No abstract

A study of 46 women with histories of childhood sexual abuse and a control group of 93 women without such histories showed an association between childhood sexual abuse and the women's symptoms of anxiety and depression, as well as their perceptions of their families of origin. Results also suggested that family conflict, control, and cohesiveness moderated the relationship between the childhood abuse and current symptoms of depression.

Frequency selectivity was measured for one monaural system condition (NOSO) and two binaural system conditions (NOSrr and NOSM) using the probe-frequency method originated by Greenberg and Larkin [J. Aeoust. Soe. Am. 44, 1513-1523 (1968)]. Subjects were first trained to detect a 500-Hz tone in noise for each condition of the experiment. Following training, the usual detection paradigm was altered such that on 25% of the trials a second signal of a different frequency was substituted for the 500-Hz signal. Performance at each of these secondary or probe-frequencies was transformed into equivalent decibels of attenuation by means of psyehometrie functions obtained at 500 Hz. A correction was then applied to these data which compensated for the relationship between frequency and the size of the MLD. The transformed and corrected data were interpreted as describing attenuation characteristics of an internal auditory filter. No systematic difference was found between attenuation characteristics for the two binaural system conditions. However, the attenuation characteristics for the binaural system conditions were approximately twice as wide as those for the NOSO condition.

This study investigates the relation between global ratings of human figure drawings and psychological adjustment. The sample was comprised of a group of Vietnamese refugees who were evaluated at their entry into a residential education program. Adjustment was defined as the number of foster-care placements experienced by these clients during the 5 years following the program. Results showed that ratings of overall artistic quality, figure bizarreness, and estimated client adjustment all varied linearly as a function of number of foster-care placements. A fourth predictor variable, number of Koppitz emotional indicators, did not produce this result. All four predictor variables were found to be related, and it was shown that ratings of figure bizarreness alone adequately predicted the criterion. Implications of these results are discussed, and results suggest that projective drawings could provide a useful index of overall adjustment when better sources of information are not available.

This study investigated the effects of childhood sexual abuse and parental alcoholism in a sample of university women. Current symptoms of anxiety and depression were measured together with retrospective reports of subjects’ families of origin. Using a 2X2 factorial design, main effects on symptoms were obtained for sexual abuse and parental alcoholism, but their interaction was not significant. With respect to family environment, a history of sexual abuse was associated with perceptions that families of origin had less cohesion, more conflict, less emphasis on moral-religious matters, less emphasis on achievement, and less of an orientation towards intellectual, cultural, and recreational pursuits. Similarly, subjects who had alcoholic parents reported less family cohesion, more conflict, and less emphasis on moral-religious matters. Results of analyses of co variance suggested that family environment was a mediator of current symptoms of anxiety, but not symptoms of depression.