Evolving meanings of death during early, middle, and later adolescence.

The relationships among death conceptions, death experiences, patterns of parent and peer attachment, and risk-taking behaviors in adolescents were examined in an effort to construct a revised notion of the meaning of death at different points in adolescent development. Students (N = 95) from middle schools, a high school, and a university were assessed with the Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment, a 10-item open-ended death conception questionnaire, and a demographic and death attitude survey. Results indicated that death experiences, discussions about death, belief in noncorporeal continuation (some form of life or energy after physical death), and parent attachments appear to increase during the course of adolescence. Parent attachment was found to be inversely associated with death experiences, conversations about death, and risk-taking behavior. Other findings are discussed with regard to the dialectical tensions of this phase of development; portraits of the early, middle, and later years of adolescence; and the notion of reconceptualizing the ideas of adolescents as cognitive death schema.

Stress as a predictor of the quality of parent-infant interactions.

Three predictor variables--vulnerability to stress, expectations for parenting stress, and low power attributions--were assessed for 21 couples during pregnancy. In-home observations of parent-infant interactions occurred 4 months postnatally. Stepwise multiple regression analyses, calculated separately for mothers and fathers, revealed that prenatal stress factors were more successful in predicting father-infant interactions. On the interaction variable basic care, 67% of the variance was explained by fathers' parenting stress expectations, stress vulnerability, and attributions for low power, whereas only 2% of the variance on basic care was explained by maternal scores on the same variables. Results of this study indicated that parent-infant interactions are affected by parental attitudes and personality characteristics. The present research also underscored the continued need to study the differential effects of gender on parent-infant interactions.

A cognitive style approach to creative thought.

Creative thinking was explored from several approaches to further understanding of the interrelationship of perception, personality, and cognition. College students (N = 45) were administered the Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT), the Remote Associates Test (RAT), a questionnaire concerning RAT strategy, and two self-report scales. Field independent subjects were found to be significantly (p less than .001) more creative than field dependents. Correlations between the RAT and GEFT and the self-report measures of conformity and creativity, while largely nonsignificant, were in the predicted directions. Results demonstrated that advanced strategy levels and insightful responses were significantly related to high performance on the RAT. Theoretical links between cognitive style and Piagetian concepts were discussed in regard to creative thought. Overall, these findings support the contention that the creative processes should be studied, not as isolated structures, but with relational and multifaceted emphasis.