Group Art Therapy With Incarcerated Women

Art therapy in groups with incarcerated individuals may be effective when participants are defensive and possess limited education. The authors provide procedures, techniques, and case examples from the New Beginnings program for working with women in a detention facility.     

Metameric intransitivity

There are two kinds of afterimages. In negative afterimages, looking at a blank field after staring at a colored figure gives a figure whose color is complementary to that of the original figure. Less well understood and studied is the phenomenon of induced positive afterimages, in which staring at a colored area surrounding a small white test patch produces an afterimage in which the hue of the surround is transferred into the previously white area. Using these differences between positive and negative afterimages and also simultaneous color contrast, which has an effect on a test patch different from either of the afterimage effects, we describe a new effect, metameric intransitivity, in which perceptually similar images can generate markedly different afterimages, whereas perceptually different images can generate indistinguishable afterimages. Supplemental figures depicting the stimuli, results, and method for generating the intransitive metamers in this study may be downloaded from http://app.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

Mortality salience increases adherence to salient norms and values

Four studies indicate that mortality salience increases adherence to social norms and values, but only when cultural norms and values are salient. In Study 1, mortality salience coupled with a reminder about cultural values of egalitarianism reduced prejudice toward Blacks among non-Black participants. In Studies 2 through 4, a mortality salience induction (e.g., walking through a cemetery) increased self-reported and actual helping behavior only when the cultural value of helping was salient. These results suggest that people may adhere to norms and values so as to manage awareness of death.     

Information Regarding Social‐Sexual Behavior as an Antecedent to Perceptions of Ineffectiveness in the Workplace1

Three experimental studies investigated whether information implying social‐sexual behavior (any non‐work‐related behavior containing a sexual component) by employees would influence judgments of their effectiveness. In managerial and entry‐level positions, both male and female employees depicted as engaging in social‐sexual behaviors at work were perceived as less effective and less desirable as bosses, compared to identically described managers for whom no social‐sexual behavior information was provided. However, these negative evaluations were mitigated when information was provided indicating that these managers were always on‐task and effectively using their time at work (Study 3), suggesting that the effectiveness of employees who engage in social‐sexual behavior at work is devalued because others believe that these behaviors detract from productive time in the office.     

Effects of warned and unwarned demand transitions on vigilance performance and stress

The present study was designed to explore the effects of warned and unwarned demand transitions in vigilance on performance and self-reported stress. Twenty observers (10 women and 10 men) were assigned at random to each of six conditions resulting from the factorial combination of signal salience (high and low salience signals) and switching (no switch, switch with warning, and switch without warning). Performance metrics and self-reported stress state (Task Engagement, Distress, and Worry) were collected. While demand transitions did destabilize subsequent performance, increasing intra-individual variability, overall performance efficiency was uninfluenced by either switching or warning. Demand transitions, whether warned or not, increased self-reported distress. A dynamic model of performance stress may be necessary and research employing vigilance tasks in the future may be useful for developing this performance-stress model.     

Avoidance learning facilitates temporal processing in the primary auditory cortex

The primary auditory cortex is now known to be involved in learning and memory, as well as auditory perception. For example, spectral tuning often shifts toward or to the frequency of the conditioned stimulus during associative learning. As previous research has focused on tonal frequency, less is known about how learning might alter temporal parameters of response in the auditory cortex. This study addressed the effects of learning on the fidelity of temporal processing. Adult male rats were trained to avoid shock that was signaled by an 8.0 kHz tone. A novel control group received non-contingent tone and shock with shock probability decreasing over days to match the reduced number of shocks received by the avoidance group as they mastered the task. An untrained (nai ve) group served as a baseline. Following training, neuronal responses to white noise and a broad spectrum of tones were determined across the primary auditory cortex in a terminal experiment with subjects under general anesthesia. Avoidance conditioning significantly improved the precision of spike-timing: the coefficient of variation of 1st spike latency was significantly reduced in avoidance animals compared to controls and nai ves, both for tones and for noise. Additionally, avoidance learning was accompanied by a reduction of the latency of peak response, by 2.0-2.5 ms relative to nai ves and approximately 1.0 ms relative to controls. The shock-matched controls also exhibited significantly shorter peak latency of response than nai ves, demonstrating the importance of this non-avoidance control. Plasticity of temporal processing showed no evidence of frequency specificity and developed independently of the non-temporal parameters magnitude of response, frequency tuning and neural threshold, none of which were facilitated. The facilitation of temporal processing suggests that avoidance learning may increase synaptic strength either within the auditory cortex, in the subcortical auditory system, or both.     

The price of deceptive behavior: Disliking and lying to people who lie to us

We hypothesized that frequency and quality of deception influences how people perceive those who lie to them and that people subsequently increase deceptive behavior as a consequence of being lied to. In Study 1, participants were covertly videotaped conversing with a partner. Following the conversation, participants evaluated partners, and partners reviewed the videotape, identifying deceptions that they told. Findings indicated that partner’s frequency of deception was inversely related to likeability. In Study 2, participants watched a videotape of a confederate who appeared to produce one or four exaggerated or minimized lies, and then evaluated the confederate. Participants and confederates subsequently engaged in a conversation. When participants witnessed either one exaggerated lie, one or four minimal lies, or no lies they trusted and liked the confederate more than when witnessing four exaggerated lies. Moreover, participants increased their own use of deception as a function of the severity and quantity of confederate’s lies.     

Sex differences in the personal costs and benefits of relational and physical aggression in high school

While recent research using peer ratings demonstrates positive relations between youth's reputations for aggression and popularity, it is not clear whether aggressive youth themselves make these links. Using youth's self‐reports, this study assessed the associations of relational and physical aggression with indicators of both personal gains in peer relations (perceived popularity and receipt of prosocial attention) and personal costs in terms of retaliation or depressive responses (peer victimization and depressive symptoms) in a large sample (n=455) of eighth‐ to tenth‐grade students. Regression analyses reveal that more relationally aggressive youth report more prosocial attention but also more relational (but not physical) victimization. In contrast, more physically aggressive youth report more depressive symptoms and physical (but not relational) victimization. Findings suggest that some costs of aggression (victimization) are higher for boys while others (depressive symptoms) are greater for girls. Group differences were also found for aggressive, victimized, and aggressive/victimized youth compared to the typical low aggressive/low victimized youth. These data suggest that the costs of relational and physical aggression may outweigh benefits except for aggressive non‐victimized boys. Aggr. Behav. 32:409–419, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.