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This article presents abstracts of several studies related to sociology. Irving Crespi presented an analysis concerning the relations between anomie, alienation, and privatization. Joel Fuerst discussed the business of satisfying the unsatisfied demands of Europe. Daniel Lerner examined a shift from the earlier revolution of rising expectations, via a long sequence of unachieved ambitions and disappointed hopes, in the direction of what may be becoming a revolution of rising frustrations. Marjorie Fiske Lowenthal summarized several studies dealing with normal and abnormal adjustment in the aging process, based on panel studies of 1,200 mentally well and mentally impaired persons sixty years and older interviewed at three points in time. John T. Lanzetta reported data from a number of studies that explore direct and indirect procedures for measuring subjective uncertainty. Clark Leavitt presented the relation between a measure of information transmission called meaningfulness and day-after recall scores from field tests. Wallace H. Wallace presented methods to evaluate consumer behavior in the laboratory. Stanley Peterfreund examined a study in 1961 about the barriers to achieving a superior level of customer service.

This paper considers some sociological aspects of aging within contemporary society and is concerned most specifically with the process by which the aging male assumes and maintains appropriate statuses and roles in his social world. This study is based on two assumptions. First, a person, as a member of society, must progress during his life through a series of more or less sequentially compatible and harmonious social statuses. The second assumption which must be stated is that in a rapidly changing society, the role requirements of the status series are not static. This has been an attempt to approach the phenomenon of aging in contemporary society through theories of socialization, decision making, prestige age groups, and social roles. This research paper applies the concept of socialization to later life stages, and the exploration of the significance of self-other role-reversal of socializing agent and object (parent and child) in terms of necessary revisions in the oldster's self-definitions, concepts, and evaluations of his status.

The length-of-service composition of a firm's labor force is of considerable interest to the employer, not only as an index of labor force specific experience, but also as a good description of its age composition. The first part of the paper analyses the effect of independent changes in the hire rate, and in the quit rate, on the distribution of length-of-service. In particular, it is shown that a realistic reduction in the quit rate rotates the length-of-service distribution in favor of those with short seniority in the company. This effect, and the effect of changes in hire rates, are illustrated with particular length-of-service specific quit schedules and hire rates. Two examples of the recent literature on a firm's ability to retain its labor force are examined and found defective in their interpretation of the length-of-service distribution. The paper closes with some implications of the obtained results for the ageing of the employed labor force and a speculative proposition on the economic consequences for firms of a declining rate of expansion, summarized as the Necessity-to-Grow principle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

it has long been widely believed that personal religious commitment increases with age, partly because of anxiety over death. Past evidence has lent support to this notion. However, it is also believed that secularization has been going on in our society, hence these correlations may reflect social change rather than increases in piety associated with aging. This paper attempts to resolve these different interpretations and reports distinct evidence for both hypotheses depending on the aspect of religious commitment examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on recent developments related to rural sociology in the U.S. Homer L. Hitt resigned as head of the Departments of Sociology and Rural Sociology and as associate dean of the Graduate School to become dean of Louisiana State University at New Orleans, Louisiana. On April 28-29, 1958, the first annual "Louisiana Conference on the Aging" was held on the campus. This conference was sponsored jointly by the Department of Sociology and the Louisiana Commission on the Aging. Outstanding scholars in gerontology were brought to the campus for the two-day session. Evan T. Peterson has joined the staff of the Division of Sociology and Rural Life, Mississippi State University, as assistant sociologist and assistant professor of sociology and rural life. The twentieth annual meeting of the Ohio Valley Sociological Society was held on May 1-2, 1958, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Host for the meeting was the Department of Sociology, University of Cincinnati. The 1959 meeting of the Society will be held in Columbus, Ohio.

