational interviewing (MI) intervention for new foster parents to support them in their transition to foster parenting. The study participants are a community sample of 112 new foster parents, half of whom were randomly selected to receive two sessions of MI and half of whom served as a control group. The goal was to improve the retention rates and the quality of the fostering experience of new foster parents, but the result was that neither retention nor quality of experience was different between the MI and control groups. Ambivalence about fostering was reduced in the MI group, and the MI group's commitment to fostering was greater than the control group's commitment by the one-year follow-up. A somewhat surprising observation was that only 47 of the 78 families in the study actually got licensed during the one-year study period, and it took participants about 125 days, on average, to get licensed. This suggests that licensing is taking too long and that many participants, without support and encouragement along the way, are abandoning the idea of fostering before they even begin. The results from this study are mixed and somewhat inconclusive, but what is evident is that more support and guidance for new foster parents is surely needed. Further study is warranted to try to create a more effective intervention to support new foster parents.

This study evaluated the association between well-being at midlife in the top 1% in mathematical ability and 1) skipping one or more grades in high school (study 1), and 2) advanced and enriching pre-collegiate STEM learning opportunities beyond the norm in high school (study 2). Subjects were identified at or before age 13, and followed up at age 50. Outcomes included positive affect, negative affect, life satisfaction, psychological flourishing, career satisfaction, relationship satisfaction, core self-evaluations, and health at age 50. Controlling for confounding background covariates (including ability, SES, and motivation at age 13), no evidence was found for any harmful effect of acceleration on well-being. Both accelerants and non-accelerants reported positive well being. If differences were found, they favored the accelerants.

Cerebral palsy is a complex condition and stressor, posing specific challenges to the affected individual and those involved. According to the literature, existing studies do not reflect the subjective experience and self-reporting of the person with a disability (Lutz & Bowers, 2005; Reeve, 2006; Singh & Ghai, 2009; Stalker, 2012; Tisdall, 2012; Watermeyer & Swartz, 2008; Watson, 2012). Thus, this study attempts to let the voices be heard of adolescents with cerebral palsy in order to gain new insight into the way in which they ascribe meaning to disability, manage their disability and overcome social, physical and emotional barriers. A qualitative approach within a psychofortigenic framework was followed in the study. The role of psychosocial factors in the psychological resilience of the adolescent with cerebral palsy was investigated in order to include the strength perspective. The theories, frameworks and models of the positive psychology paradigm were used as theoretical foundation to the study. Analysis and interpretation of data from the six semi-structured interviews was done by means of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Furthermore, the identified themes were contextualised within an ecological systems framework according to intrapsychic, interpersonal and broader community factors. A preliminary conceptual process model was compiled from the cross-case analysis and describes the interrelationship and general dynamics of the experience of disability as well as the role of psychosocial factors (risk and protective factors) in the psychological resilience of the adolescents with cerebral palsy. The results confirm the impact and experience of disability as a multi-layered phenomenon and that each individual ascribes unique meaning to it according to personality traits, needs, emotional and social support, life contexts and life demands. The need of the adolescent with cerebral palsy to be recognised and treated as a unique individual is central in this study. The experience of disability within the broader social community does not only have a psycho-emotional effect on the person with a disability, but also psycho-social implications. Risk and protective factors are interacting in a multi-levelled way and the adolescent applies personal and contextual sources of power in order to ensure positive outcomes. The value of this study is letting the voices be heard of people with a disability regarding their lived reality of disability and psychological sources of resilience. The knowledge gathered in this study can also contribute to improved aid, support and understanding of the person with a disability.

School readiness is increasingly being recognised as major need in education as it has far reaching consequences in a childâs educational and later life. Inadequate preparation and lack of timeous identification of at risk factors in this phase of life has many negative sequaleae. The literature has highlighted the role of prediction variables for scholastic achievement to facilitate appropriate intervention. School readiness assessments have been criticised for a lack of multidimensional assessment approach. In contrast to previous studies, which are generally univariate in their approach, this research aimed at a multidimensional approach to assessing at risk factors in grade 00 learners in the age cohort (4-5 ½ years). A further aim was to investigate the predictor variables/isolate the dimensions of development that would be linked to academic achievement in reading, spelling and maths in grade 1. The behaviours underpinning eight developmental domains and 19 dimensions (indicated in brackets) namely, 1) Cognitive (Ability, Approaches to learning); 2) Perceptual (Body awareness, Auditory, Spatial ability); 3) Speech (Speech, Language); 4) Neurological (Fine motor, Gross motor, Low tone), 5) Emotional (Empathy, Emotional Regulation, Self-confidence); 6) Social (Interpersonal competencies, Social regulation behaviour, Social graces, Play); 7) Developmental (Concentration, Sensory) and 8) Independence were identified in the form of a screening instrument (comprehensive version) for assessment of grade 00 learners. Factor analyses reduced the total pool of 214 items to 100 on the Comprehensive version of the test. A shortened version of the screening instrument was also compiled, using 42 items. Cronbach α coefficientâs yielded high values (>0.7) indicating sound reliabilities for the 19 dimensions and 8 domains. A convenience sample of 579 grade 00 learners in Durban schools were evaluated on the questionnaire by their teachers and parents in the first phase of the study. The same cohort were followed up in grade 1 and assessed on South African standardised tests, the ESSI and VASSI in spelling, reading and maths. The results indicated that the domains of Cognitive, Perceptual, Speech and Language displayed acceptable validity to predict academic achievement of grade 1 learners. The remaining domains, viewed as indirect variables, play an integral part in the childâs future scholastic achievement. Results of a stepwise regression analyses showed that the combined value of four predictor variables (Cognitive Ability, Social Regulation, Sensory, and Speech) roughly contribute to 17% of the variance in academic achievement of Grade 1 learners. As MANOVA analyses showed small effect sizes between the mean domain and dimension scores for the two gender groups, norms were calculated for the entire sample in the form of percentiles and stanines. The present research supports previous studies that show that early cognitive, perceptual and speech and language are strong predictors of grade 1 academic achievement. The findings of the study have implications at policy and practice level for early identification and intervention. It is suggested that the screening instrument be used to facilitate curriculum goals at preschool level, that the predictor variables be targeted for intensive intervention at preschool level and later schooling to ensure positive academic trajectories.