Reminiscence and autobiographical memory in the study of the personal past.

This study investigated adult age differences in memory for past personal experiences. Young, middle-aged, and older adults participated in an autobiographical memory task in which they were presented with word prompts and asked to report the first specific personal memory that came to mind. They also completed a reminiscence questionnaire and a measure of current well-being, the Bradburn Affect Balance Scale (ABS). The autobiographical memory data revealed significant increases across the three age groups in both the average time taken to respond to prompt words and the average "age" of reported memories. Age differences in reminiscence also were found. The hypothesis that persons who actively reminisce would respond more quickly and with more remote memories in the autobiographical memory task was not supported. Implications of this data for understanding the cognitive and functional aspects of personal memory are discussed.

Mock trial jury decisions as a function of adolescent juror guilt and hostility.

A fictitious court case involving child abuse was presented to 277 male adolescent jurors (138 college freshmen, means age = 19.25 years, 139 junior high school males, means age = 13.47 years) in an effort to determine if the tendency to deal harshly with alleged criminals is dependent upon certain personality characteristics of adolescent jurors. The Mosher Hostility Guilt Scale and the Siegel Manifest Hostility Scale were used to detect the presence of such trends. The results indicate that older adolescents attributed more of the responsibility for the crime to the defendant and administered less severe sentences than younger adolescent jurors. Hostility guilt and manifest hostility levels were not significantly related to attribution of responsibility for a criminal act; however, Ss scoring high in hostility guilt tended to give significantly shorter sentences, while Ss scoring high in manifest hostility tended to give longer sentences. Implications for adolescent peer practices are discussed.

Self-monitoring and work productivity with mentally retarded adults.

We examined the use of self-monitoring to increase the productivity of five mentally retarded adults in a sheltered workshop. Data were collected daily during a 30-minute intervention and 30-minute generalization period. Following baseline, verbal praise, prompts, and physical encouragement were administered contingent on productive behavior on a specific task during the intervention period. In the next phase, self-monitoring was trained during the intervention period. During both phases, baseline conditions prevailed in the generalization periods. In the final phase, self-monitoring was extended across the intervention and generalization periods. Results showed that increased productivity levels, evident when praise and prompting were being administered, maintained with self-monitoring alone. Minimal generalization across time was observed until self-monitoring was begun in the generalization period.

Defendant characteristics and judgment behaviors of adolescent mock jurors.

Fictitious court cases involving child abuse were presented to 140 male undergraduates and 140 male junior high school students to determine if the tendency to deal harshly with alleged criminals is dependent upon certain defendant characteristics. Results indicate that younger adolescent jurors give longer sentences than older adolescent jurors, and male defendants receive longer sentences than female defendants. While no significant main effects for case content were found, younger jurors gave longer sentences and attributed more responsibility to a parent who beat his/her child, while older adolescent jurors attributed more responsibility and prescribed longer sentences to a parent who burned the child. Implications for future research with adolescent jurors are discussed.

Coordination of perspectives: the importance of stimulus dimensionality.

An evaluation of the importance of the dimensionality of the spatial stimuli in a coordination of perspectives task is presented. It was hypothesized that using three-dimensional comparison stimuli and two-dimensional choice stimuli might result in the tapping of different cognitive skills than when both sets of stimuli are two-dimensional. Children (N = 96) aged between 5 and 12 years as well as college students (n = 24) were tested with either two-dimensional or three-dimensional comparison stimuli and two-dimensional choice stimuli. The lowest error rates for all except the kindergarten groups were found in the two-dimensional condition. It was concluded that the three-dimensional condition may have created a cognitive overload that lessened the likelihood of making correct perspective-taking judgments.

Health education in baccalaureate nursing curriculum: myth or reality?

This survey of baccalaureate nursing curricula was conducted to identify content and methods being used to help students develop beginning competence in health education. Catalogs from 200 schools revealed only minimal explicit attention to the teaching role of nurses. The 36 schools which gave evidence of health education and sent course materials showed little agreement on what health education encompassed or what reasonable expectations were for the baccalaureate nursing student. While there can be no generalization of these findings to baccalaureate nursing education, serious questions are raised concerning the thoroughness with which nursing educators are treating the health education component of the baccalaureate curriculum. Given the centrality of health education to prevention, health promotion, greater client control over his own health, reduced anxiety and more appropriate utilization, it would appear that health education is scarcely an area to be dealt with superficially in baccalaureate nursing education.

Effective integration of health education into baccalaureate nursing curriculum.

Under the auspices of the Division of Health Education at the School of Hygiene and Public Health and in conjunction with George Mason University, Department of Nursing, a Project is underway to develop, implement and test a model which incorporates appropriate health education learning into baccalaureate nursing education. The underlying premise of the Project is that nurses who are able to formulate theoretically sound educational programs in conjunction with clients and fellow providers will be more effective in achieving health education outcomes. Our hope is that this will increase the competence and confidence nurses have in helping others cope productively with the real and potential health threats confronting them.