Annual Review of Psychology - Volume 50, 1999

This chapter reviews theory and research on the development of children's knowledge about the mental world, focusing especially on work done during the past 15 years under the rubric of theory-of-mind development. The three principal approaches to explaining this development—theory theory, modular theory, and simulation theory—are described first. Next comes a description of infant precursors or protoforms of theory-of-mind knowledge in infancy, including a beginning awareness of the intentionality and goal-directedness of human actions. This discussion is followed by a summary of the postinfancy development of children's understanding of visual perception, attention, desires, emotions, intentions, beliefs, knowledge, pretense, and thinking. Briefly considered next are intracultural, intercultural, and interspecies differences in theory-of-mind development. The chapter then concludes with some guesses about the future of the field.

The investigation of marital conflict has reached a crossroads. Over 25 years of research on marital conflict behavior yields a relatively clear picture of its topography, but its relevance for changing the marital relationship remains controversial. We can continue to amass observations in a relatively atheoretical manner and hope that patterns capable of guiding clinical activity will emerge, or we can begin creating a unified theoretical framework to indicate new directions for clinical activity and empirical investigation. Before exploring the latter option, this chapter reviews briefly the impact of marital conflict on mental, physical, and family health and what is known about the nature of conflict in marriage. After highlighting some recent theoretically grounded advances, we illustrate how conceptualizing marital conflict behavior as goal directed provides an integrative theoretical framework for treatment, prevention, and marital conflict research.

DSM-IV's strong empirical base has yielded an instrument with good to excellent reliability and improved validity. Diagnostic reliability depends on both the clarity and validity of diagnostic criteria and the changeability of disorders over time: The reliability of schizophrenic spectrum disorders, personality disorders, and some childhood and adolescent disorders remains problematic. Findings on diagnostic validity appear paradoxical: Attempts to validate schizophrenic spectrum disorders with neurobiological and genetic-familial validators have been only modestly successful, whereas the tripartite personality trait model has differentiated a range of depressive and anxiety disorders. Research on comorbidity has identified several highly comorbid disorders (substance-related disorders, personality disorders, depression, and anxiety) as well as some adverse consequences of comorbidity. The advantages of dimensional approaches to diagnosis have largely been demonstrated conceptually; ultimate conclusions about the strengths and weaknesses of dimensional and syndromal methods await substantial additional empirical research.

This chapter describes the main accounts of deductive competence, which explain what is computed in carrying out deductions. It argues that people have a modicum of competence, which is useful in daily life and a prerequisite for acquiring logical expertise. It outlines the three main sorts of theory of deductive performance, which explain how people make deductions: They rely on factual knowledge, formal rules, or mental models. It reviews recent experimental studies of deductive reasoning in order to help readers to assess these theories of performance.

Our evolving understanding of how psychosocial and behavioral factors affect health and disease processes has been marked by investigation of specific relationships and mechanisms underlying them. Stress and other emotional responses are components of complex interactions of genetic, physiological, behavioral, and environmental factors that affect the body's ability to remain or become healthy or to resist or overcome disease. Regulated by nervous, endocrine, and immune systems, and exerting powerful influence on other bodily systems and key health-relevant behaviors, stress and emotion appear to have important implications for the initiation or progression of cancer, HIV, cardiovascular disease, and other illnesses. Health-enhancing and health-impairing behaviors, including diet, exercise, tobacco use, and protection from the sun, can compromise or benefit health and are directed by a number of influences as well. Finally, health behaviors related to being ill or trying to avoid disease or its severest consequences are important. Seeking care and adhering to medical regimens and recommendations for disease surveillance allow for earlier identification of health threats and more effective treatment. Evidence that biobehavioral factors are linked to health in integrated, complex ways continues to mount, and knowledge of these influences has implications for medical outcomes and health care practice.

