��You��re Such a Girl!�� The Psychological Drain of the Gender-Role Harassment of Men

Men experience gender-role harassment when they are ridiculed or ostracized for being ??not man enough?? (Berdahl 2007). Although men??s emotional (e.g. shame and anxiety) and behavioural reactions (e.g. aggression) to gender-threatening feedback have been documented (Vandello et al. 2008), potential cognitive and self-regulatory consequences of this form of harassment have yet to be investigated. In the present experiment, 84 Introductory Psychology men at a Canadian university (Winnipeg, Manitoba) either experienced or did not experience gender-role harassment (i.e. told they squeezed a handgrip ??like a girl??) before completing a set of tests (an anagram test, a stroop color-naming task, and a subsequent handgrip task). To ensure our experimental manipulation invoked a threat to participant??s sense of manliness, we also included an open-ended measure of self-identification. In accordance with Social Identity research (Ellemers, Spears, & Doosje, 2002), we anticipated that harassed men would affirm male self-aspects significantly more so than non-harassed men. Overall, results demonstrated that, as predicted, gender-role harassment significantly threatened participant??s sense of manhood, compromised cognitive ability, and weakened attentional self-control compared to the no harassment control condition. However, contrary to predictions, harassment did not weaken self-regulatory physical strength: men in the harassment condition exhibited increased handgrip strength compared to men in the no harassment condition, suggesting potential compensatory reactions occurred, as well. Implications of gender-role harassment for men??s psychological well-being, intellect, and impulse control are discussed and areas for future research are outlined.     

Paying attention to distress: What's wrong with rumination?

We explored the notion—derived from conceptualisations of mindfulness—that what makes attention to distress harmful is negative judgement about it. In Study 1 we examined factors of Nolen-Hoeksema's Ruminative Response Scale (RRS). A “Brooding” scale included items describing negative judgements of experience, and a “Reflection” scale, comprised items describing analysis of thoughts and feelings without obvious judgement. Correlations of Reflection with depression and thought suppression were lower than those for Brooding, but still significant, perhaps because all items implied some judgement. In Study 2, items were reworded to de-emphasise evaluative judgements (RRS-nonjudging) and compared to the original RRS. Although the factor structures of the original and RRS-nonjudging versions were essentially identical, the RRS-nonjudging Reflection scale was uncorrelated with depression and thought suppression, and was more highly correlated with emotional processing than was the original Reflection scale.     

Some relationships between adaptation and electromyographic activity at laryngeal and masseter sites in stutterers

Cumulative integrated electromyographic (EMG) activity was recorded from laryngeal and masseter sites from ten stutterers during a five trial oral adaptation sequence. Results showed more activity at the laryngeal site than the masseter site. While significant reductions in EMG activity were not found, patterns were shown to be related to the subjects' dysfluency patterns over trials. Results were interpreted as suggesting that reduced muscle activity and adaptation (when they occur) are artifacts of other behavioral modifications resulting from overt motor practice.     

Functional Topography of the Cerebellum in Verbal Working Memory

Speech—both overt and covert—facilitates working memory by creating and refreshing motor memory traces, allowing new information to be received and processed. Neuroimaging studies suggest a functional topography within the sub-regions of the cerebellum that subserve verbal working memory. Medial regions of the anterior cerebellum support overt speech, consistent with other forms of motor execution such as finger tapping, whereas lateral portions of the superior cerebellum support speech planning and preparation (e.g., covert speech). The inferior cerebellum is active when information is maintained across a delay, but activation appears to be independent of speech, lateralized by modality of stimulus presentation, and possibly related to phonological storage processes. Motor (dorsal) and cognitive (ventral) channels of cerebellar output nuclei can be distinguished in working memory. Clinical investigations suggest that hyper-activity of cerebellum and disrupted control of inner speech may contribute to certain psychiatric symptoms.     

The Effects of Stereotyping and Implicit Theory on Benevolent Prejudice Toward Aboriginal Canadians

Stereotyping and implicit theory on benevolent prejudice toward an Aboriginal student were investigated in a mock work setting. In a 2 (Stereotype: prime vs. no prime) × 2 (Theory: entity vs. incremental) × 2 (Race: Aboriginal vs. Caucasian) between‐subjects design, non‐Aboriginal participants were primed or not primed with a negative Aboriginal stereotype and an entity or incremental implicit theory before evaluating an Aboriginal or Caucasian student. Consistent with a benevolent prejudice perspective, when primed with the stereotype, only participants holding an entity theory expressed greater desire to help the Aboriginal compared to the Caucasian candidate, despite both candidates demonstrating identical performance information. Implications for prejudice in work environments are discussed.     

