Forms of social awareness and helping

People encounter situations from different forms of awareness; that is, they can attend to different focal topics (e.g., self, other person, or other person's situation) from different perspectives (e.g., the self's viewpoint, the other person's viewpoint). Two studies assessed whether brief interactions would produce different forms of social awareness, whether the form of awareness would persist to a subsequent interaction, and whether it would influence helping in that encounter. Pedestrians on a city sidewalk were induced to become self-focused (experimenter took their picture), become other-focused (they took experimenter's picture), or empathically adopt the perspective of another person (they advised experimenter where to take a picture). In Study 1, subjects were interviewed after leaving the experimenter. First- and third-person pronoun use and self-ratings suggested that subjects had different forms of awareness. In Study 2, pedestrians participated in one of the same three interaction conditions or a control noninteraction condition and subsequently encountered a confederate in need of help. Subjects in the self-focused and empathic condition helped more than subjects in the other-focused or control condition. Results suggest that forms of awareness created in a brief interaction do persist to subsequent interactions and influence helping. Other variables may influence helping by altering forms of social awareness.     

Selective perception by dynamic touch

Perceiving the length of a rod by dynamic touch is tied to the inertia tensorIij, a quantification of its resistance to rotational acceleration. Perception of the portion extending in front of the grasp has previously been ascribed to decomposing one component ofIij by attention. The tensorial nature of dynamic touch suggests that this ability must be anchored wholly in the tensor. Three experiments show that perceived partial length is a function of two components of the tensor, one tied primarily to magnitude and the other tied primarily to direction, whereas perceived whole length is a function of a magnitude component alone. Dynamic touch is characterized in terms of a haptic perceptual instrument that softly assembles to exploitIij differently depending on the intention, producing 1:1 maps that are appropriately scaled for each intention.     

Letter visibility and word recognition: The optimal viewing position in printed words

It has repeatedly been shown that the time and accuracy of recognizing a word depend strongly on where in the word the eye is fixating. Word-recognition performance is maximal when the eye fixates a region near the word’s center, and decreases to both sides of this “optimal viewing position.” The reason for this phenomenon is assumed to be the strong drop-off of visual acuity: the visibility of letters decreases with increasing eccentricity from fixation location. Consequently, fewer letters can be identified when the beginning or ending of a word is fixated than when its center is fixated. The present study is a test of this visual acuity hypothesis. If the phenomenon is caused by letter visibility, then it should be sensitive to variations of visual conditions in which the letters are presented. By increasing the interletter distances of the word(e.g.,a_t_t_e_m_ p_ t), letter visibility was decreased. As expected from our hypothesis, the viewing-position effect became more exaggerated. An additional experiment showed that destroying word-shape information (e.g., aTtEmPt) decreased overall word-recognition performance but had no influence on the viewingposition effect. Varying the viewing position in words might thus be used as a paradigm, allowing one to separate out the contribution of letter information and supraletter information to word recognition.     

Visual information processing in the left and right hemispheres during unilateral tachistoscopic stimulation of stutterers

Tachistoscopy was used to investigate 42 stutterers and a corresponding control group for their speech dominance. A bilateral cortical responsibility for speech was equally frequent in the two groups. However, 2.5 times as many stutterers showed a superiority in the information processing in the right hemisphere than did nonstutterers.     

Beliefs about relationships in relation to television viewing, soap opera viewing, and self-monitoring

Undergraduates (n=188) completed: a survey of television and soap opera viewing habits; the Relationship Beliefs Inventory, measuring dysfunctional relationship beliefs; and Snyder's Self-Monitoring Scale. It was hypothesized was that there would be positive associations between viewing habits and endorsement of dysfunctional relationship beliefs. Results supported this hypothesis. High television viewing was associated with the belief “the sexes are different,” and high soap opera viewing was associated with the belief “mindreading is expected” between partners. High self-monitors watched television more for escape than low self-monitors. Implications for research on dysfunctional relationship beliefs are discussed.     

Concreteness, context availability, and imageability ratings and word associations for abstract, concrete, and emotion words

Normative values on various word characteristics were obtained for abstract, concrete, and emotion words in order to facilitate research on concreteness effects and on the similarities and differences among the three word types. A sample of 78 participants rated abstract, concrete, and emotion words on concreteness, context availability, and imagery scales. Word associations were also gathered for abstract, concrete, and emotion words. The data were used to investigate similarities and differences among these three word types on word attributes, association strengths, and number of associations. These normative data can be used to further research on concreteness effects, word type effects, and word recognition for abstract, concrete, and emotion words.     

Zum Unterstützungsbedarf von Partnern schizophrener Patienten

The aim of this paper is to define concepts regarding the psychological assistance for partners of schizophrenic patients. A total of 28 in-depth interviews were analysed focussing on burdens and needs specific to partners of schizophrenic patients. Additionally, a focal group discussion was carried out. Partners often feel disappointed and dissatisfied with the information and the cooperation provided by psychiatric services. Criticism is directed towards inadequate information and insufficient counselling by physicians, the lack of integration of partners into long-term treatment and neglecting the specific needs of partners by professionals. Partners wish, in contrast, comprehensive information on an individual basis as well as the possibility of an exchange with other partners confronted with similar or identical problems. Generally, psychological assistance and cooperation should be made available as soon as possible after the diagnosis of the disorder. In addition to detailed individual conversations with the treating physician, regular meetings between partners, patient and treatment staff are recommended. Furthermore, specific workshops for partners of schizophrenic patients should be offered, with topics centered on possible changes within the relationship, such as problems with family and household organisation, questions of child education and sexual impairments.     

Desirability of the Bem Sex-Role Inventory Items for Women and Men: A Comparison Between African Americans and European Americans

The Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI) is a widely used instrument for measuring gender role perceptions, but questions have been raised regarding whether its items reflect contemporary views on gender. A recent study (Holt & Ellis, 1998) revalidated all but 2 of the 40 adjectives included in the masculine and feminine BSRI indices for a predominantly European American undergraduate sample in a rural Southern town. We examined whether European Americans in a different geographical area and 2 samples of African Americans would show similar findings. Study participants were recruited in undergraduate management courses in 2 universities and included 62 European American women, 69 European American men, 40 African American women, and 31 African American men in a large Northeastern city and 56 African American women and 33 African American men in a small Southern city. Findings indicated that European American men in the urban Northeast and African American men in the South gave the most traditional ratings, whereas European American women in the urban Northeast expressed the most liberal views. European American women considered only 4 of the 40 BSRI items to be differentially desirable for women and men, a considerable departure from the findings of Holt and Ellis (1998) as well as Bem (1974).