Are implicitly activated associates selectively activated?

What constitutes a word’s associative past? Words differ in how many associates they activate in memory and, following a brief encounter, those with fewer associates are more likely to be recalled in the presence of related cues. The issue addressed in the present article is whether associative set size effects are produced through the selective activation of strong associates or through the activation of both strong and weak associates. The set size of the strongest associates was varied factorially with the set size of the associates of these associates. We assume that associate set size indexes a word’s weaker associates. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that recall varied inversely with both target and associate set sizes. Such results held over variations in study time and participant age. Experiment 3 showed that weak associates of the target had a greater effect on recall when there were more connections among the strongest associates in the set. The findings suggest that activation is not strength selective but includes both weak and strong associates.     

Estimating the Organizational Costs of Sexual Harassment: The Case of the U.S. Army

A general model for estimating the organizational costs of sexual harassment in the workplace is proposed along with model-specific costing formulas. A partial implementation of the model is applied to sexual harassment incidence data for the Army gathered as part of a large-scale survey of the U.S. military services. Results indicate that the total annual cost of sexual harassment in the U.S. Army in 1988 was over $250,000,000. Organizational implications are discussed.     

Performance,attitudes, and professional socialization of women in academia

Junior faculty at two universities in the Northeast were surveyed regarding their objective job performance as well as attitudes toward work, availability of role models, self-perception and self-evaluation, and incidence and type of sexual discrimination. There were no significant sex differences in marital status; however, two-thirds of the married females reported having no children, whereas less than one-third of the married males had no children. Female junior faculty reported spending somewhat more time on work-related activities at home, generally less willingness to cancel class, somewhat higher likelihood of editing books and/or journals, but less likelihood of writing books and/or journal articles. Males generally felt they were above average in comparison to their colleagues and contemporaries; and they showed a fairly accurate appraisal of their standing vis-á-vis others on the publication dimension. In contrast, females rated themselves significantly lower than the males in comparison to others and showed little discriminative judgment of their relative standing on the publication dimension. Differences in the early socialization of men and women may result in the differential professional socialization of female faculty. Subtle areas of sexual discrimination in the academic experience are suggested. Finally, the authors caution against overgeneralizing from these results.     

Retrieval processes in perceptual recognition and cued recall: The influence of category size

The purpose of these experiments was to determine whether nonsemantic category size and other variables would influence perceptual recognition as they influence cued recall. Procedures developed by Jacoby and his associates were replicated with words belonging to either small or large nonsemantic categories and with recognition tested under bright-target/patterned-mask conditions. The results indicated that words belonging to larger nonsemantic sets were more difficult to identify. This finding and the results of other manipulations are discussed in relation to the interactive activation model and to the proposal that perceptual recognition performance is dependent on a retrieval process similar to that involved in recall prompted by nonsemantic cues.     

Aging and Inhibition of Unconsciously Processed Information: No Apparent Deficit

Young and older adults were compared on a cued recall task designed to show effects of activation and inhibition of unconsciously processed information. The number of associates related to the target words by prior experience was varied, and the targets were studied either in the absence or the presence of meaningfully related context cues. The number of associates of the target had an effect on recall when context cues were absent during study, suggesting that the associates had been activated and encoded during study. In contrast, when context cues were present during study, no effect of the number of target associates was observed, suggesting that the associates had been inhibited during study. Comparable activation and inhibition effects were obtained for younger and older subjects. The results suggested little or no age-related deficit in inhibition when the to-be-inhibited information was unconsciously processed and not brought to conscious awareness.     

Self-reported aggression and the perception of anger in facial expression photos

The author's purpose in this study was to assess the relationship between self-reported aggression and "seeing" anger in others. Eighty-four undergraduate participants completed a self-report questionnaire about their own aggression (i.e., aggressive attitude, verbal aggression, and physical aggression), as well as measures of resiliency and locus of control. They also responded to a series of photographs depicting facial expressions of happy, sad, angry, and fearful emotions. The results indicated that individuals reporting higher levels of overall aggression also misidentified anger from the facial expressions when this was not the emotion presented (errors of commission). No significant differences appeared among individuals reporting high and low levels of aggression in terms of underreporting anger (errors of omission). The author also found significant correlations among identification of anger from photographs, resiliency, and locus of control. The findings of the study have important implications for understanding the relationship between aggression and one's perception of anger in others.     

An Examination of Sociotropy and Excessive Reassurance Seeking in the Prediction of Depression

The study was an examination of the relationship between sociotropy and excessive reassurance seeking in the prediction of depression. Although there is an obvious theoretical link between these constructs, little empirical work has been directed at integrating these constructs. Because it was theorized that sociotropic persons would be relatively more likely to engage in excessive reassurance seeking relative to autonomous individuals, it was predicted that sociotropy, and not autonomy, would be positively related to excessive reassurance seeking. In addition, it was predicted that excessive reassurance seeking would mediate effects of sociotropy upon depression. Overall, the results from 167 undergraduates completing measures for all variables supported these predictions. The results suggest that beyond the psychological vulnerabilities hypothesized by A. T. Beck (1983), sociotropic persons might engage in interpersonal behaviors that exacerbate their response to life stress.     

Restraint and Cancellation: Multiple Inhibition Deficits in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

We used variations of the stop signal task to study two components of motor response inhibition—the ability to withhold a strong response tendency (restraint) and the ability to cancel an ongoing action (cancellation)—in children with a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and in non-ADHD controls of similar age (ages 7–14 years). The goal was to determine if restraint and cancellation were related and if both were deficient in ADHD. The stop signal task involved a choice reaction time task (go task) which required a rapid response. The demand for inhibitory control was invoked through the presentation of a stop signal on a subset of go trials which required that the ongoing response be suspended. The stop signal was presented either concurrently with the go signal (restraint version) or after a variable delay (cancellation version). In Study 1, we compared ADHD and control children on the cancellation version of the stop task; in Study 2, we compared ADHD and controls on the restraint version. In Study 3, a subset of ADHD and control participants completed both tasks so that we could examine convergence of these dimensions of inhibition. Compared to control participants, ADHD participants showed a deficit both in the ability to cancel and to restrain a speeded motor response. Performance on the restraint version was significantly correlated with performance on the cancellation version in controls, but not in ADHD participants. We conclude that ADHD is associated with deficits in both restraint and cancellation subcomponents of inhibition.