thinking processes at the Harvard Center for Cognitive Studies. The center functions as an undergraduate and graduate teaching resource for Harvard University and as a base for the independent and collaborative research of approximately 25 scholars a year from disciplines as varied as philosophy, education, psychology, engineering, linguistics, anthropology, and mathematics. The following aspects of cognitive processes are studied: A) How these processes develop from infancy; B) How they are affected by the acquisition and possession of language; and C) How they are affected by development and character of perceptual ability.

(4) Subjects: The subjects were normal infants and adults.

(5) Method: The center uses its PDP-4 computer for the control and analysis of experiments, but simple naturalistic observation of behavior is also used extensively.

(2) Results: Typical findings include: (A) perception: the pupil of the eye dilates when humans do mental "work," and this prenomenon holds true even in the dark. The dilation occurs when humans are processing information rather than when they are first taking it in. Of several physiological measures correlated with mental activity, pupillary response is the most sensitive to different degrees of "mental efforts"; (B) psycholinguistics: an individual's saying a sound out loud interferes with recognizing, on a printed page, a word that has that sound. This is caused by interference from what the subject is hearing, not from what he is saying. Listeners apparently use pauses between words to process the preceding words in their correct order, and this procedure is upset if inter-word pauses are too short; C) learning and remembering: if subjects given a list of words are asked to recall them in any order ("free recall"), their recall rate steadily declines. But if they are asked to recall the list either in the order in which the words were presented, or in another order (say by size, or weight), items are recalled at a constant rate. The way that memory is searched apparently differs according to the type of recall required: when "free recall" is allowed, a random search of memory takes place, but when ordered recall is required, the search proceeds in a fixed order at a fixed rate; D) development: when infants six to 20 weeks of age try to grasp a moving object, the movement is preceded and accompanied by opening the mouth, and ends when the mouth is closed. They later learn to separate these two movements.

(3) Implications: a clear understanding of man's intellectual processes and how they may be enhanced is of prime importance to the field of education. The investigator's studies may suggest new teaching techniques tailored to various stages of human development, and indicate ways to speed up learning and strengthen memory.

BEHAVORIAL STUDY OF MENTALLY RETARDED CHILDREN, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER, NEW YORK, N.Y.

(By Stella Chase)

Beginning date, October 1, 1966; cumulative dollars, $116,553; fiscal year 1969, $37,903, $40,443 & $78,659, fiscal year 1967.

(1) Purpose: The investigator has conducted a study of the personality and behavorial organization of mentally retarded children. She is now further analyzing the data, to determine how temperament modifies levels of performance, and she is conducting a three-year follow-up study to determine significant changes in intelligence, levels of functioning, and behavioral pathology.

(4) Subjects: The subjects are 52 children, aged five to 11 years, whose tested IQs are between 50 and 75.

(5) Method: Data are gathered by parent and teacher interviews, home and school observations, and psychiatric, psychological, and neurological examinations.

(2) Results. Of the 52 children, 31 received psychiatric diagnoses of behavorial disorder, and 21 had positive findings of neurological defects. The children were more retarded in speech than in other areas of cognitive functioning. Onset of speech was delayed 22 months and speech was characterized by defects in articulation, incorrect grammar, repetition, and egocentricity. Motor behavior was also delayed and showed predominance of restlessness and hyperactivity, finger chewing, unusual seeking of sensory experiences, and obsessional behavior. In a comparison of temperament ratings at home, in the classroom, and during an intelligence test session in my office, the greatest variation occurred in mood rating which was more negative at home than during the test. The children were lea

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adaptive and least persistent in school, and least intensely reactive during testing. An overall pattern of functioning was compiled from the child's capability and performance in everyday routines. On the average, the children were not capable of 25 percent of the everyday skills exercised by normal children, and they performed only 70 percent of those they were capable of handling. The children who were more adaptable, more positive in mood, and who had the milder intensity of reactions on temperament scales also tended to have the higher performance levels. A comparison of retarded children whose mental age was just under five years with normal five-year-olds showed similar patterns of behavior for both groups. However, the retarded group showed less intensity of reaction and less persistence than the normal children. Thirty-four children have been given intelligence tests after a three-year interval; no significant changes have been noted in IQs for boys or girls.

(3) Implications: This study may suggest guidelines to parents, teachers, and professional workers for the care, management, and treatment of mentally retarded children.

