Anger and guilt about ingroup advantage explain the willingness for political action

Three studies examined non-Aboriginal Australians' guilt and anger about their ingroup's advantage over structurally disadvantaged Aborigines. Study 1 showed that participants who perceived their ingroup as relatively advantaged perceived this inequality as unfair and felt guilt and anger about it. Anger, and to a lesser degree guilt, predicted the willingness to engage in political action regarding ingroup advantage. Study 2 showed both guilt and anger to be relatively self-focused because both were associated with appraising the ingroup's (rather than the government's) discrimination as responsible for ingroup advantage. Study 3 examined on participants especially willing to engage in political action to bring about systemic compensation to Aborigines. Anger about ingroup advantage was a potent predictor. Although guilt was associated with the abstract goal of systemic compensation, guilt did not explain willingness for political action. Results underline the importance of examining specific group-based emotions in intergroup relations.     

Risky assessments: participant suicidality and distress associated with research assessments in a treatment study of suicidal behavior

The purpose of this study was to examine patterns of self-reported suicidality and distress during research assessments in a sample of 63 women meeting criteria for borderline personality disorder and current and chronic suicidality. The risk management protocol we used during the two-year study period (University of Washington Risk Assessment Protocol; UWRAP) is described. Results indicated that changes in suicidality following assessments were small and relatively infrequent, and were just as likely to reflect decreases in suicidality as increases (17.5% versus 16.4% of sessions, respectively). Further, longitudinal analyses indicated that changes in suicidality became increasingly rare over the course of the 2-year study. Ratings of distress were more changeable than suicidality, underscoring the need for separate measurement of these constructs when assessing risk. With the aid of the UWRAP, our assessors judged 15 participants as high-risk status in 28 assessment sessions (3.7% of all sessions). In comparison to the rest of the sample, these individuals were of significantly greater clinical severity as measured by the HRSD 17-item, GAF scores, number and severity of previous suicide attempts, and number of previous psychiatric hospitalizations. Low-intensity risk intervention strategies (e.g., validating participant's feelings) were typically sufficient to reduce risk in these participants. Overall, our findings indicate that research with highly suicidal individuals can be done safely with the use of well-trained assessors and an appropriate crisis management protocol.     

Comparing to perfection: How cultural norms for appearance affect social comparisons and self-image

Theory and research suggests that cultural norms for appearance present unrealistic standards of beauty which may contribute to women's body dissatisfaction. In Study 1, women described their appearance more negatively than men and made more upward social comparisons about their bodies, but not about other domains. Women also compared more than men with unrealistic targets (e.g., models). In Study 2, we explored the role of cultural norms for appearance in social comparisons with relevant (peer) or irrelevant (model) superior targets. When cultural norms were not salient, participants judged a peer to be more relevant, compared more with the peer, and were more negatively affected by the peer. However, when cultural norms were salient, participants judged a professional model to be equally relevant, compared more with the model and felt worse after exposure to the model. We discuss the powerful role of cultural norms in determining social comparison processes and self-appraisals.     

Picking up speed in understanding: Speech processing efficiency and vocabulary growth across the 2nd year

To explore how online speech processing efficiency relates to vocabulary growth in the 2nd year, the authors longitudinally observed 59 English-learning children at 15, 18, 21, and 25 months as they looked at pictures while listening to speech naming one of the pictures. The time course of eye movements in response to speech revealed significant increases in the efficiency of comprehension over this period. Further, speed and accuracy in spoken word recognition at 25 months were correlated with measures of lexical and grammatical development from 12 to 25 months. Analyses of growth curves showed that children who were faster and more accurate in online comprehension at 25 months were those who showed faster and more accelerated growth in expressive vocabulary across the 2nd year.     

Prawn-in-a-tube procedure: habituation or associative learning in cuttlefish?

