“Log on to sex”: Some notes on the carnal computer and erotic cyberspace as an emerging research frontier

Innovation in technology often provides new opportunities in the pursuit of deviance. The response or adaptation to these new opportunities takes the form of deviant technicways. New technology in the case of the computer promises to have an applicability for carnal behavior that is socially volatile in both its perversity and import. Through on‐line bulletin boards dedicated to particular modes of sexual behavior, computer users with special sexual predilections can communicate with persons who share similar interests throughout the world. Computer communication of the erotic variety may involve mild flirtations, seeking and sharing information about sexual services available in different cities and countries, and seeking and sharing information about specific varieties of deviant sexual behavior. The computer has been used by some individuals to obtain child pornography from abroad, to contact youngsters to try to arrange meetings for sexual purposes, sometimes to misrepresent one's sexual identity ("gender bending") for various reasons ranging from seemingly harmless “on‐line transsexualism” (Van Gelder, 1985) to more convoluted (and possibly more sinister) purposes. The appearance of computer erotica can be interpreted at various functional levels and holds considerable import for social behavior. Just as the computer has begun to revolutionize social life, it may also revolutionize crime and the parameters of deviant sexual behavior.     

Self-Destructive Consequences of Sex-Role Socialization

Suicide proneness and self-destruction scales, together with measures of self-favorability and self-confidence, were administered to two samples (n = 106 and n = 213). The affective responses of the second sample (134 women and 79 men) were measured by asking respondents to circle adjectives classified for activity-passivity, positive-negativeness, and extroversion-introversion that expressed their feelings toward eight situations. Women scored lower than men on suicide proneness, higher on self-destruction, and lower on self-favorability and self-confidence. Women reacted more passively to the situations than men and more negatively to the public challenge situation. Women tend to extrovert (turn outward on others) their positive feelings in pleasant situations and to introvert (turn blame on themselves) their negative reactions to unpleasant situations. Men do the reverse. It is suggested that women are self-destructive in passive ways, reflecting their lack of self-favorability and confidence and manifested by failure to react to everyday situations in ego-building ways.     

Attributional Retraining: reducing the likelihood of failure

Failing a course is an acutely negative event for first-year university students, and a major contributor to high attrition rates at North American universities. Despite its prevalence, course failure receives relatively little research attention. What can be done to reduce course failure and help first-year students remain in university? This study examined the efficacy of an Attributional Retraining treatment intervention to reduce course failure in an Introductory Psychology course. Attributional Retraining is designed to restructure students’ causal explanations of poor performance by encouraging controllable attributions such as effort and strategy in place of immutable causes such as academic ability or intelligence. Relative to students in the control group, first-year students who received Attributional Retraining were less likely to fail the Introductory Psychology course (14.6% vs. 6.4%). This finding emerged beyond the effects of several well-established predictors of academic outcomes including student background characteristics (i.e., age, gender, and past academic performance) and learning environment variables (student registration status and participation in a first-year orientation program), suggesting the utility of Attributional Retraining for students with varying backgrounds and in different educational contexts. To the extent that Attributional Retraining is effective, inexpensive, and relatively easy to administer it may be a viable option for inclusion in orientation programs designed to reduce course failure and attrition among first-year university students.     

An eye-movement-contingent probe paradigm

A new eye-movement-contingent probe task is presented in which readers’ eye movements are monitored as they read sentences and respond to a probe word; the timing of the display of the probe word is dependent on fixation of a target word. The present study examined semantic priming effects. The target word was either related (doctor) or unrelated (lawyer) to the probe word (nurse), and the probe appeared 120, 250, 500, or 750msec after the reader first fixated on the target word. When the probe word appeared (in the location of the target word), the rest of the sentence disappeared until the participant named the probe word. Then the sentence reappeared, and the participant continued reading the sentence. Naming times to the probe word were recorded, as was sentence reading time and the eye movement behavior relative to the onset of the probe word. Priming effects were observed, since probe reaction time to related probes was faster than that to unrelated probes. Ways in which this paradigm can be used to study various issues in language processing are discussed.     

