Autobiographical narratives of deaf and hearing adults: an examination of narrative coherence and the use of internal states

To examine the impact of early linguistic experiences on later verbal report of autobiographical memory, 13 hearing adults and 13 deaf adults born to hearing parents described events that occurred before and after the age of 10 years. The contextual, temporal, and thematic coherence of the narratives was rated. The use of emotional, perceptual, mental, and physiological states was also recorded. There were differences in the coherence of the narratives and use of internal states according to the age at which the events occurred. There were no group differences in coherence, but hearing adults provided longer narratives than deaf adults. When narrative length was controlled, deaf adults included more emotional states than hearing adults. Results suggest that early unavailability of language does not impact the coherence of adults' narratives, although certain features of linguistic expression specific to ASL may result in greater saturation of emotional states references in autobiographical narratives of deaf adults.     

From victimhood to empowerment: Muslim women's narratives in the Shari'a courts of Jerusalem and Taibe

This study features the voices of women who sued their husbands in the Shari'a courts, revealing the empowerment that resulted from learning their legal rights. The stories of some two hundred Palestinian Muslim women who appealed to the Shari'a courts in Jerusalem and Taibe during the years 2000–2003 formed the basis of this study. The women came to the courts to claim material support (nafaqa) from their husbands and to demand child support (hadane). Four major reasons why these women sued their husbands in court emerged from their stories, revealing familial, social, economic and even political circumstances that impinged on their lives.     

Credibility judgments of narratives: language, plausibility, and absorption

Two experiments were conducted in order to find out whether textual features of narratives differentially affect credibility judgments made by judges having different levels of absorption (a disposition associated with rich visual imagination). Participants in both experiments were exposed to a textual narrative and requested to judge whether the narrator actually experienced the event he described in his story. In Experiment 1, the narrative varied in terms of language (literal, figurative) and plausibility (ordinary, anomalous). In Experiment 2, the narrative varied in terms of language only. The participants' perceptions of the plausibility of the story described and the extent to which they were absorbed in reading were measured. The data from both experiments together suggest that the groups applied entirely different criteria in credibility judgments. For high-absorption individuals, their credibility judgment depends on the degree to which the text can be assimilated into their own vivid imagination, whereas for low-absorption individuals it depends mainly on plausibility. That is, high-absorption individuals applied an experiential mental set while judging the credibility of the narrator, whereas low-absorption individuals applied an instrumental mental set. Possible cognitive mechanisms and implications for credibility judgments are discussed.     

Culture, memory, and the self: An analysis of the personal and collective self in long-term memory

We used a memory paradigm to test whether the nature of representations of the self within long-term memory differed as a function of cultural background. In Western samples words encoded in relation to the self are typically remembered better, and Euro-Canadian participants here showed this standard self-reference effect. However, Asian-Canadian participants were slower to recognize personal traits (as opposed to collective traits) when these traits had been encoded in reference to the self, suggesting a more elaborate representation of the collective self than the personal self in long-term memory. Further, memory was actually inhibited for Asian-Canadians when personal traits were encoded in reference to the self (vs. encoded with other referents). Differences in long-term memory trace strength for self-related data may emerge even as differences in the working self do not, and implications of this difference are discussed.     

Setting the bar: divergent sociocultural norms for women's and men's ideal appearance in real-world contexts

Research suggests that exposure to sociocultural norms for idealized appearance can reduce both women's and men's body satisfaction. Despite comparable effects for both genders in the lab, in the “real-world” women's body satisfaction is chronically lower than men's. Real-world gender differences may arise from discrepancies in men's and women's everyday exposure to norms. Across eight studies using a variety of content analysis, survey, and experimental methods, we examine differences in sociocultural norms for ideal appearance pertaining to women and men in “daily life” contexts. We demonstrate that appearance norms encountered by women in daily life are more rigid, homogenous and pervasive than those for men, and that more messages implying the attainability of the ideal appearance are directed at women. Finally, experimental results show that homogeneous, rigid norms (like those typically encountered by women) are more harmful to body image than heterogeneous, flexible norms (like those typically encountered by men).     

