When are AIDS patients to blame for their disease? Effects of patients' sexual orientation and mode of transmission

This study examined three factors affecting college students' attributions of blame for an AIDS patient's disease: sexual orientation of the patient, mode of HIV transmission, and the sex of the subject. 148 subjects read one of six vignettes describing an hypothetical AIDS patient who was described as either an heterosexual or an homosexual man who contracted HIV through one of three avenues: blood transfusion, sexual contact, or IV drug use. The homosexual AIDS patient was considered more to blame for his illness than the heterosexual AIDS patient, but only when mode of transmission was sexual contact. In addition, mode of HIV transmission was a significant factor in attributions of responsibility, as the patient who contracted HIV through a blood transfusion was rated as less responsible than the patient who contracted HIV through sexual behavior or IV drug use. Women consistently rated the AIDS patient as less responsible than did men.     

Correlates of sexual interest among elderly men

Interview data were collected from 46 English elderly men (age 70 to 94 years) relating to attitudes, psychological traits, and life satisfaction. Sexual interest was not related to life satisfaction or marital status but was significantly correlated with measures of emotional expressivity, personal identity, as well as regrets about the past. Findings are discussed in terms of Erikson's later stages of ego development.     

Some clarifications of the CANDECOMP algorithm applied to INDSCAL

Carroll and Chang have claimed that CANDECOMP applied to symmetric matrices yields equivalent coordinate matrices, as needed for INDSCAL. Although this claim has appeared to be valid for all practical purposes, it has gone without a rigorous mathematical footing. The purpose of the present paper is to clarify CANDECOMP in this respect. It is shown that equivalent coordinate matrices are not granted at global minima when the symmetric matrices are not Gramian, or when these matrices are Gramian but the solution not globally optimal.Part of this research has been supported by The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), PSYCHON-grant (560-267-011).     

Syllable-internal structure and the sonority hierarchy: Differential evidence from lexical decision,naming, and reading

Treiman (1983) and others have argued that spoken syllables are best characterized not as linear strings of phonemes, but as hierarchically organized units consisting of an onset (initial consonant or consonant cluster) and a rime (the vowel and any following consonants) and that the rime is further divided into a peak or nucleus (the vowel) and a coda (the final consonants). It has also been argued that the sonority (or vowel-likeness) of the consonant closest to the peak, which is a function of its phonetic class, may have an effect on the strength of boundaries determined by the hierarchical division of the syllable (e.g., Treiman, 1984). We examined the evidence for syllable-internal structure and for sonority in two experiments that employed visually presented stimuli and lexical decision, naming, and reading tasks. Our results provide support for the breakdown of the rime into a peak and a coda and for an effect of the sonority of the postvocalic consonant on that break. This pattern occurred only in our lexical decision tasks, so the effect is assumed to be postlexical. We did not find an effect of the onset-rime boundary, perhaps because of an unanticipated effect of word frequency. Our results are discussed in terms of phonological coding in short-term memory.     

Rhythmic motor behavior of preambulatory motor impaired,down syndrome and nondisabled children: A comparative analysis

The developmental course of rhythmic motor behavior was followed longitudinally for three groups of preambulatory children — normally developing, Down syndrome, and those with profound motor impairment. The groups differed in chronological age but were comparable with respect to motor age. The motor impaired subjects displayed significantly less rhythmic motor behavior than the nondisabled and Down syndrome groups. In comparing particular subtypes of rhythmic motor behavior, differences were found in both the average number of bouts and duration of subtypes among the groups. Longitudinal analyses of the data over the entire observation period revealed that the rhythmic motor behavior of the children with Down syndrome was more similar to that exhibited by the nondisabled children than was the rhythmic motor behavior of the children with motor impairment. However, there was considerable variability among the groups in several particular subtypes.This research was supported by grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD 17650 and HD 07226).The authors acknowledge the assistance of Robert E. Arendt, Grant Youngquist, Michael Hohn, and Charles Lowitzer in obtaining the observational data and thank the families of the subjects for their enthusiasm and dedication to the project.This study was presented at the 23rd Annual Gatlinburg Conference on Research and Theory in Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, April 21, 1990.     

