Measuring patterns of fantasy behavior in children.

Developed the Children's Fantasy Inventory using 748 1st and 3rd graders. Within the limits of a 45-item instrument relevant to the children's attention span, a wide range of fantasy activity was tapped. The 9 empirically derived, nonorthogonal scales had good internal consistency, as measured by coefficient alpha, and good test–retest reliabilities. The scales on the Children's Fantasy Inventory were related to other previously used measures of fantasy in children and to previously derived adult scales. Differences in styles of fantasy were found between boys and girls and between 1st and 3rd graders, but there were no significant differences in overall frequency of fantasy. Retesting after a year's lag indicated that fantasy behaviors had significant stability over time. (41 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Friendship patterns and altruistic behavior in preadolescent males.

Tested the H. S. Sullivan (1953) assertion that an "other" orientation gained in preadolescence through a relationship with a close friend of the same sex can develop into a general altruistic perspective. 30 male 6th graders from an original sample of 92 met 3 criteria of having a "chum" (friendship stability, communication, and willingness to share time) and were included in the chumship group; 30 Ss from the same original sample failed to meet these criteria and were included in the nonchumship group. Groups were matched on level of IQ and social acceptance. Analysis of Ss' responses on the Altruism subscale of the Scale of Social Responsibility and to the standard Prisoner's Dilemma game revealed that those Ss involved in a chum relationship exhibited significantly greater levels of altruism. Findings confirm Sullivan's assertion concerning close relationships in preadolescence and emphasize the usefulness of his social development theory to present-day theorists and researchers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Seating patterns and patient behavior in an experimental dayroom.

Investigated the effects of specific and controlled manipulations in seating patterns on the behavior of groups of 6 male psychiatric patients (N = 120) in an experimental hospital dayroom. Seating patterns were varied from structural sociopetal, sociofugal, and mixed arrangements, to an unstructured setting where Ss arranged seating themselves. Seating patterns exerted a powerful influence over the amount and quality of social interaction among Ss in the dayroom. Sociopetal and mixed arrangements demonstrated a greater amount of social interaction and more personal interaction than did sociofugal and unstructured arrangements. In contrast, seating arrangements had no effect on nonsocial activity. An unexpected finding was that Ss preferred sociopetal seating arrangements to sociofugal ones. (32 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sources of adult motives in patterns of parent behavior in early childhood.

Ratings based on 379 mothers' reports of child-rearing practices obtained in 1951 by R. R. Sears et al (1957) when their children were 5 yrs old were correlated with social motive scores obtained from 78 of the children 26–27 yrs later. Scheduling of feeding and severity of toilet training were significantly associated with adult need for achievement (nAch) scores overall and in subsamples obtained either randomly or by sex or social class. Permissiveness for sexual and aggressive behavior in childhood was significantly associated with adult need for power (nPower) scores both among men and women and in random subsamples. No child-rearing practices were associated with adult need for affiliation or intimacy motive scores. The relations for nAch and nPower cannot readily be explained in terms of the child-rearing practices involved being part of larger child-rearing syndromes responsible for promoting motives throughout the life of the child. Rather, the findings point to attitudes or behaviors involving specific practices at certain periods in a child's life as being critical for motive development, as basic-personality theorists have argued. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Little and often: Ingestive behavior patterns following hippocampal lesions in rats.

Lesions of both dorsal and ventral hippocampus were produced by multiple infusions of the excitotoxin AMPA. Meal patterns recorded before and after lesioning showed no change in total food intake, but a striking behavioral syndrome in which the lesioned rats took smaller meals 2–3 times as frequently and showed a similar change in drinking. In addition, lesioned rats alternated more frequently between feeding and drinking during a single bout of ingestive behavior. There were no group differences in the satiety sequence that followed a meal. In an open field test, lesioned rats showed enhanced locomotion in the periphery and reduced rearing. An olfactory habituation–dishabituation task showed that the lesioned rats investigated olfactory stimuli less but dishabituation to a changed stimulus was normal. The data are discussed in terms of changes in behavioral switching or a possible interoceptive agnosia following hippocampal damage. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-schematic representation of the Type A and B behavior patterns.

Two studies with 68 undergraduates who were identified as Type A (coronary prone) or Type B (noncoronary prone), based on their scores on the Jenkins Activity Survey—Form T, investigated the existence of Type A and Type B self-schemata, using 2 tasks designed to measure the influence of these hypothetical structures on speed of processing and memory interference. During an initial task, Type A's and B's made self-relevant decisions (like me, not like me) in response to trait adjectives previously scaled as Type A, Type B, or neutral in content. Reactions times (RTs) for the decisions were measured. Results indicate that both Type A's and B's made faster decisions for schema-compatible responses than for schema-incompatible responses. On a 2nd task, Type A's and B's were tested for recognition memory after they attempted to memorize half of the aforementioned trait list. Memory errors were examined and showed that Type A's and B's made more errors that were compatible with their respective self-schemata. Overall findings indicate that a Type A and Type B distinction forms a reliable organizing framework for the self-definitions of Type A's and B's. The existence of stable cognitive structures that parallel the behavioral differences between Type A's and B's has implications for both theory and application, such as the importance of examining how Type A and Type B self-schemata influence judgments of others in the achievement and performance domains. (57 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Family interaction patterns and children's behavior problems from infancy to 4 years.

Employed a new naturalistic observational methodology to assess molar aspects of family interaction in 29 4-yr-old children and their mothers. The 4-yr-olds and their families had been followed since age 6 mo, and correlations between the early measures and the 4-yr measures were computed. Proactive maternal involvement, defined in terms of affectively positive, educative exchanges between mother and child, was strongly related concurrently to the relative absence of problem behavior in the 4-yr-old. Early displays of family coercion were predictive of behavior problem ratings at age 4, but not as strongly as the absence of early positive interactions. Temperamental difficultness in the first 2 years also predicted behavior problems at age 4. The age-4 observation measures correlated in a rich pattern with observation measures at ages 1 and 2. This suggests both continuity of family style and conceptual compatibility between the earlier recording system, based on molecular codes, and the current system, heavily based on written narratives. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)