Childhood sexual abuse and parental alcoholism: interactive effects in adult women.

Symptoms associated with histories of childhood sexual abuse and parental alcoholism were investigated in a sample of 364 university women. A significant association was found in occurrence between the two stressors, and a substantially higher level of symptoms was revealed in women who had experienced both during childhood.

A new test of an old hypothesis: a quantification of sequence in the Rorschach.

Rorschach interpretation often assumes that successive responses are not independent of one another but rather that they are part of a series of interconnected events. In this study, methods that have been used to analyze event sequence data were applied to Rorschach protocols. Results from a nonclinical group of 102 university students showed that location scores on successive responses were repeated more frequently than was predicted by chance. There was also a tendency for subjects to make transitions from larger to smaller or more detailed areas of the inkblot on successive responses. In addition, we found that subjects tended to make transitions from more adequate to less adequate use of form, and that the unusual and minus form categories tended to be repeated. A modest association between transition frequencies and individual differences in anxiety, but not between transition frequencies and depression or overall symptomatology, was demonstrated.

Childhood family environment and sexual abuse as predictors of anxiety and depression in adult women.

A study of 46 women with histories of childhood sexual abuse and a control group of 93 women without such histories showed an association between childhood sexual abuse and the women's symptoms of anxiety and depression, as well as their perceptions of their families of origin. Results also suggested that family conflict, control, and cohesiveness moderated the relationship between the childhood abuse and current symptoms of depression.

Joint consequences of parental alcoholism and childhood sexual abuse, and their partial mediation by family environment.

This study investigated the effects of childhood sexual abuse and parental alcoholism in a sample of university women. Current symptoms of anxiety and depression were measured together with retrospective reports of subjects' families of origin. Using a 2 x 2 factorial design, main effects on symptoms were obtained for sexual abuse and parental alcoholism, but their interaction was not significant. With respect to family environment, a history of sexual abuse was associated with perceptions that families of origin had less cohesion, more conflict, less emphasis on moral-religious matters, less emphasis on achievement, and less of an orientation towards intellectual, cultural, and recreational pursuits. Similarly, subjects who had alcoholic parents reported less family cohesion, more conflict, and less emphasis on moral-religious matters. Results of analyses of covariance suggested that family environment was a mediator of current symptoms of anxiety, but not symptoms of depression.

Effects of temporal separation and masker level on binaural analysis in forward masking.

In the present study detection under diotic (NoSo) and dichotic (NoS pi) listening conditions in a forward masking paradigm was investigated. Both the level of a noise masker and the temporal separation between the masker and a 250-Hz tone burst served as independent variables. Results showed that most of the variance in the data could be accounted for by the amount of masking in the NoSo condition, independent of the value of the temporal parameter, which itself accounted for only 1.4% of the variance that remained. Once the data were corrected for NoSo masking effectiveness, the MLD was found to decrease by only 1.4 dB as temporal separation increased from 5-100 ms, which is consistent with a very long time constant for the binaural system. Consistent with this finding, it was shown that slope changes of the growth of masking functions, for simultaneous as compared to forward masking, were similar for both the NoSo and NoS pi conditions.

The usefulness of human figure drawings as an index of overall adjustment.

This study investigates the relation between global ratings of human figure drawings and psychological adjustment. The sample was comprised of a group of Vietnamese refugees who were evaluated at their entry into a residential education program. Adjustment was defined as the number of foster-care placements experienced by these clients during the 5 years following the program. Results showed that ratings of overall artistic quality, figure bizarreness, and estimated client adjustment all varied linearly as a function of number of foster-care placements. A fourth predictor variable, number of Koppitz emotional indicators, did not produce this result. All four predictor variables were found to be related, and it was shown that ratings of figure bizarreness alone adequately predicted the criterion. Implications of these results are discussed, and results suggest that projective drawings could provide a useful index of overall adjustment when better sources of information are not available.

Binaural analysis in forward masking: effects of signal frequency.

The present study investigates the relationship between signal frequency and size of the MLD in forward masking for the two binaural conditions NoSM and NoS pi. For both conditions, the largest MLDs were produced for signal frequencies between 200 and 500 Hz, and as signal frequency was increased above these values, the MLD progressively diminished. This pattern of frequency dependence, and the similarity of the results for the NoSM and NoS pi conditions, are consistent with data obtained in simultaneous masking experiments and are compatible with a vectorial description of the stimulus processed by the binaural system.

Upward shifts in the masking pattern with increasing masker intensity.

Masking patterns obtained with forward-masking paradigms and relatively intense maskers sometimes have their peaks at the masker frequency and sometimes at a frequency well above it. Here it is shown that which outcome is obtained depends upon certain temporal parameters of the procedure. Specifically, the masking pattern for a 2000-Hz tone showed a gradual shift toward higher frequencies as masker intensity was increased from 65 to 95 dB SPL when long signals (about 50 ms) and long masker-to-signal intervals (about 50 ms) were used, but the effect was absent or smaller when the signals and intervals were short. This shift did not occur with a 750-Hz masker. Upward shifts in the masking pattern with increasing masker intensity are in accord with the view that the peak of displacement of the traveling-wave envelope migrates basally with increasing intensity--an idea that has frequently been suggested as an explanation of the so-called half-octave shift so routinely seen in auditory fatigue experiments.

Tonal masking and frequency selectivity for the monaural and binaural hearing systems.

A series of masking experiments was performed with the aim of comparing frequency selectivity for the monaural and binaural systems. The masking stimulus used in this study combined a sinusoid, which was gated simultaneously with the signal, with a continuous broadband noise. Signal frequency was fixed at 500 Hz. In one condition, the tonal masker and noise were interaurally in phase and the signal was phase reversed. In a second condition, noise, tonal masker, and signal were presented to one ear alone. Signal thresholds were obtained as a function of masker frequency for these two conditions. After making an appropriate selection of noise levels, masking functions for the monaural and binaural system conditions were found to agree closely except for a region about their tips where the binaural condition was more detectable. Two possible interpretations of these results are discussed. Either the monaural and binaural systems contain filters each which have similarly shaped skirts, or the frequency selectivity observed under both diotic and dichotic conditions (for large frequency separations of masker and signal) reflect the operation of a common peripheral filter.

Differences between psychophysical "suppression effects" under diotic and dichotic listening conditions.

A forward-masking paradigm was used in an attempt to measure and compare "suppression effects" under one monaural system condition, NOSO, and two binaural system conditions, NOSM and NOSII. The signal was a 500-Hz tone burst of 10-ms duration (measured at the 6-dB down points) and was presented 12.5 ms after the termination of the masker. In the diotic condition, as the masker bandwidth increased, masking at first increased, reached a maximum between bandwidths of 50 and 150 Hz, and then decreased with further increases of the bandwidth. The pattern of results was very different for the dichotic conditions: Here, masking never decreased with increases in the masker bandwidth; unlike the NOSO condition, there was no evidence of a "suppression effect." These data are used to argue that diotic "suppression effects" obtained with noiseband maskers are actually produced by a combination of off-frequency listening and quality-difference cues.