Objective and subjective socioeconomic status and susceptibility to the common cold.

OBJECTIVE: We ask whether subjective socioeconomic status (SES) predicts who develops a common cold when exposed to a cold virus. DESIGN: 193 healthy men and women ages 21-55 years were assessed for subjective (perceived rank) and objective SES, cognitive, affective and social dispositions, and health practices. Subsequently, they were exposed by nasal drops to a rhinovirus or influenza virus and monitored in quarantine for objective signs of illness and self-reported symptoms. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Infection, signs and symptoms of the common cold, and clinical illness (infection and significant objective signs of illness). RESULTS: Increased subjective SES was associated with decreased risk for developing a cold for both viruses. This association was independent of objective SES and of cognitive, affective and social disposition that might provide alternative spurious (third factor) explanations for the association. Poorer sleep among those with lesser subjective SES may partly mediate the association between subjective SES and colds. CONCLUSIONS: Increased Subjective SES is associated with less susceptibility to upper respiratory infection, and this association is independent of objective SES, suggesting the importance of perceived relative rank to health.     

Infants' Visual Expectations and the Processing of Time

Visual events are defined by a number of dimensions—their location in space, content (color, shape, etc.), and time tags (onset, duration, etc.). The role of time in infants' performance in the Visual Expectation Paradigm (VExP) was studied to evaluate whether infants encode in their expectation representation the timing of events in addition to their spatial location and content. In Experiment 1, 3-month-olds produced more anticipations in a temporally predictable condition than in an unpredictable condition, suggesting that their expectations included a timing component. No evidence was found, however, that infants processed events' precise timing, but they instead appeared to process events' average temporal flow rate. This was supported in Experiment 2, in which infants trained with a shorter flow rate exhibited an increase in anticipations after being shifted to a longer flow rate, whereas those trained with a longer flow rate exhibited a decrease when shifted to a shorter flow rate. These findings indicate 3-month-olds encode in their expectation representation the average temporal flow rate rather than the precise timing of events. The findings also suggest that the VExP may be useful for exploring infants' ability to make time estimates that involve action.     

Some Factors Operating at the Moment of Resumption of Interrupted Tasks

The present investigation examined the relationship between college students' locus of control and attitudes toward energy conservation. It was predicted that the more external orientation would relate to the person's belief that energy resources were controlled by powerful others whose manipulation created energy shortage, and personal conservation would not help the situation. The present study also compared 1977 students' reactions to the Warren Commission Report to those of the sixties, to study changing attitudes among college students. Three hundred forty-seven male and female college students were administered the Rotter I-E scale and a questionnaire that included items dealing with energy and the Warren Commission Report. Analysis of variance supported the hypothesis: males were found to be more internal than females, and those who believed in energy shortage and conservation were more internal than those who believed otherwise. A similar analysis of the responses to the Warren Report showed no significant effects. Comparison of 1977 students to those of the sixties noted significantly more external orientation and increased attitudes of disbelief.     

The “post” phase of deviant careers: Reintegrating drug traffickers

Although social scientists have examined the entry, intermediate, and exit phases of deviant careers, few have analyzed the reintegration of former occupational deviants into the conventional society and legitimate economy. For this follow‐up study, 10 years after conducting a longitudinal ethnographic study of upper level drug dealers and smugglers, I returned to the field to see what had become of my former subjects. I describe the directions they have ventured and analyze the social and occupational effects of their years in the drug world on their subsequent lives. For drug dealers, whose careers follow a roughly patterned evolution through ascension, peak, and decline, reintegration serves as the postdealing phase of their deviant careers.     

Search asymmetry and eye movements in infants and adults

Search asymmetry is characterized by the detection of a feature-present target amidst feature-absent distractors being efficient and unaffected by the number of distractors, whereas detection of a feature-absent target amidst feature-present distractors is typically inefficient and affected by the number of distractors. Although studies have attempted to investigate this phenomenon with infants (e.g., Adler, Inslicht, Rovee-Collier, & Gerhardstein in Infant Behavioral Development, 21, 253–272, 1998; Colombo, Mitchell, Coldren, & Atwater in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 19, 98–109, 1990), due to methodological limitations, their findings have been unable to definitively establish the development of visual search mechanisms in infants. The present study assessed eye movements as a means to examine an asymmetry in responding to feature-present versus feature-absent targets in 3-month-olds, relative to adults. Saccade latencies to localize a target (or a distractor, as in the homogeneous conditions) were measured as infants and adults randomly viewed feature-present (R among Ps), feature-absent (P among Rs), and homogeneous (either all Rs or all Ps) arrays at set sizes of 1, 3, 5, and 8. Results indicated that neither infants’ nor adults’ saccade latencies to localize the target in the feature-present arrays were affected by increasing set sizes, suggesting that localization of the target was efficient. In contrast, saccade latencies to localize the target in the feature-absent arrays increased with increasing set sizes for both infants and adults, suggesting an inefficient localization. These findings indicate that infants exhibit an asymmetry consistent with that found with adults, providing support for functional bottom-up selective attention mechanisms in early infancy.     

The Effects of Mother Participation in Relationship Education on Coparenting,Parenting, and Child Social Competence: Modeling Spillover Effects for Low‐Income Minority Preschool Children

Although suggestions are that benefits of relationship and marriage education (RME) participation extend from the interparental relationship with parenting and child outcomes, few evaluation studies of RME test these assumptions and the relationship among changes in these areas. This quasi‐experimental study focuses on a parallel process growth model that tests a spillover hypothesis of program effects and finds, in a sample of low‐income minority mothers with a child attending a Head Start program, that increases in mother reports of coparenting agreement for RME participants predict decreases in their reports of punitive parenting behaviors. Although improvements in parenting behaviors did not predict increases in teacher reports of children's social competence, improvements in coparenting agreement were associated with increases in children's social competence over time. In addition, comparative tests of outcomes between parents in the program and parents in a comparison group reveal that RME program participants (n = 171) demonstrate significant improvements compared to nonparticipants (n = 143) on coparenting agreement, parenting practices, and teachers' reports of preschool children's social competence over a 1 year period. The findings are offered as a step forward in better understanding the experiences of low‐resource participants in RME. Implications for future research are discussed.