Conceptualizing an HIV Diagnosis Through a Model of Grief and Bereavement

For people living with HIV/AIDS, grief and bereavement typically refer to the loss of life felt in the HIV community. However, changes in HIV treatments allow care providers to view HIV grief in a way that considers physical, social, and emotional loss, as well as a loss of the life they had previously pictured for themselves. Kübler‐Ross's ( 1969 ) model of bereavement is presented as a way to conceptualize clients living with HIV who are dealing with grief and bereavement. In addition, popular bereavement counseling approaches relevant to clients with HIV are discussed, and a case illustration is provided.     

Subjective impact, meaning making, and current and recalled emotions for self-defining memories

Two studies examined the impact of self-defining events on individuals (i.e., subjective impact), meaning making with regard to these events, and how subjective impact may account for the pattern of current and recalled emotions for these self-defining memories (Singer & Moffitt, 1991-1992). In Study 1, participants recalled self-defining memories, indicating how much impact the recalled events have had on them and described meaning making for these events. Subjective impact was shown to be a good marker for meaning making. Participants in Study 2 each recalled five self-defining memories, reporting their current emotions about the events, the emotions they recalled feeling at the time, and the impact the events have had on them. As expected, for negative memories, people reported less negative emotion (e.g., sadness) and more positive emotion (e.g., pride) compared to how they recalled feeling at the time. For positive memories, people reported equally intense positive emotion (e.g., love) and less negative emotion (e.g., fear) compared to how they recalled feeling at the time. These patterns of current and recalled emotions were accounted for by impact ratings.     

Visual motion influences the contingent auditory motion aftereffect

In this study, we show that the contingent auditory motion aftereffect is strongly influenced by visual motion information. During an induction phase, participants listened to rightward-moving sounds with falling pitch alternated with leftward-moving sounds with rising pitch (or vice versa). Auditory aftereffects (i.e., a shift in the psychometric function for unimodal auditory motion perception) were bigger when a visual stimulus moved in the same direction as the sound than when no visual stimulus was presented. When the visual stimulus moved in the opposite direction, aftereffects were reversed and thus became contingent upon visual motion. When visual motion was combined with a stationary sound, no aftereffect was observed. These findings indicate that there are strong perceptual links between the visual and auditory motion-processing systems.     

Chronometric studies of numerical cognition in five-month-old infants

Developmental research suggests that some of the mechanisms that underlie numerical cognition are present and functional in human infancy. To investigate these mechanisms and their developmental course, psychologists have turned to behavioral and electrophysiological methods using briefly presented displays. These methods, however, depend on the assumption that young infants can extract numerical information rapidly. Here we test this assumption and begin to investigate the speed of numerical processing in five-month-old infants. Infants successfully discriminated between arrays of 4 vs. 8 dots on the basis of number when a new array appeared every 2 s, but not when a new array appeared every 1.0 or 1.5 s. These results suggest alternative interpretations of past findings, provide constraints on the design of future experiments, and introduce a new method for probing infants' enumeration process. Further experiments using this method provide initial evidence that infants' enumeration mechanism operates in parallel and yields increasingly accurate numerical representations over time, as does the enumeration mechanism used by adults in symbolic and non-symbolic tasks.     

Cognitive dissonance in groups: the consequences of disagreement

As L. Festinger (1957) argued, the social group is a source of cognitive dissonance as well as a vehicle for reducing it. That is, disagreement from others in a group generates dissonance, and subsequent movement toward group consensus reduces this negative tension. The authors conducted 3 studies to demonstrate group-induced dissonance. In the first, students in a group with others who ostensibly disagreed with them experienced greater dissonance discomfort than those in a group with others who agreed. Study 2 demonstrated that standard moderators of dissonance in past research--lack of choice and opportunity to self-affirm, similarly reduced dissonance discomfort generated by group disagreement. In Study 3, the dissonance induced by group disagreement was reduced through a variety of interpersonal strategies to achieve consensus, including persuading others, changing one's own position, and joining an attitudinally congenial group.     

Changing circumstances, disrupting habits

The present research investigated the mechanisms guiding habitual behavior, specifically, the stimulus cues that trigger habit performance. When usual contexts for performance change, habits cannot be cued by recurring stimuli, and performance should be disrupted. Thus, the exercising, newspaper reading, and TV watching habits of students transferring to a new university were found to survive the transfer only when aspects of the performance context did not change (e.g., participants continued to read the paper with others). In some cases, the disruption in habits also placed behavior under intentional control so that participants acted on their current intentions. Changes in circumstances also affected the favorability of intentions, but changes in intentions alone could not explain the disruption of habits. Furthermore, regardless of whether contexts changed, nonhabitual behavior was guided by intentions.     

A cross-cultural analysis of the behavior of women and men: implications for the origins of sex differences

This article evaluates theories of the origins of sex differences in human behavior. It reviews the cross-cultural evidence on the behavior of women and men in nonindustrial societies, especially the activities that contribute to the sex-typed division of labor and patriarchy. To explain the cross-cultural findings, the authors consider social constructionism, evolutionary psychology, and their own biosocial theory. Supporting the biosocial analysis, sex differences derive from the interaction between the physical specialization of the sexes, especially female reproductive capacity, and the economic and social structural aspects of societies. This biosocial approach treats the psychological attributes of women and men as emergent given the evolved characteristics of the sexes, their developmental experiences, and their situated activity in society.