A substantial body of empirical research has documented both the promise and the shortcomings of psychological interventions for preventing or ameliorating marital distress. Couple therapy reduces relationship distress and may affect individual psychopathology, such as depression. However, some couples are unresponsive and others improve but relapse later. Interventions to prevent marital distress usually produce short-term changes in behavior and relationship satisfaction, but little evidence exists demonstrating a longer-term prevention effect. Furthermore, these interventions have yet to be examined on a diverse population of couples or with a diverse set of outcome criteria (e.g. effects on children). Concern about the negative impact of marital discord and divorce will continue to provide the impetus for research on more effective means of intervening with couples. Future research could benefit from a focus on a more diverse population of couples, treatment in natural settings, the development of more powerful interventions, and the examination of those interventions over longer periods of time and with more comprehensive outcome measures.

We review recent trends and methodological issues in assessing and testing theories of emotion, and we review evidence that form follows function in the affect system. Physical limitations constrain behavioral expressions and incline behavioral predispositions toward a bipolar organization, but these limiting conditions appear to lose their power at the level of underlying mechanisms, where a bivalent approach may provide a more comprehensive account of the affect system.

The aim of clinical assessment is to gather data that allow us to reduce uncertainty regarding the probabilities of events. This is a Bayesian view of assessment that is consistent with the well-known concept of incremental validity. Conventional approaches to evaluating the accuracy of assessment methods are confounded by the choice of cutting points, by the base rates of the events, and by the assessment goal (e.g. nomothetic vs idiographic predictions). Clinical assessors need a common metric for quantifying the information value of assessment data, independent of the cutting points, base rates, or particular application. Signal detection theory (SDT) provides such a metric. We review SDT's history, concepts, and methods and provide examples of its application to a variety of assessment problems.

Three areas of high-level scene perception research are reviewed. The first concerns the role of eye movements in scene perception, focusing on the influence of ongoing cognitive processing on the position and duration of fixations in a scene. The second concerns the nature of the scene representation that is retained across a saccade and other brief time intervals during ongoing scene perception. Finally, we review research on the relationship between scene and object identification, focusing particularly on whether the meaning of a scene influences the identification of constituent objects.

This analytic review is concerned with the interpersonal processes, and the characteristics of situations and persons that influence them, that lead to the confirmation and disconfirmation of expectations in the course of social interaction. We examine the steps in the chain of events by which the expectations of one person guide and direct the dynamics of social interaction such that the behavior of the target of those expectations comes to confirm or disconfirm those expectations. We further inquire into the motivational and structural foundations of confirmation and disconfirmation in social interaction, using these inquiries to address frequently asked, but rarely answered, questions about expectations and social interaction. Finally, we argue that investigations of expectations in social interaction provide a paradigm for more general theoretical and empirical considerations of interpersonal processes and social relationships.

In this review we focus on the perceptual and psychophysical aspects of somesthesis, although some information on neurophysiological aspects will be included as well; we look primarily at studies that have appeared since 1988. In the section on touch, we cover peripheral sensory mechanisms and several topics related to spatial and temporal pattern perception, specifically measures of spatial sensitivity, texture perception with particular emphasis on perceived roughness, complex spatial-temporal patterns, and the use of touch as a possible channel of communication. Other topics under this section include the effects of attention on processing tactile stimuli, cortical mechanisms, and the effects of aging on sensitivity. We also deal with thermal sensitivity and some aspects of haptics and kinesthesis. In the section on pain, we review work on the gate-control theory, sensory fibers, and higher neural organization. In addition, studies on central neurochemical effects and psychophysics of pain are examined.

This review demarcates major periods of empirical activity and accomplishment (i.e. “generations”) in research on children's peer relations and social competence during recent decades and identifies the investigative agendas that were dominant or ascendant during these periods. A sampling of studies that were conducted during the most recent generation of peer relations research is organized and reviewed in relation to two types of research objectives: (a) enduring agendas—aims from past research generations that have continued to serve as an impetus for empirical investigation during the 1990s—and (b) innovative agendas—newly emergent objectives that are predicated on novel conceptual issues or ongoing research controversies and deficiencies. This profile of continuity and change in investigators' research agendas provides a platform for delineating and analyzing recent empirical accomplishments in the field of peer relations research.