Depression and processing information about others

We investigated differences between mildly depressed subjects and normal controls in their memory for, and judgments of, another person. All subjects read a story (containing either predominately positive or predominately negative items) under instructions to form an impression of the story target. Subjects later made several judgments about the target and attempted to recall the story. For both the positive and the negative story, depressed subjects produced significantly more negative intrusions (i.e., recalled nonpresented negative items) than did the normal subjects, but they did not recall more negative items correctly than did the normal subjects. Depressed subjects also perceived themselves as more similar to the negative story target than did the normal controls and indicated greater liking for the negative story target than did the normal controls.     

Automatic processes in lexical access and spreading activation.

The semantic priming effect can be reduced or eliminated depending on how the prime word is processed. The experiments reported here investigate this prime task effect. Two experiments used identity and semantic priming tasks to determine whether the prime word is encoded at a lexical level under letter-search conditions. When the prime task was naming, both identity and semantic priming occurred; however, when a letter-search task was performed on the prime word, only identity priming occurred, thus supporting the argument that the search task affects activation of semantic associates rather than lexical access of the prime word. Another experiment demonstrated that this identity priming was the result of lexical processes rather than of letter-by-letter priming. A cross-modal priming technique demonstrated that the letter-search prime task does not actively suppress activation of semantic associates. The implications of these results for automaticity and for proposed mechanisms of priming are discussed.     

Learning disabilities, distinctive encoding, and hemispheric resources

The purpose of this study was to isolate possible sources of learning ability differences in distinctive encoding of item-specific and relational information. Two mechanisms postulated as underlying ability group differences were attentional capacity (as inferred from the magnitude and direction of correlations between primary and secondary recall) and resource monitoring strategies (as reflected in measures of selective attention and laterality). In Experiment 1, learning disabled and nondisabled childrens' word recall was compared on dichotic listening recall tasks that included nonorienting instructions, and orienting instructions that directed children's attention toward semantic, phonemic, or structural word features. Disabled children showed lower recall and more diffuse selective attention to word features than nondisabled children. Reciprocity (negative correlations) between targeted and background words within and between ability groups was comparable, except when targeted word features were phonemically organized. Experiment 2 indicated that disabled childrens' cued recall was inferior to that of nondisabled children, even though both ability groups produced comparable symmetrical recall patterns related to ear presentations. Taken together, the results suggest that the locus of disabled childrens' distinctive encoding deficiencies is related to resource monitoring strategies during interhemispheric processing.     

Perceptual learning following a long-lasting tactile reversal.

Crossing 2 adjacent fingers produces a distorted perception when 2 tactile stimuli are touched to the crossed fingertips. This is because a given pair of fingers has a functional range of action within which spatial perception is correct (uncrossed fingers) and beyond which perceived location of tactile stimuli is wrong (crossed fingers). The present study tested the possibility that this range of action could be modified following a long-lasting crossing. Therefore, the functional range of action of the 2nd and 3rd fingers was tested every month in 6 volunteers who maintained the finger crossing for as long as 6 months. The results show that after a variable period of time the range of action was enlarged such that spatial perception was correct with crossed fingers as well. The perceptual organization of the human hand therefore depends on experience and is not rigidly determined on a genetic basis.     

Scratching as a behavioral index of anxiety in macaque mothers.

The aim of this study was to assess the validity of the notion that anxiety influences maternal style in monkeys. To this end, we investigated the correlations between measures of the quality of mother-infant relationship and scratching, a behavior pattern that reflects a state of anxiety. The subjects were seven group-living macaque mothers and their infants observed during the first 12 weeks postpartum. Postpartum scratching by the mothers was positively correlated with both maternal possessiveness and maternal warmth, two composite measures of the quality of mother-infant relationship that reflect a possessive and attentive maternal style. Evaluation of the correlations between maternal rank and scratching before and after parturition indicated that interactions with their infants, not those with other group companions, were the main source of anxiety for the mothers. These results support the notion that anxiety influences maternal style in monkeys and suggest that studies aimed at investigating physiological and social correlates of maternal emotionality in nonhuman primates could use scratching as a useful and simple behavioral measure.