EFFECT OF FETAL ACTIVITY ON APPREHENSION AND AGGRESSION, FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY, TALLAHASSEE, FLA.

(By C. Etta Walters)

Beginning date, December 1, 1966; cumulative dollars, $44,564; fiscal year 1969, $17,623.

(1) Purpose: Can the behavior of toddlers towards other children be predicted from their movement in the womb? The investigator believes so, and is testing this hypothesis to find the relation between fetal activity and subsequent "social apprehension" (shyness) and aggression towards other children.

(4) Subjects: Eighty expectant mothers and their subsequently newborn infants are used as subjects. Mothers are physically normal, non-smoking, nonworking, middle-class married women between 22 and 26 years old.

(5) Method: During the prenatal testing period, fetal activity is measured for one and one-half hours weekly during the last trimester of pregnancy. Fetal squirms, kicks, ripples, and hiccups are counted as specific fetal movements. The expectant mothers are given the Ipat anxiety scale questionnaire, as are mothers in a comparison group of smokers. During the postnatal period several tests are given to the developing infants: At three, six, nine, 12, and 18 months the infants are rated on the infant security scale and assessed for their activity level and their behavioral individuality. At nine, 12, 18, and 24 months the infants are tested for their level of developmental coordination. At 12, 18, and 24 months the Gesell developmental schedule (motor scale) is given to assess both the overall developmental maturity of the children and their reactions to the testing situation. A record of the children's accidents, sicknesses, and traumatic experiences is also made during these testing periods. At 30 months of age the children are placed in nursery school at a day-care center. There they are observed for two hours daily for a two-week period, and their behavior is rated on the social apprehension and peer aggression scales. An additional rating is made of overt aggressive behavior towards other children. Mother-child interactions are measured on a scale of parental love-hostility and acceptance-rejection (still under development) and a scale of maternal overprotection. Correlations between fetal activity (mean number of fetal movements per month), shyness, and peer aggression are determined for children of each sex.

(2) Results: To date, this study is in its data-collection phase.

(3) Implications: The results of this study may provide new insight into the origins of shyness and aggressiveness, and may clarify whether these behavioral traits arise from genetic or prenatal factors, from learning, or from a combination of these.

THE CULTURE OF POVERTY IN PUERTO RICO AND NEW YORK, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, URBANA, ILL.

(By Oscar Lewis)

Beginning date, January 1, 1967; cumulative dollars, $276,503; fiscal year 1969, $83,070; $87,333 % $193,000, fiscal year 1967.

(1) Purpose: The investigator is studying the character and style of life of

low-income Puerto Rican slum families in San Juan and New York. He is codifying and analyzing material from an earlier study, and is extending his proj. ect to include the life histories of other Puerto Rican groups.

(4) Subjects: The subjects include 100 Puerto Rican families from four slum areas of Greater San Juan, and their relatives in New York. A small group of American white and Negro low-income families will be studied for comparison. (5) Method: In addition to summarizing data already collected, additional field studies are conducted. In one study, 40 children from the San Juan and New York family samples are examined by a physician and a clinical psychologist, and are observed in their homes, their local neighborhoods, schools, and other group situations. The children are interviewed to obtain their views of family, school, slum community, and the larger society. Other studies of rural relatives of slum-dwellers, second-generation New York Puerto Ricans, "succesful" slum families, and families of prostitutes are being made from tape-recorded interviews and psychological testing.

(2) Results: To date, the book "The study of Slum Culture: Backgrounds for La Vida" has been published, which reports on the core slum families in this study. Fifty households in Puerto Rico and New York have been studied and most of the field data have been analyzed. A major volume is being written on each of three large extended families in Puerto Rico and New York. The first of the three books, now being prepared for publication, concerns an extended family of 14 related households with 62 members, of which three households are in New York and the remainder in Puerto Rico. Eight of the Puerto Rican households are in urban slums and three are in the country. In Part I of the book, the rural background is presented through the life histories of two sisters, 70 and 72, born in the interior highland coffee country of Jayua. Part II deals with the biographies of some of their husbands and children, and Part III deals with a 26year-old granddaughter living in New York City and her 61-year-old foster father in a rural town in Puerto Rico. The studies spell out the effects of poverty on the quality of life, but show that poverty per se does not necessarily produce prostitution, dependence on welfare, delinquency, school failure, and family dissolution, and the other chronic problems of the poor.

(3) Implications: This study clarifies the "culture of poverty" as it exists in Puerto Rico and New York, in rural and urban settings, among Puerto Ricans and Americans.

