The rhythmic structure of mother-infant interaction in term and preterm infants

The purpose of this study was to quantify social interaction rhythms in 3- and 5-month-old term and preterm infants and their mothers. Infant-mother dyads were videotaped in a 3-min face-to-face paradigm. For each second of the interaction, separate scores were assigned to infant and mother indicating levels of affective involvement, creating 2 180-sec time series. Spectral and cross-spectral techniques were used to quantify periodicities in each member of the dyad and to estimate the synchrony or coherence of interactional rhythms between each infant and mother. Results showed the existence of periodicities in the behavior of each infant and mother at 3 and 5 months, with most subjects showing spectral peaks between .022 and .10 Hz. Increases from 3 to 5 months in behavioral periodicities were found for infants and mothers as well as for the coherence between infant-mother dyads. Term dyads showed higher coherence than preterm dyads at both 3 and 5 months. Term infants more often led the interaction at both ages. These results were taken as evidence that behavioral periodicities, which may be biologically based, underlie early mother-infant interaction and provide a temporal structure for the organization of cognitive and affective experience. Differences in synchrony between term and preterm infants may explain later reported differences in language between these groups.     

Mother- and father-preterm infant relationship in the hospital preterm nursery

The relationships of Israeli mothers and fathers with their 38 preterm infants during hospitalization were traced in a short-term longitudinal study. Parent-infant interactions were observed and self-reports of parental feelings and perceptions were assessed twice: at the beginning and end of the nursery period. Mothers engaged in more caregiving, talking, and holding during initial contacts, but the disparity in maternal and paternal interactions decreased with time. Except for caregiving, in which mothers still surpassed fathers, fathers equaled mothers in all other activities at the time of the infants' discharge from the hospital. Fathers consistently surpassed mothers in playing and stimulating. Mothers perceived their infants to be more difficult than did fathers but reported enjoying them more. With time, parents were less disappointed and concerned over the infants' well-being but perceived them as more difficult. The data also demonstrated an association between infant behavioral states, parental feelings and perceptions, and parental behavior.     

Acceptance of self,acceptance of others,and preferred teaching approach

One hundred and eighty-one teacher training students sat three attitude measuring instruments to investigate the relationships between attitudes to self, attitudes to others and attitudes to educational practices. Clinical studies within the ambit of Rogerian psychotherapy suggest that a relationship between self and other attitudes should be positive. Substantial and statistically significant positive correlations, in the order of p<0.01, emerged consistently in this study between attitudes to self and attitudes to a range of others and to progressive child centred educational practices. Self acceptance level would seem to be an index of attitudes to a wide range of others. This relationship provides a principle of utmost importance for human relationships since the application of psychological processes to enhance the self concept should facilitate as a corollary a decrease in interpersonal tensions and inter group conflict. This relationship is of particular consequence in the teaching context since teaching is a sharing of self with others. The results of the study suggest that those with low self acceptance prefer (p<0.01) to avoid close encounters with pupils and prefer a more traditional formal teaching style.     

Influence and adaptability in families with deaf parents and hearing children

This study assessed the influence of individual family members in functional families, primarily to determine whether hearing children of deaf parents have more influence than do hearing children of hearing parents. Eight families with deaf parents and a hearing child and eight all hearing families were videotaped while planning a family meal together. It was found that deaf-parented families share many traits with hearing families. However, there were some differences. The hearing children of deaf parents had a greater number and percentage of their ideas accepted than did the hearing children of hearing parents. Differences were also noted between the deaf fathers and the hearing fathers. The deaf-parented families were more adaptable, as measured by the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scale. The observed difference in child influence, in and of itself, is neither good nor bad. Deafness of one family member, in an auditory dependent environment, may require a more flexible family power structure. Professionals assessing deaf-parented families should be sensitive to the special adaptive needs required for healthy functioning of the family.     

Staff Self‐Appraisal at the Departmental Level: A Case Study

The introduction of academic staff appraisal in higher education institutions in Australia will require a considerable expansion in staff development facilities. An important issue will be the relative emphasis to be placed upon central staff development units as against structures at the faculty or departmental level. This case study, conducted at Macquarie University and aimed at improving teaching in higher education, explores the Self‐Appraisal Workshop as one such structure and suggests that it provides a very useful format at the faculty or departmental level because it brings together people teaching similar course units. As a result it is easier to integrate aspects such as curriculum design, assessment policies, academic content and teaching methods, than it is at the central level where staff development workshops usually have a cross‐faculty mix. An evaluation, based upon student ratings of teaching, interviews and staff reflection on the process, suggests that the Self‐Appraisal Workshop is a valuable technique for staff appraisal and development.     

Radicals reflect: The first twenty years of the caucus for a new political science

B. Nelson Ong is Assistant Professor Political Science at the College of New Rochelle, New Rochelle, NY 10805. He is also the Secretary of the National Association of Scholars.     

Organization of attack and other behaviors of White King pigeons exposed to intermittent water presentations

Six water-deprived pigeons were exposed to a fixed-time 90-sec water schedule with and without a conspecific target available. Target contacts and the pigeon’s location in the test chamber during the interreinforcement interval were recorded, and the results were compared with those previously obtained with food reinforcement. Prior to target introduction, water-reinforced birds spent more total time in the front near the reinforcer dispenser and less in the rear than food-reinforced birds and, unlike food-reinforced birds, exhibited postreinforcement drinking-like behaviors near the reinforcer dispenser before moving away from that area. With the target available, the level, topography, and duration of target-directed biting pecks were comparable for food- and water-reinforced pigeons. In contrast, the temporal organization of target pecks reflected the different temporal and spatial organizations of behavior prior to target introduction. For both food- and water-reinforced birds, the time between reinforcers at which a bird was spatially situated halfway between the front and rear of the chamber prior to target presentation was positively correlated with the time at which maximum target contact subsequently occurred.     

Effects of memory reactivation treatments on postdiscrimination generalization performance in pigeons

In Experiment 1, it was shown that generalization testing following successive discrimination training between two closely spaced wavelengths results in a sharp gradient with a peak of responding shifted from S+ so as to be further removed from S?. Testing after a 24-h delay resulted in a flatter gradient with greater peak (and area) shift. A 5-min pretest exposure to S+, reinforced or unreinforced, or to S? (unreinforced) reinstated immediate test performance; free reinforcement with no discriminative stimulus present had no such effect. Experiment 2 replicated the flattening of generalization gradients and enhanced peak shift in delayed testing. Free feeding in a pretest treatment with a distinctive food uniquely associated with the wavelength discrimination problem failed to reinstate immediate test performance. Experiment 3 tested the hypothesis that free feeding failed as a reactivation treatment because it did not engender keypecking. Subjects were trained to peck a vertical line stimulus before being given wavelength discrimination training. Again, the enhanced peak shift and greater flattening with delayed wavelength generalization testing was found. A pretest exposure to the vertical line stimulus elicited pecking but had no effect on subsequent wavelength generalization. Thus, only a reactivation treatment that included one of the discrimination training stimuli was effective in producing delayed test performance comparable to that obtained in an immediate test.