Effects of models and demonstrations of personal narratives on the use of lexical ties by writers with mental retardation

A single subject reversal design was used to investigate the effects of two methods for teaching writing to eight adolescents with mild or moderate mental retardation during a weekly process writing workshop. During each workshop, each student wrote a personal narrative while the teacher circulated among the group and provided positive verbal feedback and spelled words on request. Students' texts were later typed with corrected spelling and punctuation and returned to them with verbal praise before the next writing workshop. During the first experimental condition, the subjects listened to an exemplar text selected by the teacher. In the second phase, the teacher read a narrative she had written as the exemplar text. During the third experimental condition, the teacher orally self-instructed herself through steps in writing a narrative. The subjects' texts were analyzed for number of words written and number and type of lexical ties used to produce cohesion between sentences in a text. The model narrative produced the best gains in the number of words written by the poorer readers, while the demonstration improved the cohesiveness of their texts. The better readers and writers wrote more cohesively during the model narrative and produced longer text during the demonstration condition.     

Clinically abusive relationships in an unselected birth cohort: men's and women's participation and developmental antecedents

In an unselected birth cohort (N=980, age 24-26 years), individuals in abusive relationships causing injury and/or official intervention (9% prevalence) were compared with participants reporting physical abuse without clinical consequences and with control participants who reported no abuse, on current characteristics and prospective developmental risks. In nonclinically abusive relationships, perpetrators were primarily women. In clinically abusive relationships, men and women used physical abuse, although more women needed medical treatment for injury. Women in clinically abusive relationships had childhood family adversity, adolescent conduct problems, and aggressive personality; men had disinhibitory psychopathology since childhood and extensive personality deviance. These findings counter the hibitory assumption that if clinical abuse was ascertained in epidemiological samples, it would be primarily man-to-woman, explained by patriarchy rather than psychopathology.     

The effect of women's suggestive clothing on men's behavior and judgment: a field study

Numerous studies have shown that men overestimate the sexual intent of women based on their clothing style; however, this hypothesis has not been assessed empirically in a natural setting. This small field study measured the time it took for men to approach two female confederates sitting in a tavern, one wearing suggestive clothes and one wearing more conservative clothes. The behavior of 108 men was observed over 54 periods on 16 different nights in two different taverns. The time it took for the men to approach after initial eye contact was significantly shorter in the suggestive clothing condition. The men were also asked by male confederates to rate the likelihood of having a date with the women, and having sex on the first date. The men rated their chances to have a date and to have sex significantly higher in the suggestive clothing condition. Results are discussed with respect to men's possible misinterpretation that women's clothing indicates sexual interest, and the risks associated with the misinterpretation.     

Making gender matter: the role of gender-based expectancies and gender identification on women's and men's math performance in Sweden

It is well established that an emphasis on gender differences may have a negative effect on women's math performance in USA, Germany and the Netherlands. It has further been found that an individual's identification with the stereotyped group may moderate effects of negative stereotypes. The present study investigated how gender-based expectancies affected the math performance of women and men in Sweden, a nation with a smaller gender gap than in other countries, and a strong cultural emphasis on gender equality. Participants, 112 female and 74 male undergraduate math students from Swedish universities, completed a difficult math test in which their gender was either linked to their test performance or not. Men performed better than women when gender was made relevant among participants who did not see their gender as an important aspect of their identity, while participants high in gender identification were unaffected by gender identity relevance. Moreover, the gender relevance manipulation affected men's performance more than women's. The results deviate from findings on US samples, indicating that the role of group identification as a moderator of stereotype-based expectancy effects is complex, and that factors in the cultural context may interact with individual differences in identification to determine the impact of negative stereotypes.     

