Minority adolescents and substance use risk/protective factors: a focus on inhalant use

Despite the fact that inhalant use is a growing problem among youth in the United States, relatively little attention has been paid to the demographic and social factors related to its use. This study used data from a household survey of adolescents in Washington state, and found that race/ethnicity was a strong predictor of lifetime prevalence of inhalant use, with Native-American youth being particularly likely to use inhalants. Comparing the age at initiation of inhalant use to other legal and illegal substances, we found that cigarettes and inhalants showed the lowest age at initiation. We conducted logistic regressions on lifetime prevalence of inhalant use, and compared these models to other substances. In general, we found that attachment to parents. parents' drug use, and school attachment were strong predictors of lifetime use of marijuana, alcohol, and inhalants. However, while peer drug use was a strong predictor of marijuana and alcohol use, it was not a significant predictor of adolescents' use of inhalants. Our final set of analyses included inhalant use in regression models predicting other problem behaviors: these analyses demonstrated that inhalant use was a strong predictor of involvement in problem behavior.     

Empathic Blushing in Friends and Strangers

Three volunteers watched a previously recorded video of one of them singing, as cheek sensors monitored their blushing. When performers watched videotapes of their performance, they blushed significantly more than strangers, but not more than their own friends, watching with them. Friends and strangers did not differ significantly in blushing, however. Skin conductance arousal responses of performers and friends, but not performers and strangers, or friends of performers and strangers, were correlated. In a second experiment, strangers who sang before watching another person sing blushed more than strangers who did not sing first, or who sang and then watched a neutral video. This suggests that performing the embarrassing act may have predisposed people to blush, perhaps empathically, later. No gender differences were seen in blushing. Embarrassability questionnaire scores did not correlate with blushing. Empathic accuracy, and associative learning, are proposed to account for the results.     

The role of memory in the Tower of London task

The Tower of London (TOL) task is widely used as a neuropsychological test of planning. Relatively little is known of the cognitive components of the task, and in particular the role of memory in performance. The current studies on normal adults looked at the role of verbal and spatial working memory in the TOL. The effects of verbal and visuospatial dual-task manipulations on TOL performance were examined in an experiment with 36 participants. Both verbal and visuospatial executive secondary tasks caused poorer performance on the TOL; however, concurrent articulatory suppression enhanced performance. The results suggest that executive and spatial components are important in the task, and raise questions about the role of preplanning in the TOL.     

Constancy scaling and conflict when the Zöllner illusion is seen in three dimensions

If a standard Z?llner illusion is seen as a staircase in depth, pairs of long lines flanking convex stair edges appear to diverge as usual, but divergence in pairs flanking concave edges can appear reduced. If the stair is reversed perceptually in the manner of the Schr?der staircase, convex and concave shapes exchange and the extent of apparent divergence in the long line pairs exchanges with them. The effect is enhanced if explicit stair edges are added, and reduced if the standard Z?llner pattern is replaced by one in which segments of the long lines are offset in the direction of the usual illusory effect. The observations suggest that the three-dimensional potential of the pattern cannot be excluded from explanations of the illusion, and are compatible with the view of Gregory and Harris that inappropriate constancy scaling is its primary cause, triggered 'bottom-up' by pattern properties or 'top-down' by cognitive inference. However, these two mechanisms would have to be acting in conflict to generate suppression of divergence in the concave steps. Pattern processing for properties, such as orientation, that are not associated with the potential of the Z?llner illusion as a three-dimensional configuration, but that have been suggested as sources of the illusion in recent studies, could also be acting in opposition to hypothesis scaling in the concave steps.     

Ageing and bilingualism: absence of a "bilingual advantage" in stroop interference in a nonimmigrant sample

Previous research has found an advantage for bilinguals relative to monolinguals on tasks of attentional control. This advantage has been found to be larger in older adults than in young adults, suggesting that bilingualism provides a buffer against age-related declines in executive functioning. Using a computerized Stroop task in a nonimmigrant sample of young and older monolinguals and bilinguals, the current investigation tried to replicate previous findings of a bilingual advantage. A bilingual advantage would have been demonstrated by smaller Stroop interference (i.e., smaller increases in response time for incongruent than for neutral trials) for bilinguals than for monolinguals. The results showed that bilingual young adults showed a general speed advantage relative to their monolingual counterparts, but this was not associated with smaller Stroop interference. Older adults showed no effect of bilingualism. Thus, the present investigation does not find evidence of a bilingual advantage in young or older adults and suggests limits to the robustness and/or specificity of previous findings.     

隔代“亲”的社会心理解析

隔代抚育中出现了普遍的隔代“亲”现象。本文分别从文化传统（血缘宗亲）、心理需求、社会现实、补偿心理等几个方面来阐述隔代“亲”的成因。     

Anxiety-related bias in the classification of emotionally ambiguous facial expressions

High- and low-trait socially anxious individuals classified the emotional expressions of photographic quality continua of interpolated ("morphed") facial images that were derived from combining 6 basic prototype emotional expressions to various degrees, with the 2 adjacent emotions arranged in an emotion hexagon. When fear was 1 of the 2 component emotions, the high-trait group displayed enhanced sensitivity for fear. In a 2nd experiment where a mood manipulation was incorporated, again, the high-trait group exhibited enhanced sensitivity for fear. The low-trait group was sensitive for happiness in the control condition. The mood-manipulated group had increased sensitivity for anger expressions, and trait anxiety did not moderate these effects. Interpretations of the results related to the classification of fearful expressions are discussed.