PSYCHOPATHOLOGY IN THE UNDERPRIVILEGED PRESCHOOLER, WILLIAM ALANSON WHITE INSTITUTE, NEW YORK, N.Y.

(By Martin Kohn)

Beginning date: May 1, 1967; cumulative dollars, 158,165; fiscal year 1969, 57,088. (1) Purpose: This investigator is refining and testing methods he has developed for assessing pathology in culturally deprived preschool children.

(4) Subjects: About 120 disturbed children, aged three to six, in day-care centers and other child-care institutions, are the subjects.

(5) Method: The investigator is focusing on two measurement scales: The competence scale (which he designed to measure the degree of social competence with which three to five-year-olds master the day-care environment) and the symptom checklist (geared to identify patterns of pathological behavior in threeto six-year-old children). The scales were first tested in a number of day-care centers, with two teachers rating a random selection of children. Symptom and competence ratings will now be obtained for four classes of disturbed children: Those functioning poorly in day-care centers, those referred for psychiatric treatment, those in therapeutic day nurseries, and those institutionalized in mental hospitals. The tests will be repeated every six months for two years.

(2) Results: To date, 32 teachers in four day-care centers have used the scales. As a result of conferences with the teachers, some of the words used in the scales were changed. Teachers in 90 day-care centers are now using the scales to rate disturbed children.

(3) Implications: The findings in this project may be useful in planning new preschool programs or expanding such programs as Head Start and Upward Bound. The measurement scales being developed by the investigator may provide some tools for identifying emotional disturbances in the young so that therap may be instituted as early in life as possible.

INTENSIVE NURSING AFTERCARE FOR PSYCHOTIC MOTHERS, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL, BOSTON, MASS.

Beginning date:

1969, $130,881.

(By Henry U. Grunebaum)

--9

19--; cumulative dollars, $270,059; fiscal year

(1) Purpose: The investigators are evaluating a program of intensive nursing aftercare of hospital-discharged psychotic mothers of young children, focusing on the mother's relationship with her child, her adaptation to the home, and the psychological barriers to adaptive mothering.

(4) Subjects: The subjects are two groups of 30 psychotic mothers and one group of 30 normal mothers, and their children under five years of age.

(5) Method: Nurses visit aftercare patients before their hospital discharge, at home weekly for the first three months, and once every two weeks for the remaining 21 months. The second group of psychotic mothers are visited before discharge, and five times thereafter. Normal mothers are visited for initial and terminal assessment. One study considers the outcome of the aftercare and compares changes found in the three groups, using techniques which measure situational stress, maternal personality, psychopathology, attitudes and behavior, general and specific aspects of child development, and psychiatric status of the child. A second evaluation is based on analysis of tape-recorded sessions, supervisory conferences, and clinical reports.

(2) Results: Aftercare services have begun with 15 psychotic mothers, and initial evaluations have been completed. A family planning interview has been introduced to survey possible differences between psychotic and normal mothers, and to seek ways to assist psychotic mothers with family planning.

(3) Implications: Development of a method of helping nursing personnel to give effective aftercare treatment to psychotic mothers offers a major contribution to primary prevention in community health. It may reduce potential emotional disorders in a "high risk" population-the children of these mothers.

DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY OF INFANCY, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS MEDICAL CENTER, CHICAGO, ILL.

(By N. H. Greenberg)

Beginning date, July 1961; cumulative dollars, $220,829; fiscal year 1969, $27,559.

(1) Purpose: This investigator is conducting interrelated longitudinal studies concerned with early adaptational development, i.e., development of emerging biological processes that organize and regulate behavior during infancy. The research was designated to relate sequential changes in the development of normal and atypical infant behavior with infant-mother interactions.

(4) Subjects: All Ss are selected prenatally based on results from preliminary information forms and self-administered psychological tests completed by the mother at the time of her first prenatal outpatient visit. Subjects are selected from women receiving prenatal care at one of three Chicago Board of Health Maternal Infant Welfare Clinics or at the Obstetrics Clinic of the University of Illinois Hospital.

(5) Method: Mothers are assigned to subgroups on the basis of psychological predictive indicators of the probability for normal versus disordered infant development in the presence of a healthy versus medically-complicated pregnancy. After screening, selection and subject subgroup assignment, all maternal subjects are followed in the Obstetrics Clinic of the University of Illinois Hospital, where confinement and delivery occur. Infants will be longitudinally studied through an infant inventory, psychophysiological measurements, Gesell Development Schedules, and pediatric data. Methods of studying maternal behavior include film recorded infant-mother interaction and home observations with an inventory of 41 items.

