Luis R. Marcos

The role of stress on the language-independence and code-switching phenomena

Abstractthis investigation studies the extent to which stress affects the assumed functional separation of coordinate bilinguals linguistic organization. Spanish/English bilinguals were subjects in a GSR linguistic conditioning experiment using two intensities of buzzer sounds (stressful conditions) and two lists of words. One word for each list functioned as the conditioned stimulus. Generalization to semantically, phonemically, and unrelated words occurred in both languages and buzzer conditions. We found a differential impact of the buzzer on the functional separation of the languages, although not in the direction predicted. We concluded that stress produced code-switching, and hence, a primitivization of the subjects cognitive and linguistic functioning is assumed to have occurred. These findings are important in understanding the way stress affects the bilinguals languages at the linguistic and cognitive levels. They are also important in understanding the role of stress in language development and in the transfer of linguistic information.

Medical Students Attitudinal Changes Associated with the Psychiatric Clerkship

This study explores the effects of the psychiatric clerkship on medical students’ attitudes toward mentally ill patients. Of 42 junior medical students in the study, 11 students were assigned to a primarily “Dispositional” unit and 11 to a “Treatment” unit. The control group consisted of 20 students with no psychiatric clerkship experience. All completed the Opinion about Mental Illness scale on the first and last days of the clerkship. The results demonstrate that the Dispositional Unit students experienced a decrease in Benevolence and an increase in Social Restrictiveness. The Treatment Unit students showed a decrease in Social Restrictiveness and an increase in Mental Hygiene Ideology.

Hand movements and nondominant fluency in bilinguals.

16 subordinate bilingual subjects produced 5-min. monologues in their nondominant languages, i.e., English or Spanish. Hand-movement activity manifested during the videotape monologues was scored and related to measures of fluency in the nondominant language. The hand-movement behavior categorized as Groping Movement was significantly related to all of the nondominant-language fluency measures. These correlations support the assumption that Groping Movement may have a function in the process of verbal encoding. The results are discussed in terms of the possibility of monitoring central cognitive processes through the study of “visible” motor behavior.

Law, policy, and involuntary emergency room visits

The authors present data showing that the number of mentally ill individuals brought by police officers to psychiatric emergency rooms in New York City increased by 69 percent from 1983 to 1989. They conclude that while the statutory criteria for the involuntary removal of mentally ill persons to hospitals have not changed, case law decisions and public policies that facilitate the involuntary treatment of patients who neglect their essential needs have contributed to this trend. The impact of these visits on hospital based psychiatric emergency rooms is discussed in terms of increased clinical and legal responsibility for the disposition of persons who are considered dangerous including those who are self-neglectful of their own essential needs.

Alternate Level of Care Patients in Public General Hospital Psychiatry.

Little has been written on the relationship between psychiatric services in public general hospitals and in other institutional settings. The authors analyze the interaction between them and its effects on quality of care. They suggest that clinicians and administrators are biased in favor of institutional care. Several recommendations for further research on the subject are made.