Sixty women, aged 30, 35, 40, and 45, participated in a retrospective interview concerning psychosocial changes in their adult lives. Subjects' responses provided self-report data concerning specific psychosocial changes, and judges who read the interview protocols provided independent ratings of major psychosocial transitions. The distributions of self-reported changes and rated transitions across both chronological age and family cycle phases were examined statistically. Rated transitions were found to be reliably related to chronological age but not to family cycle phase. Specifically, 78% of the subjects manifested a major transition commencing between ages 27 and 30. That transition was characterized initially by personal disruption, followed by reassessment and finally by increased psychological well-being. Both chronological age and family cycle phase were reliably related to a variety of self-reported changes. The implications for conceptions of adult developmental changes are discussed.

This symposium focuses on understanding developmental experiences in the adult lives of women, including the nature of psychosocial changes and their relation to chronological age, family-cycle phase, and historical time. Harris, Reinke, and Ellicott report on a research program oriented to hypothesis testing. They interviewed 124 middle-class women randomly selected from seven age-groups (30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, and 60) about their life experiences retrospectively. Noteworthy findings included major transitions associated with ages 27–30 and with the preschool, launching, and postparental phases of the family cycle. In particular, the family cycle, which implies a context of relationships and social roles, illuminated many psychosocial regularities across women’s lives. In her discussion, Hancock describes some theory-generating research which suggests that women’s developmental crises, precipitated by ruptures in relationships, challenge assumptions about relationships and impel women toward active self-emergence.

BackgroundThe societal costs of problematic class A drug use in England and Wales exceed £15B; drug-related crime accounts for almost 90% of costs. Diversion plus treatment and/or aftercare programmes may reduce drug-related crime and costs.ObjectivesTo assess the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of diversion and aftercare for class A drug-using offenders, compared with no diversion.PopulationAdult class A drug-using offenders diverted to treatment or an aftercare programme for their drug use.InterventionsProgrammes to identify and divert problematic drug users to treatment (voluntary, court mandated or monitored services) at any point within the criminal justice system (CJS). Aftercare follows diversion and treatment, excluding care following prison or non-diversionary drug treatment.Data sourcesThirty-three electronic databases and government online resources were searched for studies published between January 1985 and January 2012, including MEDLINE, PsycINFO and ISI Web of Science. Bibliographies of identified studies were screened. The UK Drug Data Warehouse, the UK Drug Treatment Outcomes Research Study and published statistics and reports provided data for the economic evaluation.MethodsIncluded studies evaluated diversion in adult class A drug-using offenders, in contact with the CJS. The main outcomes were drug use and offending behaviour, and these were pooled using meta-analysis. The economic review included full economic evaluations for adult opiate and/or crack, or powder, cocaine users. An economic decision analytic model, estimated incremental costs per unit of outcome gained by diversion and aftercare, over a 12-month time horizon. The perspectives included the CJS, NHS, social care providers and offenders. Probabilistic sensitivity analysis and one-way sensitivity analysis explored variance in parameter estimates, longer time horizons and structural uncertainty.ResultsSixteen studies met the effectiveness review inclusion criteria, characterised by poor methodological quality, with modest sample sizes, high attrition rates, retrospective data collection, limited follow-up, no random allocation and publication bias. Most study samples comprised US methamphetamine users. Limited meta-analysis was possible, indicating a potential small impact of diversion interventions on reducing drug use [odds ratio (OR) 1.68, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.12 to 2.53 for reduced primary drug use, and OR 2.60, 95% CI 1.70 to 3.98 for reduced use of other drugs]. The cost-effectiveness review did not identify any relevant studies. The economic evaluation indicated high uncertainty because of variance in data estimates and limitations in the model design. The primary analysis was unclear whether or not diversion was cost-effective. The sensitivity analyses indicated some scenarios where diversion may be cost-effective.LimitationsNearly all participants (99.6%) in the effectiveness review were American (Californian) methamphetamine users, limiting transfer of conclusions to the UK. Data and methodological limitations mean it is unclear whether or not diversion is effective or cost-effective.ConclusionsHigh-quality evidence for the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of diversion schemes is sparse and does not relate to the UK. Importantly this research identified a range of methodological limitations in existing evidence. These highlight the need for research to conceptualise, define and develop models of diversion programmes and identify a core outcome set. A programme of feasibility, pilot and definitive trials, combined with process evaluation and qualitative research is recommended to assess the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of diversionary interventions in class A drug-using offenders.Funding detailsThe National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment programme.

Sixty-four middle-class women from four cohorts aged 45, 50, 55, and 60 participated in a retrospective interview concerning psychosocial changes in their adult lives. Their responses provided self-report data relating to specific psychosocial changes, and judges who read the interview protocols provided independent ratings of major psychosocial transitions. The results indicated that major psychosocial transitions were more likely to be associated with phases of the family cycle than with chronological age; within the family cycle, transitions were more likely to occur during the preschool (28% of the women), launching (42% of the women), and postparental (33% of the women) phases than during the no children, school-age, or adolescent phases; transitions associated with the preschool and launching phases were characterized by dissatisfaction, personal disruption, marital unhappiness, and decreased personal development, whereas transitions associated with the postparental phase were characterized by personal mellowing and improved marital relations; and finally, numerous self-reported psychosocial changes were associated with family cycle phase, and a small number of changes was associated with chronological age.

A serial list learning paradigm was employed to investigate the role of postcategorical information in producing the stimulus suffix effect (SSE). Serial recall performance was mea· sured for eight-item word lists under four experimental conditions: a control condition (C), where white noise was used as a stimulus suffix; the word-suffix (WS) condition, where list items and suffix were semantically unrelated; the target-suffix condition (TS), in which the final list item and the suffix were from the same category; and the category-suffix condition, in which the final three list elements and the suffix were from the same category. All three verbal suffix conditions produced the SSE, but its magnitUde was reduced when the suffix was semantically related to the last list element. Several pre-and postcategorical explanations of the SSE are evaluated in light of the results.In serial recall tasks, if list items are presented auditorially, the final items in the list are better recalled than if the list is presented visually. This advantage of auditory presentation has been labeled the modality effect, and has been attributed to the contribution of an additional auditory memory store (Crowder & Morton, 1969). The auditory advantage disappears, however, if the recall list is followed by an extra item, even when recall of that item is not required. This decrement in recall performance, called the "stimulus suffix effect" (SSE), can be attributed to the negative effect of the irrelevant item on the information in the auditory store that would otherwise produce the modality effect.One recent version of the auditory store explanation assumes that the additional memory component responsible for the advantage of auditory presentation is organized precategorically (Crowder, 1978). In this context, categorical refers to the point in information processing at which contact is first made between new input and learned linguistic categories. The precategorical model proposes that the auditory memory of this echoic component is functionally uncorrelated with the whole semantic or categorical memory system, and resides in a separate store called precategorical acoustic storage (PAS) (Crowder & Morton, 1969). Stimulus information in the PAS is carried as raw auditory sensory energy and is subject to only primitive processing. For categorization to occur, a further stage of information processing that compares the auditory memory in PAS with the learned linguistic information is necessary. According to the precategorical model, the SSE is the result of displacement of the precategorical acoustic traces by the incoming information at a first stage of processing.A second hypothesis concerning the manner of Copyright © 1979 Psychonomic Society, Inc. 35 organization in this echoic component assumes that information storage is postcategorical. The postcategorical model, discussed by Salter and Colley (I 977), proposes that simultaneous to its storage at a sensory level, auditory information is registered against its permanent categorical ...