A 31-item questionnaire was given to 199 students, 20 of whom were found to have histories of previous suicide attempts. Results support the necessity of a distinction between groups within a nonsuicidal comparison population and that a quantitative relationship between frequency of suicidal thought and likelihood of attempted suicide exists.…

Balanced groups of obese and thin persons, men and women, lone eaters and group eaters, were unobtrusively observed. Observers noted occurrence of extraneous responses, counted bites and chews, and rated tension, mood, and food enjoyment. Results were reported at the International Congress on Obesity, London, October 1974. (Author)

Young (N=18) and older (N=18) adults participated in a vocabulary task involving varying degrees of risk with a payoff structure that varied either directly or inversely with risk. In contrast to prior research using constant payoff structures, results did not indicate that older adults are more cautious than young adults. (Author)

Subjects were pretested on objective and subjective responses to test suggestions of the Barber Suggestibility Scale. After being exposed to one of three treatments--experimenter modeling, hypnotic induction, or control--each subject was retested. Experimenter modeling was as effective as hypnotic induction in enhancing responsiveness to test…

The relative effects of imagerial covert rehearsal with attentional shifts and the use of an independent reinforcing agent in a covert reinforcement therapy were compared. A 17-year-old female student, requesting treatment for a snake phobia, served as the subject. The phobia was measured along four dimensions: behavioral approaches to a live…

This exploratory study compared the response patterns of two groups of counselors experienced in crisis intervention. One group (N=5) was trained according to the Rusk model and the other (N=5) in the brief, focal therapy approach. With the exception of explicit empathy, no between-group differences in frequency of intervention were found. (Author)

A workshop group (didactic) participated in an educational program emphasizing lecture presentations and small group discussion. The second group (experiential) confronted, examined, and shared feelings and reactions to grief and death. Data indicated experiential group showed a significant reduction in fear of death as a result of the workshop.…

Nonassertive female university student volunteers (N=45) were assigned randomly to one of three individual counseling programs: placebo counseling, standard assertion training, or assertion training incorporating anger induction procedures. The standard method proved superior on a self-report measure but on one of four behavioral ratings the anger…

Selective attention was assessed in second, fourth, and sixth grade reflective and impulsive children with an incidental learning task using pictures (animal-household object pairs) or shapes (colored forms) as stimuli. By the sixth grade, reflective children displayed less incidental learning and greater central learning than impulsive children…

An individualized, free-response self-disclosure measurement questionnaire was developed to study differences in self-disclosure patterns of female subjects as a function of target roles. Findings indicated significantly more reported self-disclosure to females than males and to friends than relatives. This discrepancy suggests informant reports…

Jokes (N=100) about the aged were compared with jokes (N=160) about children. A negative attitude toward the aged and a positive one toward children were found. In addition, these jokes in general were more negative toward the next older generation. (Author)

This report describes the experimental studies conducted to examine the role of mental structures in four different areas of research. The first area involves the structural analysis of isolable subsystems involved in visual and auditory pattern recognition. The second area involves the study of the encoding and retrieval of emotional or…

Effects of affective and behavioral interview styles on client environmental contingency, goal-related, action-step-related, self-reference affect, and time oriented statements were examined with 24 female subjects. Counselor interview styles differentially prepare clients to describe their behavior in specific behavioral terms and engage in goal…

Risk-taking attitudes and behaviors among young and elderly adults were investigated. Elderly subjects, from both a nursing home and the community, and college students responded to choice dilemmas involving aged central characters. Each subject responded twice, once under "self" instructions, and once as the "average elderly person" would…

Seven autistic, seven Down's syndrome, and seven normal children of approximately the same mental age were trained on a single dimension, simultaneous match-to match problem. The results suggest that Down's syndrome, and not autistic children suffer from additional deficits. (Author/KC)