The interrelation between the octupole phonon and the low-lying
proton-neutron mixed-symmetry quadrupole phonon in near-spherical nuclei is
investigated. The one-phonon states decay by collective E3 and E2 transitions
to the ground state and by relatively strong E1 and M1 transitions to the
isoscalar 2+ state. We apply the proton-neutron version of the Interacting
Boson Model including quadrupole and octupole bosons (sdf-IBM-2). Two F-spin
symmetric dynamical symmetry limits of the model, namely the vibrational and
the \gamma-unstable ones, are considered. We derive analytical formulae for
excitation energies as well as B(E1), B(M1), B(E2) and B(E3) values for a
number of transitions between low-lying states.Comment: 25 pages, 3 figures, LaTeX, epsfig. Nucl. Phys. A (in press
