This book not only documents the authors' own studies of real life social situations, but also provides an extensive review of other literature in this field. Michael Argyle and his colleagues are particularly concerned with the practical applications of situational analysis - to social skills training, mental health and deviance, intergroup behaviour, personnel selection and consumer research. In addition, by concentrating on situational variables, the volume makes an important contribution to the study of personality, since personality-situational interaction is at least as important in determining behaviour as are general personality traits. During recent years there has been extensive criticism of the conduct of research in social psychology. Social Situations points the way forward to a resolution of the crisis in the discipline. It marks an important advance in our understanding of social behaviour which will interest social and clinical psychologists and sociologists.

English and Italian encoders were asked to communicate two‐dimensional shapes to decoders of their own culture, with and without the use of hand gestures, for materials of high and low verbal codability. The decoders drew what they thought the shapes were and these were rated by English and Italian judges, for similarity to the originals. Higher accuracy scores were obtained by both the English and the Italians, when gestures were allowed, for materials of both high and low codability; but the effect of using gestures was greater for materials of low codability. Improvement in performance when gestures were allowed was greater for the Italians than for the English for both levels of codability. An analysis of the recorded verbal utterances has shown that the detriment in communication accuracy with the elimination of gestures cannot be attributed to disruption of speech performance; rather, changes in speech content occur indicating an increased reliance on verbal means of conveying spatial information. Nevertheless, gestures convey this kind of semantic information more accurately and evidence is provided for the gestures of the Italians communicating this information more effectively than those of the English.

Pyoderma gangrenosum is an uncommon ulcerative skin disorder that occurs in all age groups. Approximately 4% of patients are infants and children. There are several notable differences between the childhood and adult manifestations of the disease, including the distribution of lesions and associated disorders. We reviewed the childhood cases (< or = 18 yrs of age) of unequivocal pyoderma gangrenosum in the English literature and tabulated the trends in clinical features, associated disorders, and therapy. We report our 3-week-old patient, the youngest documented case. Of the 46 patients, only 4 were less than 1 year of age. A systemic illness was present in 74% of the older children, most commonly, ulcerative colitis. Only one infant had an associated problem (HIV+) at the time of onset. Infants appear to have an unusual distribution of perianal and genital lesions not often described in other age groups. Our review suggests that pyoderma gangrenosum in children has a similar clinical appearance to that in adults. It is associated with some of the same underlying disorders, but with different frequencies. The distribution of lesions in children is similar, often involving the lower extremities, but pyoderma gangrenosum of the head and face appears to be more common in children. Infants may have ulcers in genital and perianal areas. The most frequently prescribed treatment for children is systemic corticosteroids, which generally are very effective.

(1)The use of cosmetics (facial make-up and hair care) leads to more favourable appearance ratings by others (both males and females). For make-up there were more favourable ratings on all of the six appearance scales, and for hair care there were more favourable ratings on four of the six appearance scales. (2)The use of cosmetics leads to more favourable ratings of personality as perceived by others (both males and females). Facial make-up enhanced ratings on eight of the fourteen personality dimensions tested and hair treatment led to more favourable ratings on ten of the scales.

Subjects were required to describe line drawings of two-dimensional shapes at two levels of verbal codability, with and without using hand gestures. Elimination of gesture affected speech performance by changing the semantic content of utterances and the proportion of speaking time spent pausing; numbers of wordr, numbers of pauses, mean pause length and semantic content were found to be related to the verbal codability of the stimulus material; and the number of hesitations was related to both gesture and level of codability . This research was supported in part by a like to thank Michael Argyle for his helpful grant from the SSRC to M. Argyle and from suggestions and Rad Babic for help with the N.I.M.H. to Professor J. S. Bruner. We would pause analyzer.Ew. J. SOC. P s Y c~I . 2 ) , pp. 189-19s (