The prawn-in-a-tube procedure (J. B. Messenger, 1973a) has been used almost exclusively to study associative learning in cuttlefish. In two experiments, the authors sought to determine whether the decline in attack responses observed in this procedure was best accounted for by habituation or associative learning. Results of Experiment 1 revealed an asymmetrical stimulus-specificity effect that could be interpreted as either an instance of habituation or of associative learning. Results of Experiment 2 demonstrated that the response decline could not be reversed following the presentation of a dishabituatory stimulus. The combined results of these experiments support the conclusion that the response decline is best viewed as a resulting of associative processes. The authors considered whether the response decline represents extinction or passive avoidance.     

Family Support and Mental Health in Pregnant Women Experiencing Interpersonal Partner Violence: An Analysis of Ethnic Differences

This study investigated the relationship between family support and mental health in a community sample of pregnant women experiencing interpersonal partner violence (IPV). This study also examined how family support may differentially affect mental health in Black and White women experiencing IPV. A total of 110 participants (32 Black and 78 White) were obtained from the first time period of a longitudinal study examining the effects of domestic violence on women. The model was supported (χ² = 142.55; df = 72, p > .001, RMSEA = .07). Black women had better mental health than White women. However, ethnicity was not a significant predictor of family support. Implications from this study highlight the need for further research on the role of family support in the lives of physically abused women as well as the need to incorporate cross cultural perspectives when examining this issue.     

Lexical retrieval constrained by sound structure: the role of the left inferior frontal gyrus

Positron emission tomography was used to investigate two competing hypotheses about the role of the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) in word generation. One proposes a domain-specific organization, with neural activation dependent on the type of information being processed, i.e., surface sound structure or semantic. The other proposes a process-specific organization, with activation dependent on processing demands, such as the amount of selection needed to decide between competing lexical alternatives. In a novel word retrieval task, word reconstruction (WR), subjects generated real words from heard non-words by the substitution of either a vowel or consonant. Both types of lexical retrieval, informed by sound structure alone, produced activation within anterior and posterior left IFG regions. Within these regions there was greater activity for consonant WR, which is more difficult and imposes greater processing demands. These results support a process-specific organization of the anterior left IFG.     

"Roadblocks" revisited: neural change, stuttering treatment, and recovery from stuttering

In light of emerging findings concerning untreated recovery and neural plasticity, this paper re-examines the viability of an NIH conference recommendation [Cooper, J. A. (1990). Research directions in stuttering: Consensus and conflict. In Cooper, J. A. (Ed.), Research needs in stuttering: Roadblocks and future directions (pp. 98-100). Rockville, MD: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.] that adults who have recovered from stuttering might inform our understanding of the nature and treatment of persistent stuttering. It is suggested that those who have recovered could constitute a behavioral, cognitive, and neurophysiologic benchmark for evaluating stuttering treatment for adolescents and adults, while helping to identify the limits of recovery from a persistent disorder. This possibility seems especially promising because of findings from recent studies investigating untreated recovery during childhood and adulthood, the emerging evidence concerning neural plasticity and reorganization, and reports of neural system changes during stuttering treatment. Potential obstacles to applying findings from unassisted recovery to treatment do exist, but the benefits of attempts to fully understand stuttering certainly outweigh the difficulties. EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES: After completing this activity, the learner will be able to: (1) describe two complexities involved in determining whether recovery from stuttering was assisted or unassisted; (2) discuss the implications for stuttering research of two neural plasticity research findings from areas other than stuttering; and (3) evaluate the possible implications for stuttering treatment of a coordinated research program that addresses behavioral, cognitive, and neurological characteristics of assisted and unassisted recovery from stuttering.     

Memory for contextual details: effects of emotion and aging

When individuals are confronted with a complex visual scene that includes some emotional element, memory for the emotional component often is enhanced, whereas memory for peripheral (nonemotional) details is reduced. The present study examined the effects of age and encoding instructions on this effect. With incidental encoding instructions, young and older adults showed this pattern of results, indicating that both groups focused attention on the emotional aspects of the scene. With intentional encoding instructions, young adults no longer showed the effect: They were just as likely to remember peripheral details of negative images as of neutral images. The older adults, in contrast, did not overcome the attentional bias: They continued to show reduced memory for the peripheral elements of the emotional compared with the neutral scenes, even with the intentional encoding instructions.