Practice makes perfect: Training the interpretation of emotional ambiguity

The interpretation of emotionally ambiguous words, sentences, or scenarios can be altered through training procedures that are collectively called cognitive bias modification for interpretation (CBM-I). In three experiments, we systematically manipulated the nature of the training in order to discriminate between emotional priming and ambiguity resolution accounts of training effects. In Experiment 1 participants completed word fragments that were consistently related to either a negative or benign interpretation of an ambiguous sentence. In a subsequent semantic priming task they demonstrated an interpretation bias, in that they were faster to identify relatedness of targets that were associated with the training-congruent meaning of an emotionally ambiguous homograph. We then manipulated the training sentences to show that interpretation bias was eliminated when participants simply completed valenced word fragments following unrelated sentences (Experiment 2), or completed fragments that were related to emotional but unambiguous sentences (Experiment 3). Only when participants were required to actively resolve emotionally ambiguous sentences during training did changes in interpretation emerge at test. Findings suggest that CBM-I achieves its effects by altering a production rule that aids the selection of meaning from emotionally ambiguous alternatives, in line with an ambiguity resolution account.     

The interactive effects of role overload and resilience on family-work enrichment and associated outcomes

ABSTRACT

Using an interactionist perspective and conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study examined the interactive effects of resilience and role overload on family-work enrichment and the outcomes of surface acting, emotional exhaustion, and job satisfaction. The model was tested using a sample of 156 full time employees who completed surveys at two time periods. As expected, resilience was positively related to family-work enrichment and family-work enrichment was negatively related to surface acting and emotional exhaustion and positively related to job satisfaction demonstrating mediating effects for family-work enrichment. Role overload moderated the positive relationship between resilience and family-work enrichment such that the relationship was weaker when role overload was high indicating a boundary condition for the favorable effects of resilience. Finally, support was found for the conditional indirect effects of resilience on surface acting, emotional exhaustion, and job satisfaction through family-work enrichment such that the relationships were weaker when role overload was high.     

Interpreting conjoined noun phrases and conjoined clauses: Collective versus distributive preferences

Two experiments are reported that show that introducing event participants in a conjoined noun phrase (NP) favours a single event (collective) interpretation, while introducing them in separate clauses favours a separate events (distributive) interpretation. In Experiment 1, acceptability judgements were speeded when the bias of a predicate toward separate events versus a single event matched the presumed bias of how the subjects' referents were introduced (as conjoined noun phrases or in conjoined clauses). In Experiment 2, reading of a phrase containing an anaphor following conjoined noun phrases was facilitated when the anaphor was they, relative to when it was neither/each of them; the opposite pattern was found when the anaphor followed conjoined clauses. We argue that comprehension was facilitated when the form of an anaphor was appropriate for how its antecedents were introduced. These results address the very general problem of how we individuate entities and events when presented with a complex situation and show that different linguistic forms can guide how we construe a situation. The results also indicate that there is no general penalty for introducing the entities or events separately-in distinct clauses as "split" antecedents.     

The editorial perspective

This study utilizes in‐depth interviews of female injecting drug users (IDUs) supplemented by analyses of a large national data set to explore the association between the strength of the social bond and participation in a health‐related form of deviance: AIDS risk behaviors. The theoretical framework extends social control theory by examining the effects of further weakening of the social bond in an already deviant population. Risk behaviors are operationalized as a second‐level of deviance among individuals already participating in initial‐level deviant behavior (drug use). Prior research on how aspects of the social bond deter the individual from further deviance during adulthood has focused on males. Careers and marriage have been examined as elements of social control. The subjects of this study are female, however. For women, careers and marriage are often less salient, and relationships with children may be a more relevant measure of the social bond.

In‐depth interviews with eighteen female IDUs and two former IDUs are presented to explore the degree to which relationships with children deter female IDUs from participating in risky behaviors. Analysis of the interview data suggests that the presence, weakening, or rupturing of the bond to children is related to higher levels of second‐level deviance in the form of AIDS‐risk behaviors. However, the interviews also suggest that there are qualitative differences in the deterrence effects of weakened bonds to children, depending on the circumstances as well as the level of ongoing interaction between mother and child. Analyses of the data from the National AIDS Demonstration Research (NADR) Project are then presented, providing additional support to the conclusion that loss of relationships with children is related to higher levels of risk.     

Plato's Theory of Aging

Plato's writings express a positive attitude toward elderly people. But do his writings also show a serious theoretical interest in issues of aging? We approach this question by comparing what Plato says about aging to major theoretical issues in gerontology. We argue that many of Plato's subtler observations of the behavior of elderly people and many of his ideas about aging anticipate specific research and theoretical advances in contemporary gerontology. We compare passages in Plato's works to the debate between activity and disengagement theories, the concepts of continuity and gerotranscendence, Robert Butler's discovery of “the life review,” and recent theories of old age wisdom. Plato's anticipation of these ideas and issues related to them suggests that his writings may contain still other major insights into aging which are not yet articulated in gerontology. We suggest three possibilities.