Representation of inflected nouns in the internal lexicon

The lexical representation of Serbo-Croatian nouns was investigated in a lexical decision task. Because Serbo-Croatian nouns are declined, a noun may appear in one of several grammatical cases distinguished by the inflectional morpheme affixed to the base form. The grammatical cases occur with different frequencies, although some are visually and phonetically identical. When the frequencies of identical forms are compounded, the ordering of frequencies is not the same for masculine and feminine genders. These two genders are distinguished further by the fact that the base form for masculine nouns is an actual grammatical case, the nominative singular, whereas the base form for feminine nouns is an abstraction in that it cannot stand alone as an independent word. Exploiting these characteristics of the Serbo-Croatian language, we contrasted three views of how a noun is represented: (1) the independent-entries hypothesis, which assumes an independent representation for each grammatical case, reflecting its frequency of occurrence; (2) the derivational hypothesis, which assumes that only the base morpheme is stored, with the individual cases derived from separately stored inflectional morphemes and rules for combination; and (3) the satellite-entries hypothesis, which assumes that all cases are individually represented, with the nominative singular functioning as the nucleus and the embodiment of the noun’s frequency and around which the other cases cluster uniformly. The evidence strongly favors the satellite-entries hypothesis.     

The cataphoric use of the indefinite this in spoken narratives

Are concepts that were introduced with the unstressed, indefinite articlethis, as opposed to the indefinitea/an, more accessible from listeners’ mental representations? Subjects heard and then verbally continued each of a series of informal narratives. The last clause of each narrative introduced a new noun phrase that began with either the indefinitethis or the indefinitea/an (e.g.,this egg oran egg). When the concepts were introduced with the indefinitethis, the subjects referred to them more frequently, often within the first clauses that they produced, and typically via pronouns. In contrast, when the concepts were introduced witha/an, the subjects referred to them less frequently and typically via full noun phrases. Thus, concepts introduced with the indefinitethis were more accessible; therefore, the indefinitethis appears to operate cataphorically to improve referential access.     

Distortions and deceptions in self presentation: Effects of protracted litigation in personal injury cases

The goal of diagnostic examinations in personal injury lawsuits is to ascertain genuineness and substantiality of claimed impairments so that ‘damages’ can be accurately defined. These examinations require consideration of the potential role of malingering and other deceptive response styles in determining the nature and extent of impairment. Involvement in litigation renders plaintiffs susceptible to stressors and to influences that may lead to increased impairment, biased reportage, and retarded recovery. Underlying personality patterns play a critical role in defining and shaping reactions to trauma, to the stress of litigation, and to treatment interventions. Protracted litigation creates conditions that promote mnemonic and attitudinal distortions, as well as conscious and unconscious motivations for secondary gain. The presence of non-legally relevant factors provides the opportunity for proportionate attribution of causation. An assessment model is proposed for analyzing elements of causation.     

A comparison of adult women's and men's ascriptions of negative traits to the same and opposite sex

College students (N=135), ranging from 19 to 55 years of age, were studied to determine their sex stereotypes. Results from the present study indicated that adult males were significantly more negative than adult females in their evaluations of both sexes. One possible explanation that may be offered to account for these findings is that current emphasis of female rights may be causing negativistic reactions on the part of males toward both sex groups.     

Language and the use of language

Antony Flew's ‘A Strong Programme for the Sociology of Belief (Inquiry 25 {1982], 365–78) critically assesses the strong programme in the sociology of knowledge defended in David Bloor's Knowledge and Social Imagery. I argue that Flew's rejection of the epistemological relativism evident in Bloor's work begs the question against the relativist and ignores Bloor's focus on the social relativity of mathematical knowledge. Bloor attempts to establish such relativity via a sociological analysis of Frege's theory of number. But this analysis only succeeds if the rejection of an explanatory theory entails that there are reasonable grounds for the rejection of the set of propositions which that theory was intended to explain. I argue against such an entailment, and thus against Bloor's attempt to relativize mathematical knowledge.     

The self in self-handicapping: Differential effects of public and private internal audiences

People self-handicap to satisfy both self-presentational and self-protective motives. The cognitive salience of a public or private audience, as well as the objective public or private situation, determines when each motive dominates. To show this, we manipulated the objective situation separately from the cognitive salience of public and private internal audiences. We hypothesized that in the objectively public situation, people would self-handicap more when focused on a public audience than when focused on a private audience; whereas in the objectively private situation, the reverse would occur. Two studies using different manipulations of audience salience supported the hypothesis. For self-presentational motives to foster self-handicapping, then, the person must not only be in public but must be cognitively focused on the public audience; and for self-protective motives to foster self-handicapping, the person must both be in private and cognitively focused on the private audience.