The study examined the relationships between various parental discipline styles and perceived powerlessness in antisocial adolescents. The literature on adolescent antisocial behavior frequently describes states of disaffection, alienation, and powerlessness as characteristic of the delinquent youth. The parent-child relationship is also frequently implicated as the significant precursor of antisocial behavior in adolescents. The purpose of this study was to determine if perception of control orientations function as cognitive mediators between perceived styles of parental discipline and subsequent behavior in adolescents. It was concluded, on the basis of the data obtained from this study, that antisocial adolescents do not perceive themselves to be more powerless than non-antisocial adolescents. It was recommended that caution should be exercised in applying such a label to those exhibiting antisocial patterns of behavior. It was also concluded that punishment applied in an unpredictable fashion may have detrimental effects on the development of female adolescents.

The problem addressed in this exploratory research study was whether any correlational relationship existed between a selection of personality and demographic variables (considered as aspects of the self-concept construct) and selected subjective and objective measurements of verbal behavior. The purpose of the study was to achieve a better understanding of the dynamic monitoring process of the self-concept and the possible relationship that may exist between it and certain quantifiable verbal behaviors. The conclusion of this study is that the self-concept construct does appear to be an influencing factor upon verbal behavior. It is considered that individuals are consistently interacting with their social environment to obtain feedback in order to test the self's perceptions of the social environment and its relationship to its environment.

Cue-controlled relaxation appeas to have several advantages over prominent anxiety-reduction treatments. It does not require the formulation of conditioned stimulus hierarchies nor the use of mental imagery as does systematic desensitization nor the application of noxious stimularion (farradic shock) utilized in anxiety relief. However, its efficacy, in quantitative terms, has not been determined. The present study compared the effectiveness in attainment of relaxation of instructional set, biofeedback training, and biofeedback-assisted/cue-controlled relaxation training procedures. Results indicate that cue-controlled relaxation training was more effective in terms of mean level of frontal is EMG and degree of maintenance of low EMG levels than either biofeedback training or instructions.

Husbands and wives of 67 couples described themselves on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, described their spouses on an altered form of this test, and completed the Locke-Wallace Short Marital Adjustment Test. Results for each man were matched to a woman's results based on socio-cultrual similarity to create a comparison group of nonmarried couples. A chi-square test indicated that related spouses of the married group did not have more similar personalities than unrelated partners in the comparison group. An F-test suggested that actually, interspousal personality similarity affects marital adjustment for both sexes, but it is not affected by perceived similarity. Accuracy of perception on the introversion-extraversion scale had a positive effect on the marital adjustment of wives, but not of husbands.

To determine the relationships among perceived contingency of parental reinforcements, depression, and locus of control, 66 male and 54 female undergraduate university students completed questionnaire measures. Significant relationships were obtained between depression and locus of control for both sexes. Also, subjects of both sexes who described their parents as having administered rewards and punishments more noncontingently tended to describe themselves as more external and as more depressed. Parental rewards were perceived by both sexes as administered more noncontingently than punishments. Females tended to perceive parental rewards as delivered more noncontingently than did males. All the intercorrelations among perceived contingency of parental reinforcement, locus of control, and depression were in the prediction direction.

The present study investigated a theory of the etiology and generalization of stuttering behavior. The subjects were 24 male students at a medical center who responded to advertisements requesting participation in a research project on learning and heart rate. The age range of the subjects was 22-28 years, and the mean age was 22.8 years. Three stimulus topic words were used in the present study. Two of these words were semantically equivalent. The independent variables were the three words that the subjects were instructed to discuss: neutral word condition, experimentally induced noxious word condition, and word semantically equivalent to the noxious word condition. The six dependent measures were percentage of part-word repetitions, percentage of interjections, heart-rate beats per minute, electromyographic microvolts per minute, galvanic skin response ohms conductance per minute, and self-report ratings of "state" anxiety. As predicted, heart rate and a self-report "state" anxiety measure achieved significance in a pattern corresponding to part-word repetitions. Two other measures of state anxiety (galvanic skin response and frontalis electromyographic activity) did not reach significance, although the results were in the predicted direction. The theory that "trait" anxiety accounts for susceptibility of fluency failure under emotional stress was not confirmed. The hypothesis offered …