High levels of early emotionality (of either negative or positive valence) are hypothesized to be important precursors to early psychopathology, with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) a prime early target. The positive and negative affect domains are prime examples of Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) concepts that may enrich a multilevel mechanistic map of psychopathology risk. Utilizing both variable-centered and person-centered approaches, the current study examined whether levels and trajectories of infant negative and positive emotionality, considered either in isolation or together, predicted children's ADHD symptoms at 4 to 8 years of age. In variable-centered analyses, higher levels of infant negative affect (at as early as 3 months of age) were associated with childhood ADHD symptoms. Findings for positive affect failed to reach statistical threshold. Results from person-centered trajectory analyses suggest that additional information is gained by simultaneously considering the trajectories of positive and negative emotionality. Specifically, only when exhibiting moderate, stable or low levels of positive affect did negative affect and its trajectory relate to child ADHD symptoms. These findings add to a growing literature that suggests that infant negative emotionality is a promising early life marker of future ADHD risk and suggest secondarily that moderation by positive affectivity warrants more consideration.

In the early 1930s, with worldwide economies sinking deeper into what would become the Great Depression, upwards of 400,000 people crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. They were en route to what for most would be permanent relocation to Mexico.1 Though many traveled from established enclaves in the Midwest and Northeast, the vast majority came from the Southwest, where Mexican America was concentrated. Claims on both sides of the border to the contrary, the mass exodus could hardly be described as voluntary. In addition to the tens of thousands of immigrants subject to stepped-up deportation efforts and state-sponsored repatriations, countless individuals and families were intimidated, “scare-headed” (the term used by an influential local official to describe the Los Angeles campaign) or otherwise coerced into leaving lest they become burdens on the country's overtaxed relief rolls. Significant numbers of the departed were U.S. citizens, swept up in what the progressive journalist Carey McWilliams called “a determination to oust the Mexican.”2

In August 1969, President Richard M. Nixon approached the American people with a radical proposal to do what the federal government had never done before: guarantee a minimum level of income for every American family unable to provide one for itself. Eight years later, in August 1977, President Jimmy Carter announced a similar proposal for a federal guarantee of income, this time along with an expansion of public works jobs. Like Nixon before him, Carter soon abandoned his bill, and with it the quest for a federal income guarantee. Thus, inconclusively, ended a decade-long struggle to replace the nation's uncoordinated, incomplete collection of welfare programs with a single, comprehensive system of federal relief. This struggle took place against a backdrop of economic stagnation and demographic change that sent social spending soaring and made existing poor-relief arrangements seem increasingly obsolete. It also tapped into growing taxpayer resentment and a rising tide of popular animosity toward welfare. In part for these reasons, the quest for a guaranteed income marked the end of an era of liberal government activism against poverty, and ushered in a new era of poor-law reform. Welfare, not poverty, was the social problem of the 1970s. And the idea of a guaranteed income was the solution embraced by a new, more chastened and conservative, ideological center.

Second of Two Commentaries on the Following Publications

Dinesh D'Souza. The End of Racism: Principles for a Multiracial Society. New York: Free Press, 1995, 724 pages, ISBN: 0-684-8524-4, $30.00.

Stephan Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom. America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997, 704 pages, ISBN 0-684-84497-4, $32.50.

Many retrospective analyses of remote memory have demonstrated recency effects in that memory for events proximal to the time of testing is superior to memory for events from remote time periods. However, the rate at which information decays over time and the specific pattern of forgetting may vary depending upon the distinct attributes of stimuli used as indices of memory. Studies examining long-term forgetting of well rehearsed, conceptually integrated information underscore preservation of remote events, some of which are thought to be permanently stored in memory. A different pattern of forgetting emerges in relation to recall of discrete facts whereby recall declines according to a negatively accelerated decay curve. In the current study long-term retention of transient news events was examined. Results were examined in relation to the effects of age and sex. All age groups demonstrated recency effects in that events from the recent past were recalled better than remote events. Age did not exert a negative influence on recall of remote or recent events with the exception of younger participants who did not recall items predating their dates of birth. Older female participants were less adept at recalling very old events than their male counterparts. (JINS, 2000, 6, 44–51.)