This paper examines the theoretical orientations by which social work views the aging process and reviews some current research and theory on personality processes in aging, which suggest a developmental framework for understanding the aging process and appropriate social work Intervention. The discussion encompasses three related areas: (1) the extension of the concept of developmental tasks into old age, (2) the view of personality processes in aging as partially intrinsic and not lust reactive, and (3) the multiple possibilities for successful aging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this paper is gerodontics, that branch of dental science concerned with the effects of aging on the occurrence, prevention and treatment of dental disease, and how dentists relate to this field. Factors affecting this problem, especially dental education are reviewed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The occurrence of hereditary premature senescence in a family of pure bred Belgian hares belonging to a rabbit-breeding colony organized for the investigation of constitutional problems, has been described. Representatives of 20 generations of the complex have been studied. The condition was a degeneration of variable degrees of severity and two principal forms were recognized, the acute and the chronic, the chronic being the more frequent. The chronic form has now been described in terms of the principal local or external manifestations; that is, degeneration of the coat and skin, lesions of the eyes and feet, and reproductive abnormalities, and of the general deterioration which in severe cases pursued a progressive course characterized by muscle wasting, fat reduction, emaciation, weakness, and death. The acute form will be described in the next paper (2).

This article presents various abstracts related to the field of human health and behavior. The first one is "Sociological Aspects of Aging," by Howard E. Jensen. The author stresses the disparate, though complimentary, biological and sociological problems of aging. The aging of an individual, as a sociocultural phenomenon, is defined not by physical deterioration or by time but by the value system of his society. The author points out that the simplest part of the sociological problem of aging is to ascertain the objectively determinable physical needs of the aged and to provide for them. The next abstract is "The Sentence Completion Test As a Predictor of Continuation in Psychotherapy," by E. Wesley Hiler. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the Michigan Sentence Completion Test as a predictor of a patient's prematurely terminating therapy. Another abstract is "Decision-Making in a Mental Hospital: Real, Perceived, and Ideal," by Mark Lefton, Simon Dinitz and Benjamin Pasamanick. This paper attempts to examine the decision-making process in a small, institute type of psychiatric hospital in terms of differences in real, perceived and ideal influence patterns of 53 mental health specialists.

Recent research findings and theoretical formulations are presented which suggest that reminiscing serves Important Intrapersonal functions in helping the elderly cope with the aging process. The author offers some new formulations on the interpersonal significance of reminiscing and discusses the diagnostic and treatment implications and applications that can aid the social worker in his work with the elderly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fifteen years after 270 persons 60 years of age and over were first studied in a multidisciplinary longitudinal study of aging, 83 panelists were available for a sixth observation. In an investigation of the relationship between self and physicians' assessment of general health status the following was demonstrated: (1) There is a persistent, positive congruence of the two types of health ratings. (2) Whenever there is incongruity the tendency is for the individual to overestimate his health. (3) There is a substantial stability of both types of ratings through time. (4) The self health rating tends to be a better predictor of future physicians' ratings than the reverse. (5) Self-ratings of health have utility as a measure of health in survey research when objective measures are not feasible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many recent studies of older people have been concerned with the validity of the theory of disengagement. Briefly stated, this theory assumes that disengagement is an inevitable process associated with aging "in which many of the relationships between a person and other members of society are severed, and those remaining are altered in quality." The theory further assumes that ego energy declines with age, and that as persons age they experience increased self-preoccupation and presumably decreased response to normative controls. Data from a nationwide sample study of persons aged 65 years or more permit comparisons of the attitudes of successive age cohorts from age 65 to 69 to age 85. The findings indicate that with advances in age, old people in the United States apparently do become increasingly preoccupied. On the other hand, there seems to be no evidence from the data for the decrease in response to normative controls also suggested by the theory. The data suggest that most old people harbor weak or non-existent age group identifications, and that most old people are optimists. A key question seems to be whether the present findings are associated with aging in a particular culture, the United States, or whether they have a more general application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the authors investigate the usefulness of a technique related to aging, namely that of the use of metaphors for the words, time and death. Aging can be looked at from several points of view. It can be defined as physiological deterioration, as status change, as an accumulation of experience, or as entrance into a discriminated-against minority. Each of these definitions has some use for specific purposes, but none of them is unique to aging; each definition makes aging equivalent to some other social process. There is one feature, however, which is unique to human aging. The human being has a definite notion of the normal life span and also, to a certain degree, has some picture of the course of human life. Aging means, to a great extent, coming to the end of one's life span and also entering into a period, which is the last period of human Life, both of which conditions have a definite meaning for individuals. Authors in this article investigate the applicability of this technique to relating a course of life, starting with age 45, a time, which is usually considered to be the climax of life.