Concurrent guidance of attention by multiple working memory items: Behavioral and computational evidence

During visual search, task-relevant representations in visual working memory (VWM), known as attentional templates, are assumed to guide attention. A current debate concerns whether only one (Single-Item-Template hypothesis; SIT) or multiple (Multiple-Item-Template hypothesis; MIT) items can serve as attentional templates simultaneously. The current study was designed to test these two hypotheses. Participants memorized two colors, prior to a visual-search task in which the target and the distractor could match or not match the colors held in VWM. Robust attentional guidance was observed when one of the memory colors was presented as the target (reduced response times (RTs) on target-match trials) or the distractor (increased RTs on distractor-match trials). We constructed two drift-diffusion models that implemented the MIT and SIT hypotheses, which are similar in their predictions about overall RTs, but differ in their predictions about RTs on individual trials. Critically, simulated RT distributions and error rates revealed a better match of the MIT hypothesis to the observed data than the SIT hypothesis. Taken together, our findings provide behavioral and computational evidence for the concurrent guidance of attention by multiple items in VWM.

     

How are graphs read? An indication of sequence

Graphs are an extremely powerful communicative and analytical tool commonly used in both the behavioral sciences and computing (as well as many other fields). More than 2.2 trillion graphs are published annually, and these graphs are used to communicate a host of often very important information to readers. Yet despite the multitude of applications for which graphs are used, and despite the frequency of their use, little is known about how graphs communicate information or about the cognitive processes that readers use when they read and interpret the information presented within graphs. Insight into the answers to these questions can be obtained through the study of the techniques that people use to read graphs. This paper describes the research methodology and results of an empirical investigation into the viewing order in which readers choose to view the different components of graphs and into the length of time that readers spend studying each of these components.     

Near-death experience by proxy: A case study

A recent interview with a 34-year-old man, currently serving a life sentence for murder, revealed a remarkable case of near-death experience by proxy. The phenomenological features of the experience unfolded typically, with some slight variation in content. The immediate drastic changes in attitude and belief following the experience are described.Ms. Sutherland was formerly a lecturer in the Department of Social Work, University of Sydney.     

Changes in religious beliefs,attitudes, and practices following near-death experiences: An Australian study

This study examined changes in religious beliefs, attitudes, and practices in the lives of 50 near-death experiencers. I attempted to clarify whether these changes were to greater religiousness or to a deeper spirituality. I found that before the near-death experience (NDE), my respondents were no more religious or spiritually inclined than the general Australian population. Following the NDE there was a statistically significant shift towards spirituality on most items investigated.     

External details revisited – A new taxonomy for coding ‘non-episodic’ content during autobiographical memory retrieval

Autobiographical memory (ABM) is typically held to comprise episodic and semantic elements, with the vast majority of studies to date focusing on profiles of episodic details in health and disease. In this context, ‘non-episodic’ elements are often considered to reflect semantic processing or are discounted from analyses entirely. Mounting evidence suggests that rather than reflecting one unitary entity, semantic autobiographical information may contain discrete subcomponents, which vary in their relative degree of semantic or episodic content. This study aimed to (1) review the existing literature to formally characterize the variability in analysis of ‘non-episodic’ content (i.e., external details) on the Autobiographical Interview and (2) use these findings to create a theoretically grounded framework for coding external details. Our review exposed discrepancies in the reporting and interpretation of external details across studies, reinforcing the need for a new, consistent approach. We validated our new external details scoring protocol (the ‘NExt’ taxonomy) in patients with Alzheimer's disease (n = 18) and semantic dementia (n = 13), and 20 healthy older Control participants and compared profiles of the NExt subcategories across groups and time periods. Our results revealed increased sensitivity of the NExt taxonomy in discriminating between ABM profiles of patient groups, when compared to traditionally used internal and external detail metrics. Further, remote and recent autobiographical memories displayed distinct compositions of the NExt detail types. This study is the first to provide a fine-grained and comprehensive taxonomy to parse external details into intuitive subcategories and to validate this protocol in neurodegenerative disorders.