Socioeconomic Status and Coronary Heart Disease Risk: The Role of Social Cognitive Factors

The aim of this study is to examine existing research on social cognitive factors that may, in part, mediate the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and coronary heart disease (CHD). We focus on how social status is 'carried' in the mental systems of individuals, and how these systems differentially affect CHD risk and associated behaviors. To this end, literatures documenting the association of various social cognitive factors (e.g., social comparison, perceived discrimination, and self-efficacy) with cardiovascular disease are reviewed as are literatures regarding the relationship of these factors to SES. Possible mechanisms through which social cognitions may affect health are addressed. In addition, directions for future research are discussed, and a model identifying the possible associations between social cognitive factors, SES, and coronary disease is provided.     

The effect of standard, motivation, and strategy instructions on the facial processing accuracy of internal and external subjects

In the present study, it was hypothesized that poorer performance of externals in cognitive and interpersonal tasks also would be found in the processing of nonverbal information in the form of a facial affect recognition task. It was further hypothesized that the poorer nonverbal processing performance of externals was due to either their lower motivation or their use of less effective processing strategies. Subjects (N = 70) were divided into internal and external groups and then further subdivided into groups that received standard, motivational, or strategy instructions. Analysis of subjects' responses to the facial affect recognition task showed internals performed significantly better than externals under standard conditions. However, neither motivational nor strategy instructions improved the performance of externals. The implications for interpersonal functioning of the poorer nonverbal processing ability of extenrals was discussed from both theoretical and methodological perspectives.     

Effects of Perceived Group Effectiveness and Group Role on Attributions of Group Performance1

Cadets at the U.S. Military Academy completed a questionnaire describing their experiences in Cadet Basic Training (CBT) and Cadet Field Training (CFT). Analyses of variance examined the impact of Group Role (Leader vs. Follower) and Perceived Group Effectiveness (High vs. Low) on group member perceptions of the extent to which each of six factors affected group performance. Significant main effects for Perceived Effectiveness were interpreted in terms of the egodefensive bias. Role main effects indicated that leaders tended to make stronger dispositional attributions than did followers. There were no signifcant Group Role × Perceived Effectiveness interaction effects. Findings support, in part, hypotheses concerning the operation of an attributional bias within the leader-member relationship.     

Age-related differences in interlingual priming: a behavioural and electrophysiological investigation

Reaction time (RT) and the N400 ERP component were measured to examine age-related differences in bilingual language processing. Although young bilinguals appear to access both languages simultaneously (i.e., non-selective access), little is known about language selection in older adults. The effect of language context on language selectivity was investigated using interlingual homographs (IH; i.e., words with identical orthography but distinct semantic features in two languages, e.g., coin meaning 'corner' in French and 'money' in English). Younger and older French/English bilinguals were presented with triplets of letter strings comprised of a language context cue, an IH, and a target word, in a lexical decision semantic priming task. RT and ERP results support non-selective language access in young adults; however, the older bilinguals used the language context cue to bias their reading of the IH. Results are discussed in terms of age-related changes in language processing and context use in bilinguals.     

Perceptual adaptation to sinewave-vocoded speech across languages

Listeners rapidly adapt to many forms of degraded speech. What level of information drives this adaptation, however, remains unresolved. The current study exposed listeners to sinewave-vocoded speech in one of three languages, which manipulated the type of information shared between the training languages (German, Mandarin, or English) and the testing language (English) in an audio-visual (AV) or an audio plus still frames modality (A + Stills). Three control groups were included to assess procedural learning effects. After training, listeners' perception of novel sinewave-vocoded English sentences was tested. Listeners exposed to German-AV materials performed equivalently to listeners exposed to English AV or A + Stills materials and significantly better than two control groups. The Mandarin groups and German-A + Stills group showed an intermediate level of performance. These results suggest that full lexical access is not absolutely necessary for adaptation to degraded speech, but providing AV-training in a language that is similar phonetically to the testing language can facilitate adaptation.     

The factor structure of the Anxiety Sensitivity Index among Northern Plains Native Americans

Within our current research climate, an emphasis has been placed on examining the cross-cultural applicability of psychological tools, and exploring their utility with people of different backgrounds. Within this line of investigation lies the risk of classifying people too broadly and masking important regional, tribal, or dialectical differences. This may be particularly potent among Native Americans, given the number of distinct indigenous entities. This study examined the psychometric characteristics of the Anxiety Sensitivity Index with a tribally homogeneous sample, as compared to previous tribally-heterogeneous and majority culture findings. Results suggested that data from a homogeneous Native American sample poorly fit factor solutions reported from heterogeneous Native American and Caucasian samples, and favored a unifactorial solution. Implications for assessment with Native American peoples are discussed.