Reproductive issues in adults with cystic fibrosis: Implications for genetic counseling

This article reviews reproductive issues faced by the growing number of individuals with cystic fibrosis (CF) who reach adulthood. Approximately 97–98% of males with CF are infertile and they may have an increased risk for genitourinary anomalies. Females with CF may experience delayed puberty, irregular menstrual cycles, and decreased fertility. Women with CF who have good clinical scores, good nutritional status, and normal lung volumes with mild to moderate airway obstruction, have a better chance for successful pregnancies. The role of the genetic counselor in counseling adults with CF is discussed and resources for CF adults are provided.     

Response scales and sequential effects in judgment

There are persistent sequential effects in judgment tasks. For example, responses tend to be similar to the value of the just-prior stimulus. This is called assimilation. Also, if feedback is or is not provided after each trial, then responses contrast with or assimilate to, respectively, each of several earlier stimuli in the sequence. These context effects have been shown to be independent of stimulus modality and of the range of stimulus values within a modality. By providing different sets of feedback in order to affect the responses used, this article shows that these sequential effects in judgment data are also independent of the form and range of the scale of responses used to label stimuli.     

Studies of mood and humor appreciation

A total of 189 students in two studies rated jokes on funniness and several other scales after rating their own mood on the Nowlis-Green Mood Adjective Check List. Subjects in Experiment 1 gave a second and third set of mood ratings after their joke-funniness ratings. Three mood factors—surgency, elation, and vigor—reliably predicted joke appreciation in both studies. More tentative evidence linked humor appreciation to concentration, social affection, excitement, freedom, and (lack of) fatigue, but humor appeared independent of aggression, anxiety, tension, and inhibition. Relationships among joke-scale ratings were highly similar for subjects reporting relatively positive moods and those reporting more negative moods. Results were discussed with reference to several humor theories.The authors would like to thank Carol Pierce, Marguerite Ponder, and Ron Fox for their help with this research.     

Sex roles and nonverbal communication skills

As a step toward understanding sex differences in nonverbal decoding and encoding abilities, the hypothesis that sex-role variables are related to these communication abilities was tested. An analysis was undertaken of 11 studies on the relationship of encoding and decoding abilities to sex roles, including several masculinity and femininity scales, a measure of attitudes toward women, and a questionnaire on sex roles in the home. Although the relationships of the masculinity and femininity measures to decoding were generally weak, more masculine people tended to be better decoders. Patterns also emerged showing that the magnitude of the correlations varied with age group, sex, sex-role scale, and channel of communication. In addition, among women, those who were more liberated according to several indices were better decoders, at least of a woman stimulus person. Differences between the sexes in encoding and decoding abilities were unaffected by partialling out the masculinity and femininity measures. A hypothesis concerning the adaptive uses of nonverbal sensitivity is advanced, as well as a hypothesis concerning overall sex differences in nonverbal communication skills.Part of this research was conducted while the authors held National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowships, and was supported by a National Science Foundation Dissertation Award to the first author and by a grant from the Biomedical Research Support Program, National Institutes of Health, to The Johns Hopkins University. This paper could not have been prepared without the generosity of several colleagues and students who made their unpublished results available. These people are (alphabetically): Bella M. DePaulo, Karen I. Fischer, Judith Harackiewicz, Leonard A. Kusnitz, Carol J. Mills, James G. Simmons, Ann L. Weber, and Miron Zuckerman. In addition, Bert F. Green, Jr., Bella M. DePaulo, and Marylee C. Taylor provided many appreciated suggestions and criticisms on an earlier draft.     

Time Travel and Self-Consistency: Implications for Determinism and the Human Condition

In this paper I examine a recent scientific claim that travel into the past, so long as a 'consistent' trajectory is followed, may be possible. I then argue that the possibility of such travel has unexpected implications for the free will-determinism debate. In particular, human existence may be, at best, determinate but uncaused.     

Women and Weight: Gendered Messages on Magazine Covers

In this content analysis, the covers of 21popular women's and men's magazines were examined forgendered messages related to bodily appearance. Magazinecovers were divided according to gender of readers and each cover was reviewed using a checklistdesigned to analyze visual images and text as well asthe placement of each on the covers. Analyses showedthat 78% of the covers of the women's magazinescontained a message regarding bodily appearance, whereasnone of the covers of the men's magazines did so.Twenty-five percent of the women's magazine coverscontained conflicting messages regarding weightloss and dietary habits.In addition, the positioning ofweight-related messages on the covers often implied thatlosing weight may lead to a better life. Men's magazinesfocus on providing entertainment and expanding knowledge, hobbies, and activities; women'smagazines continue to focus on improving one's life bychanging one's appearance.     

Distortions in Eyewitnesses' Recollections: Can the Postidentification-Feedback Effect Be Moderated?

Giving eyewitnesses confirming feedback after they make a lineup identification (e.g., "Good. You identified the actual suspect.") inflates not only their recollections of how confident they were at the time of the identification, but also other testimony-relevant judgments, such as how good their view was, how much attention they paid during witnessing, and how quickly they identified the suspect. We replicated this postidentification-feedback effect with eyewitnesses who had made false identifications (N = 156), adding critical conditions in which after the identification but prior to the feedback, some eyewitnesses were given instructions to privately think about their confidence, their view, and other matters. Other eyewitnesses were given the same thought instructions subsequent to the feedback manipulation. Prior thought served to mitigate the effects of feedback, but subsequent thought did not. In addition, even without feedback, privately thinking about confidence had some confidence-inflating properties of its own.     

Regular versus randomized sentences, nouns versus prepositions, and assimilation in salience.

The authors' research supports an alternative to the theory that organization improves retention by producing fewer elements for processing. College students' recall of randomized words was better for nouns than for prepositions. Regular sentences improved recall, but this improvement was less for nouns than for prepositions. According to the alternative theory, a part assimilates (increases in similarity) to its high-in-salience organization-produced group, thus increases in salience, and hence is retained better. The high-in-salience group for a regular sentence should be the sentence's meaning. Because the nouns were recalled better, they were more similar in salience to the regular sentences' meanings than were the prepositions. Assimilation should be minimal when parts are very similar. Therefore, the nouns' assimilation in salience should have been less than the prepositions', explaining the nouns' less improvement in recall.