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Four experiments were designed to investigate automatic processing of letter case and lexical/semantic information under forward and backward masking conditions that disallowed a visible image. Stimulus displays were letter string pairs; the letter case for each pair matched or mismatched, and the relationship between the two strings within pairs varied. Experiment 1 required direct Same-Different responses to stimulus pairs, and the results indicate that tasks requiring direct responses to stimulus inputs cannot distinguish between conscious response biases and unconscious use of information. Experiments 2 and 3 employed an indirect index of automatic prerecognition analyses of verbal-linguistic parameters and showed that, with 30-msec pre-and postmasked presentations, letter case, orthographic regularity, and lexical/semantic information are all analyzed in unconscious operations. Experiment 4 demonstrated that, under the viewing conditions of Experiments 2 and 3, subjects had no awareness of the stimulus input.Results of several recent studies indicate that subjects access the meaning of words under central masking conditions that deny a visible image of letters in a display (e.g., Balota, 1983;Fowler, Wolford, Slade, & Tassinary, 1981;Friedman, 1980;Huber & Johnson, 1980;Marcel, 1980 Marcel, , 1983bMarcel & Patterson, 1978). Unless these results can be shown to be artifactual and/or fail to gain converging support from other methods for studying the earliest operations of visual processing, they have important implications for theoretical accounts of (1) the means by which semantic access occurs, (2) the function performed by central pattern masking, and (3) the distinction between visual, but not visible, operations and the outcomes of those operations that constitute current perceptual awareness.Direct and indirect measures of processing have provided at least partial converging evidence of prerecognition semantic access. Fowler et al. (1981), Friedman (1980, Huber andJohnson (1980), and Marcel (1983b;Marcel & Patterson, 1978) used procedures that required direct responses to stimulus inputs. Marcel's (1983b;Marcel & Patterson, 1978) data are the most surprising and counterintuitive. When he determined the longest onset asynchrony between a stimulus and a following pattern mask (SOA) at which subjects made chance-level judgments (defined as .60 probability of correct response), Portions of these data were reported at the meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, May, 1983. The authors express appreciation to Paul Koch, Chris Conzemius, and Angela Hemmer for assistance in conducting the experiments, and to Roberta Klatzky, David Balota, and three anonymous reviewers for critical comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Address reprint requests to L L Avant, Department of Psychology, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011.Marcel found that the SOA for judgments of semantic similarity between a masked word and two unmasked words was lower than that for judgments of form similarity betw...

This article reports evaluation results from a federally funded project designed to improve the co-parenting relationship between custodial and noncustodial parents. The project was hypothesized that improving this relationship would result in increased voluntary compliance with child support orders. Results indicate that, although numerous strategies to involve noncustodial parents in the program were employed, virtually none was successful. Although there was a slight increase in compliance with child support orders for participant families, this was not thought to be a result of program participation and did not have a positive impact on income level of participant families. Further, the quarterly income of the participant families fell dramatically over the course of the program. Discussion focuses on the flaws in family policy that contribute to the failure of the parental partnership concept for low-income families.

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Participants in a statewide family preservation program were classified on the basis of income level and enrollment in public assistance. These variables, along with other economic, parent, and child risk factors, were used to predict the probability of out-of-home placements at the close of this intervention program. Results revealed that neither low income nor receiving public assistance was predictive of having a child removed from the home. Higher levels of childcentered risk and parent-centered risk were the only consistent predictors of placement outcomes. Additional analyses revealed that family characteristics (e.g., history of psychiatric care, prior child placements, and involvement with the legal system) also were typical of families experiencing out-of-home placements. This study challenges the stereotype of low-income or welfare families being at greater risk of having a child removed from their home. Findings are discussed in the context of recent welfare reform initiatives and implications for future family policy research.