Influences on responsiveness: Interactions between mothers and their premature infants

The responsiveness of mothers to their infants has been found to make an important contribution to children's development. Mothers' cognitive ability, emotional state, and life stresses may influence their responsiveness, as may the medical condition of their infants. The patterns of influence may vary between groups of children with different biological risk conditions and should be examined carefully to determine intervention points for different groups. Forty mothers and their 3-month-old (corrected age) infants with intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH) were observed in free play. Mothers' depressive symptoms, cognitive skills, and the degree of infants' IVH were assessed and expected to be influences on mothers' responsiveness. Results indicated that mothers' depressive symptoms and cognitive skills were associated with their responsiveness, but that depressive symptoms were the stronger predictor. Post hoc analyses suggested that socioeconomic status and depressive symptoms may have related effects on mothers' behavior.     

Hostile masculinity,sexual aggresion,and gender-biased domineeringness in conversations

This study assessed the ability of certain variables to predict which men would be more domineering in conversations with a woman and/or with a man. The variables included men's self-reported sexually aggressive behavior and several components comprising a personality profile labeled “Hostile Masculinity.” As expected, these variables successfully predicted domineering behavior toward the female but not toward the male. These findings supported theories hypothesizing that men's desire to control women and men's antisocial behavior toward them are due to specific rather than to general factors (i. e., evolutionary and feminist theorizing). © 1994 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

“Feeling my Sister’s Pain”: Perceived Victim Suffering Moderates the Impact of Sexualized Music Videos on Fijian Women’s Responses to Men’s Intimate Partner Violence against Women

To better understand how sexualized music videos affect women’s responses to intimate partner violence (IPV), we examined the role of individual variability in perceived victim pain and perceived victim culpability in moderating and mediating (respectively) the priming effects of sexual music videos on women. Female Fijian college students (n?=?243) were randomly assigned to one of three viewing conditions: stereotyped sexual music videos, non-stereotyped/non-sexual music videos, or neutral videos. All participants then read a portrayal of a male-toward-female IPV episode and their perceptions of the female victim and male perpetrator were assessed. Only women who minimized the victim’s pain were adversely affected by exposure to the stereotyped sexual videos. Specifically, for women who perceived low victim pain, those in the stereotyped video condition perceived the victim as more culpable and reported greater perpetrator-directed favorable responding than those in the other two conditions. For these women who perceived low victim pain, perceptions of victim culpability mediated the impact of video type on perpetrator-favorable responding. The findings help us better understand susceptibility to the negative impact of stereotypical sexual videos and highlight areas, such as emphasizing the suffering of victims and reducing myths about victim culpability, which may be worthy of particular emphasis in interventions.

     

Applying theory to the black box: A model for empirically scoring biodata

Despite being an effective predictor of job performance, empirically keyed biodata assessments have been criticized as black box empiricism unlikely to generalize to new contexts. This paper introduces a model that challenges this perspective, explicating how biodata content, job demands, and criterion variables collectively influence the construct validity, and generalizability of empirically scored biodata. Across two field studies, expected changes in scale correlations with external measures were found that coincided with changes in the contextual similarity between calibration and holdout contexts, the criteria used, and the content validity of biodata items. Collectively, this paper offers a framework that helps understand and optimize empirical biodata keying in practice, furthering confidence for their use in applied settings.     

Two-year-olds' search strategies and visual tracking in a hidden displacement task

Children younger than 3 years have difficulty with search tasks that involve hidden displacement. Partial visual information was provided about a ball's path as it moved toward a hiding place. Children (2.0 and 2.5 years old) saw a ball rolling down a ramp placed behind a transparent screen with 4 opaque doors. A wall, placed on the ramp and directly behind 1 of the doors, protruded above the screen and stopped the ball. Children were asked to find the ball. The transparency of the screen permitted visual tracking of the ball between the doors, but its final resting place was obscured. Both age groups were equally proficient at tracking the ball as it rolled behind the screen, but the 2.5-year-olds were more likely to reach to the correct door. Looking behavior was related to errors in the younger group in that tracking that stopped short or continued past the correct door was associated with incorrect choices.     

Depression and its relation to light deprivation

The absence or diminution of light is potentially an anxiety-arousing situation for, perhaps, all of us. Even a cursory look at the origin myths of many cultures reveals the chaotic, destructive, and dangerous aspects of darkness. Additionally, language reflects the same qualities metaphorically and symbolically. Developmentally, the arrival of the darkness of evening potentially signals object loss and ego regression. But factors other than ubiquitous references to a consideration of light and darkness are relevant. Can it be that we are all at least prone to depression due in part to this factor? Questions regarding possible biological causes of depression are perhaps unanswerable at this time. Is the seratonin level really associated with depression and light deprivation? Research is as yet inconclusive. If a relationship exists, another question must be asked: Will certain psychological situations affect a person's seratonin production? The answer to this question of how depression is associated with biological causes is certainly beyond the scope of this paper. Yet the preceding case history reveals at least some psychological causes of depression that were initially seen as biologically based. The SAD proponents would have treated Mr. B with light therapy. The quick solution of light therapy, based on a shaky theoretical base and lacking sturdy research, has too often replaced the psychoanalytic approach. In all too many situations psychoanalysts are being replaced by lightbulbs.     

Positive and negative generation effects,hypermnesia, and total recall time

Self-generated information is typically remembered better than perceived information (the generation effect). Experimental design produces an important limiting condition for this effect: Generation enhances recall in within-subjects designs, but typically not in between-subjects designs. However, Mulligan (2001) found that the generation effect emerged over repeated recall tests in a between-subjects design, calling into question the generality of this limiting condition. Two experiments further delineated the emergent generation effect Experiment 1 demonstrated that this effect does not require multiple discrete recall tests but may emerge on a single recall test of long duration. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the negative generation effect (a reversal of the typical generation effect produced under certain conditions) is abolished by multiple recall tests. In both experiments, the generate condition produced greater hypemnesia (increased recall over tests) than did the read condition.