Learned helplessness has recently incorporated attribution theory to predict the specific occurrence/nonoccurrence of the motivational, cognitive and affective deficits characteristic of helplessness. College students (N=50) participated in a study to investigate the effects of a personal-universal helplessness manipulation on subsequent task…

Much of the research on bereavement and its consequences fails to account for social network factors. A sample of widows participated in a comprehensive national study to determine factors that enhanced or lessened their psychological well-being shortly after the death of their husbands, and over time. Two groups responded, those in the Crisis…

People exposed to stressful experiences should be less negatively affected if they receive higher rather than lower levels of social support. This proposition was tested by investigating the "stress buffering" role of social support in a way that allowed comparison between conceptually different measures related to the construct of…

Kinetic-Family-Drawings were obtained from 50 kindergarten or first grade children with delayed perceptual and/or motor development and 50 controls to investigate the effectiveness of this instrument as a measure of socio-emotional dimensions of high risk low achievers. Each child was asked to draw each member of his family (including himself)…

This study compared and analyzed the language capabilities of 10 school-age children raised in either single parent homes resulting from divorce or in two parent families. More specifically, it compared the context and complexity of oral personal event narratives produced by both groups of children. The study also investigated the usefulness and…

This study tested the theoretical proposition that family histories of destructive adult conflict reduce children's emotional security. Subjects were 112 children--ages 6, 11, and 19 years--with equal numbers of males and females in each age group. Subjects viewed the videotapes of an adult couple engaged in either a destructive conflict or a…

This study was undertaken to determine the effects of different ways of coping on caregivers' physical health and symptoms of depression and anxiety. Sixty persons living with and caring for a spouse with Alzheimer's disease (n=58) or multi-infarct dementia (n=2) were interviewed and evaluated by a series of instruments. Independent variables…

Rape is a significant trauma that causes the victim immediate as well as long-term difficulties. A cross-section of rape survivors and matched controls completed questionnaires about current somatic, psychological, and social difficulties. The time since assault for the rape group varied from 6 months to 8 years. Factor analysis yielded eight…

An exploration of writing anxiety suggests that it is a normal form of behavior rather than a pathology, but that it varies in degrees of its dysfunctionality. Excerpts from the log books of college students in a writing anxiety workshop illustrate four broad categories of writing anxiety: procrastination, feeling emotionally distressed, thinking…

This paper reports characteristics of mothers in a special needs preschool program and describes features of the program. Children in the program range in mental test performance from untestable to superior and in severity of problem from mild to severe. The program provides informal assessment and parent staff discussions along with opportunities…

The psychosomatic theory of obesity assumes that binging, eating in response to emotional distress, is characteristic of obese individuals, yet experimental attempts to demonstrate binging have yielded weak support for this assumption. The incidence of binging was investigated by means of structured interviews on food habits with 41 male and 39…

The Situational Self-statement and Affective State Inventory, a research inventory comprised of five hypothetical situations involving interpersonal conflict, and a series of self-report measures of psychopathology were administered to 224 undergraduates to examine the correlational relationship between specific cognitions and affective states in…

The author views hospitalization of the child as a time of potential crisis for the child and family and as an area where the school can play a significant role in minimizing potential disruption. Topics covered include historical trends in hospital treatment of children, the concept of crisis intervention, parents' reactions to their children's…

Hyperactivity in children is explained in relation to behavioral characteristics, precipitating factors, and stimulant medication therapy. The basic mechanism of hyperactivity is seen to be impulsive style in motility, attention, and socialization. Problems caused by impulsivity are noted to include feeding problems, school difficulties, and peer…

Analyzed were the self reported fears of 83 educable mentally retarded (EMR), 32 trainable mentally retarded (TMR), 19 learning disabled, and 22 normal children (all between the ages of 6 and 19 years). Ss were individually asked, "What are the things to be afraid of?", and answers were grouped into the following categories: animals, people, dark,…