Anger and social appraisal: a "spicy" sex difference?

The central objective of this study was to investigate the role of social appraisal in sex differences in anger expression. Anger expression was inferred from the amount of hot sauce given to the person who induced anger. Participants were randomly assigned to a social condition, in which they expected to meet this person, or to a nonsocial condition, in which they had no such expectation. Men and women differed in their anger expressions, despite the fact that they did not differ in anger experience. Women expressed anger to a lesser extent than men, but only in the social condition. Social appraisal partly mediated the relation between sex and anger expression. The role of social appraisal in emotion and appraisal theory is discussed.     

Women remember more faces than men do

Women have been found to outperform men on face recognition tasks, specifically in the recognition of female faces. Men do not seem to exhibit a corresponding own-sex bias. To examine the generality and possible reasons for these patterns, 107 men and 112 women viewed faces of both children and adults of either Swedish or Bangladeshi origin, for later recognition. As expected, women were especially good at remembering female faces, but also outperformed men on male faces. Men did not show an own-sex bias. Thus, regardless of age and ethnicity of the faces, women performed at a higher level than men on both female and male faces, possibly reflecting enhanced interest in faces, and in particular, female faces.     

Higher face recognition ability in girls: Magnified by own-sex and own-ethnicity bias

Earlier studies on adults have shown sex differences in face recognition. Women tend to recognise more faces of other women than men do, whereas there are no sex differences with regard to male faces. In order to test the generality of earlier findings and to examine potential reasons for the observed pattern of sex differences, two groups of Swedish 9-year-old children (n = 101 and n = 96) viewed faces of either Swedish or Bangladeshi children and adults for later recognition. Results showed that girls outperformed boys in recognition of female faces, irrespective of ethnicity and age of the faces. Boys and girls recognised Swedish male faces to an equal extent, whereas girls recognised more Bangladeshi male faces than boys did. These results indicate that three factors explain the magnitude of sex differences in face recognition: an overall female superior face recognition ability, the correspondence between the sex of viewer and the gender of the face, and prior knowledge of the ethnicity of the face.     

Methylphenidate speeds evaluation processes of Attention Deficit Disorder adolescents during a continuous performance test

Fortysix Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) adolescents took a Continuous Performance Test (CPT) under placebo and methylphenidate (35.33 mg/day). The task required pressing one button for targets (p=133),and another button for nontargets. Subjects displayed a strong bias to make the more frequent negative response before completely evaluating stimuli. Consistent with this assumption, subjects responded faster (by an average of 87 ms) to nontargets than to targets. Methylphenidate increased accuracy and speeded reaction times (RTs) to targets. The drug also increased the amplitude of the P3b component of the eventrelated potential for nontargets and shortened the latency of P3b for both targets and nontargets. These results suggest increased capacity allocation to and faster evaluation of task stimuli. Finally, the stimulant lengthened relative motor processing time (RT-P3b latency) for nontargets, a finding implying that response processing was accomplished with the benefit of earlier completion of evaluation processes for these stimuli.Portions of these findings were reported at the meeting of the Society for Research in Child and Adolescent Psychopathology, Costa Mesa, California, January 24–26, 1990. This research was supported by NIMH grant MH38118 to the first author. We thank the late Helen Pollock and the University of Rochester's Strong Memorial Hospital Pharmacy Manufacturing Department for their help.     

Sense or sensibility? Social sharers’ evaluations of socio-affective vs. cognitive support in response to negative emotions

When in emotional distress, people often turn to others for social support. A general distinction has been made between two types of support that are differentially effective: Whereas socio-affective support temporarily alleviates emotional distress, cognitive support may contribute to better long-term recovery. In the current studies, we examine what type of support individuals seek. We first confirmed in a pilot study that these two types of support can be reliably distinguished. Then, in Study 1, we experimentally tested participants’ support evaluations in response to different emotional situations using a vignette methodology. Findings showed that individuals perceived any type of reaction that included socio-affective support as preferable. The evaluation of cognitive support, however, was dependent on the specific emotion: Unlike worry and regret, anger and sadness were characterised by a strong dislike for purely cognitive support. Using different materials, Study 2 replicated these findings. Taken together, the findings suggest that individuals evaluate different types of support in a way that is unlikely to benefit emotional recovery in the long run.     

Performance and Private Speech of Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder While Taking the Tower of Hanoi Test: Effects of Depth of Search,Diagnostic Subtype,and Methylphenidate

We administered the Tower of Hanoi to demographically comparable samples of control participants (n = 34) and children with the Combined (n = 22) and Inattentive subtypes (n = 19) of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Controls excelled over children with the Inattentive subtype, who outperformed patients with the Combined subtype. These results replicated findings of greater executive deficits in the Combined than in the Inattentive type of ADHD. Double-blind administration of methylphenidate improved task performance only for patients with the Inattentive subtype. In a drug-free Baseline session, children with both subtypes of ADHD made more private verbalizations than controls, particularly when failing puzzles. In later sessions, regardless of drug condition, the inattentive sample exhibited a smaller increase in self-regulatory utterances under failure. In contrast, the combined sample decreased self-regulatory verbalizations under failure only under methylphenidate. The results support some differences between the two subtypes of ADHD in executive functioning and in their response to stimulant therapy. Portions of these results were submitted as part of H. Theresa Chang's PhD dissertation (Chang, 2000) and Helena Kopecky's unpublished master's research, both conducted at the University of Rochester and supervised by Rafael Klorman.     

认知功能的性别差异

我们了概述认知功能的性别差异, 尤其是情节记忆功能的性别差异。已有的研究结果表明女性在言语生成、情节记忆、面孔识别任务中比男性存在明显的优势, 而男性的优势则表现在视空间任务中, 如视空间情节记忆任务。本文批判性地讨论了一个流行的假设: 类固醇激素影响认知功能的性别差异, 得出的结论是内源性睾丸激素或雌二醇均未显著影响认知功能的性别差异。