Four areas in Detroit were selected by factor analysis of all census tracts as varying widely in socio-ecological stressor conditions. High Stress areas were marked by rates of low socio-economic status, high crime, high density, high residential mobility, and high rates of marital breakup; Low Stress areas showed the converse conditions. All areas were racially segregated. The sample in each area provided about 125 married males, living with spouse, aged 25-60, with relatives in the city. Blood pressure levels were highest among Black High Stress males and showed no difference among Black Low Stress and White areas. Suppressed Hostility (keeping anger in when attacked and feeling guilt if one's anger is displayed when attacked) was related to high blood pressure levels and percent hypertensive for Black High Stress and White Low Stress males; Black Low Stress men with high pressures were associated with anger in but denying guilt. White High Stress high readings were most associated with guilt after anger. For Blacks, skin color was related positively to blood pressure and High Stress males had darker skin color than Black middle class males. Black High Stress men with dark skin color and suppressed hostility had the highest average blood pressure of all four race-area groups.

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Blood pressures (BPs) of 755 Detroit, Michigan, area females have been analyzed in relation to parity, race and residential stress. Mean BP values have been adjusted by standard methods of covariance analysis for differing effects of age and body size among various groups being compared. Adjusted systolic and diastolic BPs are found to be significantly different for black and white females. A residential stress effect is also seen for systolic BP among white females. However, none of the regression relationships between BP and parity is found to be significant in the race-stress groups included in the study. Thus, neither the consideration of race and stress nor adjustments for age and body size appear to add new information to the complex subject of BP as it relates to childbearing.

This study examined blood pressure levels of married women in relation to such work‐related variables as work load, satisfaction with work, reported strain, and evaluated performance. The major findings were: (a) Differences in work load were unrelated to blood pressure levels. However, currently unemployed working women had lower levels, (b) Housewives reporting tension about housework and being critical of own performance had higher blood pressure, (c) Working wives with a strong commitment to the work role had higher blood pressure levels, as did those women who were relatively low on indicators of job achievement.

A series of experiments was carried out as part of a continuing program of research based on a conceptual model of the mind. The specific function under empirical scrutiny was a cognitive feedback loop presumed to sustain network activity autonomously for a period of time until the loop gradually dies down. This reverberatory process was explored intensively in a female subject by means of a salience technique consisting of the oral presentation of a string of six consonants, to which she merely listened, and her subsequent report of whatever consonants spontaneously “popped into mind.” The interval between stimulus presentation and her report contained various filler activities, such as counting beats of a metronome or looking at colored travel slides, and varied in duration. The key experimental intervention was a brief excursion into deep hypnosis at some point during the interval, which served to disrupt cognitive processing and permitted inferences to be drawn concerning reverberation. The following principles were derived from the data:. 1. Reverberation consists of autonomous reactivation of a network by the signal transmitted from that network at the time of its original activation. 2. Reverberation takes place independently of conscious awareness. 3. The reverberating signal is strongest at the time of network activation and gradually decreases until it dissipates. 4. Barring disruption, a single series of reverberations from a transient network apparently can last for hours. 5. Reverberation acts to retard, in proportion to its own intensity, the intrinsic rate of decay in network strength. 6. The course of reverberation is a direct function of current amplification level in the system. 7. For a given level of amplification, strength of the reverberating signal is an inverse function of the strength of competing signals in process.

The findings on cognitive reverberation reported in a previous issue of this journal were replicated and extended. Two male undergraduates, trained in hypnotic methods, participated as subjects in a series of studies employing the same salience technique, in which S first listens to a string of consonants, next engages in a filler activity, and then tells whatever consonants pop into mind. The data again yielded evidence for the existence of an autonomous reverberation process since disruptive effects occurred with the introduction, during the filler interval, of five‐second pauses under hypnosis or a posthypnotic state of low mental arousal. In addition to being altered in either direction by changes in arousal level, the process was once more shown to be vulnerable to competition by the filler task itself. Duration of reverberatory action was found to vary among individuals from less than one minute up to several hours. The replicated observation of no further reduction in salience from an increase in number or length of disruptive pauses supported the two‐process theory of residual network strength plus reverberation expounded earlier. Finally, the role of cognitive arousal was extended to a more complex task involving the differential manipulation of salience in two sets of stimuli presented on the same trial.

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