| Abstract: | The adaptive style theory proposes that given a sustained aversive maternal control experience children will come to adopt 1 of 2 perceptual orientations toward evaluative cues. The open-style adapter maintains vigilance to negative evaluative cues, whereas the closed-style adapter defends against negative cues. This postulate, also critical to a narrower model for paranoid development, was tested by exposing 78 male undergraduates to an array of evaluative words, which they were told came from a maternal source. The words were composed of favorable, neutral, and unfavorable adjectives. After a period during which the S could freely scan a display of these words, retention was tested by recognition procedures. As predicted, open-style Ss, considered to be predisposed to paranoid behavior, extracted the most negative meaning, and closed-style Ss were the most defended against negative meaning. This effect held only for cues having a maternal source. (20 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
