The eating behavior of obese and nonobese women

Sixty-one obese, normal weight and thin women were observed for 30 minutes as they consumed a free-choice lunch in a quasi-naturalistic setting. Their behavior was unobtrusively quantified in terms of microbehavior (mouthfulls, chews, drinks and pauses) and of the macrobehavior (type and amount of food consumed and total active eating or drinking time). Information on subject and environmental variables are also reported. Observed behavior was analyzed as comparative group totals and as patterns of behavior over time. Comparison of group totals showed that: (a) there were no differences in types of food or number of calories consumed between the three groups, (b) no differences were found between the eating behavior of the normal weight and the obese and (c) the obese women spent less time actively eating, less time chewing and more time drinking than did the thinnest group. Pattern analysis revealed a decrease in all responses over time but showed no significant pattern difference between groups.     

Situational and personality determinants of a victim's identification with a tormentor

The effects of two situational (tormentor legitimacy and tormentor justification) and two personality (victim's belief in the just world and victim's Machiavellianism) factors on several reactions of a victim to his tormentor were explored. Greater conformity by victims to their tormentor's opinions occurred when the victims believed strongly in the just world and when the tormentor was well justified for his behavior; there was a greater conformity towards the tormentor in these conditions than towards a neutral nontormentor. The tormentor received less positive evaluations from the victim when he acquired his role illegitimately or when the victim was Machiavellian; when the tormentor acquired the role legitimately, he was liked no less than the nontormentor. The experimental variables did not affect behavioral imitation of the tormentor or the interpersonal distance maintained by the victim. The results failed to conform to any simple identification process. Several explanations for these results are explored and directions for additional research are discussed.     

An examination of encoding and retrieval processes in reading disabled children

A choice reaction time experiment was performed in order to assess the information processing characteristics of 12-year-old reading disabled children. Eight reading disabled children were compared to a sample of nondisabled readers. The stimuli consisted of consonants presented in three memory load conditions. A Stimulus Quality manipulation was included in the design in order to assess the encoding process. The results of the research indicated that the rate of encoding differed between disabled and nondisabled readers. In addition, support for the hypothesis that disabled and nondisabled readers do not differ in terms of central processes was also obtained.     

A Survey of Career Development in Corporations

The article describes a survey that examined career development programs in 118 Fortune 500 Corporations. It reports first the characteristics of the career development service providers. The services themselves can be divided into directly job-related career planning services, and those not so directly related, such as life planning and counseling services. The services offered by the corporations are compared for frequency among corporations and length of time offered. Based on the survey, Griffith draws conclusions concerning the extent of career development practiced within major corporations.     

Individual magnitude estimates for various distributions of signal intensity

Magnitude estimates of loudness were collected for several variations in the schedule of signal presentations. For wide ranges (about 50 dB centered at 65 dB), the conditions were: random selection of 21 signals equally spaced in decibels, constrained selection so that each signal was used equally often but successive signals were always close together, constrained selection in which successive signals were always far apart, and random selection from a nonuniform distribution that consisted of two groups of equally spaced signals separated by a gap of 24 dB. In addition, two other ranges, 10 and 30 dB, were run with random selection of 21 equally spaced signals. The measures examined were: mean magnitude estimate as a function of signal intensity, coefficient of variation of the ratio of successive responses as a function of signal separation, and the correlation of the logarithm of successive responses as a function of signal separation. The basic question was whether all of the different schedules of signal presentation produce data that can be viewed as selections from appropriate regions of the 50-dB random signal selection data. To a degree, this was found, but with systematic exceptions.     

How do highly proficient bilinguals control their lexicalization process? Inhibitory and language-specific selection mechanisms are both functional

The authors report 4 experiments exploring the language-switching performance of highly proficient bilinguals in a picture-naming task. In Experiment 1, they tested the impact of language similarity and age of 2nd language acquisition on the language-switching performance of highly proficient bilinguals. Experiments 2, 3, and 4 assessed the performance of highly proficient bilinguals in language-switching contexts involving (a) the 2nd language (L2) and the L3 of the bilinguals, (b) the L3 and the L4, and (c) the L1 and a recently learned new language. Highly proficient bilinguals showed symmetrical switching costs regardless of the age at which the L2 was learned and of the similarities of the 2 languages and asymmetrical switching costs when 1 of the languages involved in the switching task was very weak (an L4 or a recently learned language). The theoretical implications of these results for the attentional mechanisms used by highly proficient bilinguals to control their lexicalization process are discussed.     

Written spelling to dictation: Sound-to-spelling regularity affects both writing latencies and durations

The authors examined the effect of sound-to-spelling regularity on written spelling latencies and writing durations in a dictation task in which participants had to write each target word 3 times in succession. The authors found that irregular words (i.e., those containing low-probability phoneme-to-grapheme mappings) were slower both to initially produce and to execute in writing than were regular words. The regularity effect was found both when participants could and could not see their writing (Experiments 1 and 2) and was larger for low- than for high-frequency words (Experiment 3). These results suggest that central processing of the conflict generated by lexically specific and assembled spelling information for irregular words is not entirely resolved when the more peripheral processes controlling handwriting begin.     

Intimate partner aggression reporting concordance and correlates of agreement among men with alcohol use disorders and their female partners

This study examined relationship aggression reporting concordance among 303 men with alcohol use disorders and their female partners enrolled in couples-based alcohol abuse treatment. Agreement for physical and psychological aggression was generally consistent with, or higher than, concordance rates reported among other populations. Men's antisocial personality disorder characteristics were the strongest predictor of higher concordance for male- and female-perpetrated aggression. Higher alcohol problem severity, poorer relationship adjustment, and higher psychopathic personality features were associated with better concordance in some analyses. Women reported experiencing more physical aggression than men reported perpetrating, and women reported perpetrating more psychological aggression than men reported experiencing. Findings highlight the importance of obtaining aggression reports from both partners and the need for research investigating methods for improving concordance.