The intensive psychosocial training program for residents improved their patients' satisfaction.

An intensive 1-month training rotation in interviewing improved residents' knowledge about, attitudes toward, and skills in interviewing.

No abstract

The study was designed to explore social class differences in maternal behavior in both structured and unstructured mother-child interaction situations, and in an interview. Seventy-six lower-class mothers were compared to 38 middle-class mothers in an unstructured "waiting-room" situation, and in a structured problem-solving situation with the child. In addition, all mothers were interviewed and certain features of their language analyzed. Significant social class differences in maternal behavior appeared in each of the three situations. In the waiting room, lower-class mothers were more disapproving and controlling than middle-class mothers. In the problemsolving situation, the teaching strategies of middle-class mothers were characterized by the use of nonspecific suggestions and the infrequent use of nonverbal help and negative feedback to the child. Lower-class mothers were more likely to intrude physically into the child's problem solving; they used relatively higher rates of negative feedback, and more specific, concrete suggestions to their children than the middle-class mothers. The language analysis indicated that middle-class mothers used longer and more complex sentences, relatively more adjectives, and fewer personal referents. The results are discussed in terms of the implications of such differences in maternal behavior for the cognitive development of the child.

Eleven normotensive workers in "high strain" jobs, defined by the combination of high psychological work load and low worker control, were compared with 26 normotensive workers in "low strain" jobs on ambulatory blood pressure (BP) at work, at home in the evening, and during sleep. High strain workers' systolic BP was higher at work and at home in the evening, after adjusting for prework casual BP, body mass index, gender. Type A behavior, and caffeine consumption. Under certain conditions, systolic BP during sleep and diastolic BP at work were higher as well. Men and women, and Type A and Type B workers, were indistinguishable in job strain effects on BP. Type A workers tended to hold "active" (high demand, high control) jobs, and Type B workers "passive" jobs. More research is needed to distinguish more clearly job strain as 'cause' of observed BP effects from job strain as mere 'correlate.'