Recent analyses of organizational change suggest a growing concern with the tempo of change, understood as the characteristic rate, rhythm, or pattern of work or activity. Episodic change is contrasted with continuous change on the basis of implied metaphors of organizing, analytic frameworks, ideal organizations, intervention theories, and roles for change agents. Episodic change follows the sequence unfreeze-transition-refreeze, whereas continuous change follows the sequence freeze-rebalance-unfreeze. Conceptualizations of inertia are seen to underlie the choice to view change as episodic or continuous.

Psychology can and should be at the forefront of participation in social, community, and preventive interventions. This chapter focuses on selective topics under two general areas: violence as a public health problem and health promotion/competence promotion across the life span. Under violence prevention, discussion of violence against women, youth violence, and child maltreatment are the focal points. Under health and competence promotion, attention is paid to the prevention of substance abuse and HIV/AIDS. We highlight a few significant theoretical and empirical contributions, especially from the field of community/prevention psychology. The chapter includes a brief overview of diversity issues, which are integral to a comprehensive discussion of these prevention efforts. We argue that the field should extend its role in social action while emphasizing the critical importance of rigorous research as a component of future interventions.

In this review, we describe a shift that has taken place in the area of developmental suggestibility. Formerly, studies in this area indicated that there were pronounced age-related differences in suggestibility, with preschool children being particularly susceptible to misleading suggestions. The studies on which this conclusion was based were criticized on several grounds (e.g. unrealistic scenarios, truncated age range). Newer studies that have addressed these criticisms, however, have largely confirmed the earlier conclusions. These studies indicate that preschool children are disproportionately vulnerable to a variety of suggestive influences. There do not appear to any strict boundary conditions to this conclusion, and preschool children will sometimes succumb to suggestions about bodily touching, emotional events, and participatory events. The evidence for this assertion is presented in this review.

Psychotherapy is facing challenges that relate to the emergence of managed health care, the possibility of a national health care system, and advances in biological psychiatry. These situations have created pressure to achieve a more accurate assessment of psychotherapeutic effectiveness. Psychotherapy has been proven to be generally effective; however, there is uncertainty as to why. The field is currently experiencing apparent turmoil in three areas: (a) theory development for psychotherapeutic effectiveness, (b) research design, and (c) treatment technique. This chapter reviews the dynamics within each of the areas and highlights the progress made in treating mental disorders. We conclude that recent advances in research design may provide a transition that will bring psychotherapy closer to becoming a unified paradigm with an acceptable theory of effectiveness.

The focus of this review is on theory and research of lifespan (lifespan developmental) psychology. The theoretical analysis integrates evolutionary and ontogenetic perspectives on cultural and human development across several levels of analysis. Specific predictions are advanced dealing with the general architecture of lifespan ontogeny, including its directionality and age-differential allocation of developmental resources into the three major goals of developmental adaptation: growth, maintenance, and regulation of loss. Consistent with this general lifespan architecture, a meta-theory of development is outlined that is based on the orchestrated and adaptive interplay between three processes of behavioral regulation: selection, optimization, and compensation. Finally, these propositions and predictions about the general nature of lifespan development are examined and supported by empirical evidence on the development of cognition and intelligence across the life span.

To comprehend and produce language, we must be able to recognize the sound patterns of our language and the rules for how these sounds “map on” to meaning. Human infants are born with a remarkable array of perceptual sensitivities that allow them to detect the basic properties that are common to the world's languages. During the first year of life, these sensitivities undergo modification reflecting an exquisite tuning to just that phonological information that is needed to map sound to meaning in the native language. We review this transition from language-general to language-specific perceptual sensitivity that occurs during the first year of life and consider whether the changes propel the child into word learning. To account for the broad-based initial sensitivities and subsequent reorganizations, we offer an integrated transactional framework based on the notion of a specialized perceptual- motor system that has evolved to serve human speech, but which functions in concert with other developing abilities. In so doing, we highlight the links between infant speech perception, babbling, and word learning.