(2) Results: Events during the periods of early development have been causally linked to a variety of later psychiatric maladies, ranging from personality and psychosomatic disorders through major psychiatric illnesses including the psychoses. Disturbances in the mother-infant relationships have been partially held to account for the origins of such problems. Specific properties in maternal

behavior which accompany nominal and atypically developing behavior remain unclear.

(3) Implications: Comparative studies of the infant-mother relationships between those developing normally and of infants with behavioral distortions may lead us to a better knowledge of the parameters of maternal behavior which are compatible with healthy versus disordered development during the first few years.

DEVELOPMENT OF LOGICO-CONCEPTUAL SKILLS, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO

(By Prof. Lyle E. Bourne, Jr.)

Beginning date, January 1968; cumulative dollars, $93,596; fiscal year 1969, $45,143. Research objectives: The rationale for these experiments is provided by a logical analysis of class concepts and of conceptual behaviors. Particularly critical in that analysis is a description of rules or operators defining certain types of concepts and the essential independence of the rule and the relevant (physical and perceptible) stimulus properties of a particular concept. With respect to the latter point, note that the distinction between any two types of concepts, e.g., disjunctive and conjunctive concepts, is indifferent to the particular stimulus attributes and dependent only on how two (or more) attributes are related. This analysis raises questions about how human beings learn concepts based on various rules, to what extent the rules themselves are learned as generic principles, the manner in which learned rules are used to solve new conceptual problems and— particularly critical for the present program-the interaction of task conditions and developmental (or age-related) variables with the learning and subsequent use of conceptual rules in problem solving. The objective of this research program is to supply experimentally-derived answers to several of these questions. Beginning date, September 1, 1967; cumulative dollars, $218,478; fiscal year 1969, $117,456.

DRUG AND COGNITION STUDIES IN DISTURBED CHILDREN

Professional personnel engaged on project: C. Keith Conners, Ph.d. Ass't. Prof. Psychology, Dept. of Psychiatry; Naomi Zigmond, Ph.d., instructor in psychology, Dept. of Psychiatry; Leon Eisenberg, M.D., professor of psychiatry, Dept. of Psychiatry; Frank Ervin, M.D. Ass't. professor of psychiatry, Dept. of Psychiatry; Mary Louise Lyons School, M.D. Association in Neurology, Dep't. of Neurol. ; Gerard Rothschild, Ph.d., research fellow, Dept. of Psychiatry; Janet Fritz, M.A. Psychologist, Dept. of Psychiatry; Marcia Mattox, B.S., psychologist, Dept. of Psychiatry; Johnson, Rosalyn, secretary, Dept. of Psychiatry.

Applicant organization: Massachusetts General Hospital, Fruit Street, Boston,

Mass.

Research objectives: The following major research objectives are proposed for a 5-year period of study: (1) To compare the efficacy of two stimulants (dextroamphetamine and methylphenidate) for the improvement of behavior and cognitive functioning in children with conduct problems, specific learning disabilities and/or minimal brain dysfunction. (2) To determine the effect of these drugs on brain processes associated with tasks of simple learning and attention: specifically to measure the effects of drugs on parameters of cortical evoked potentials and upon "contingent negative variation" studied by computer averaging; and upon attentional processes in discrimination learning. (3) To examine autonomic indices of the orienting reflex, as these are affected by drug treatment. (4) To study effects of diphenylhydantoin sodium (DPH) on a subgroup of problem children characterized by temper outbursts and rage reactions.

Beginning date, June 1, 1969; cumulative dollars, none; fiscal year 1969, $104.213.

CULTURAL ENRICHMENT BY MEANS OF A TOY LIBRARY

Professional personnel engaged: Dorothy S. Edwards, Associate Director, Human Resources Research Prog.; Clifford P Hahn, Director, Human Resources Research Program; Jean R. McNelis, Senior Res. Asso., Human Resources Research Program; Jacques H. Robinson, Research Scientist, Skills Research Program; Charles F. Williams, Senior Res. Scientist, Communication Res. Prog. Applicant organization: American Institutes for Research in the Behaviora Sciences, 8555 Sixteenth Street, Silver Spring, Md.