Upward and downward physical appearance comparisons: Development of scales and examination of predictive qualities

Despite good theoretical and empirical rationale for assessing tendencies to make upward and downward physical appearance comparisons no measure for these specific constructs exists. The present work developed and tested the psychometric properties of upward and downward physical appearance comparison scales. The scales were administered to participants (N = 224) along with measures of general appearance comparison tendencies, body image, disordered eating, Antifat and Antigay attitudes. The scales displayed good psychometric properties. Importantly, the upward but not downward physical appearance comparison scale predicted lower Appearance Evaluation and higher EAT-26 scores. Conversely, the downward but not upward physical appearance comparison scale predicted higher Appearance Evaluation and greater Antifat Attitudes (Dislike). The scales were unrelated to a nonappearance related construct. These new measures fill a gap in the literature and may be of benefit to researchers interested in body image, appearance concerns, eating disorders, social comparison, and obesity prejudice.     

Building Communities in Tense Times: Fostering Connectedness Between Cultures and Generations through Community Arts

The worldwide upsurge in social polarizations generates intercommunity tensions that challenge the social fabric of urban neighborhoods and undermine the relationships between their members. Because community arts can foster the creation of connections between people that would not have been in contact otherwise, they are often perceived as being powerful tools to foster community resilience. Through a multiple case study approach, this article describes how three community arts projects, carried out in two socioeconomically deprived neighborhoods of Montreal (Canada), influenced the social relationships between participants from diverse ethnocultural backgrounds and generations. Using participant observation and arts-based data collection methods (photography, video, and arts productions), the authors examine how the three projects illustrate (a) the interactive processes at play, (b) the transmission and hybridization of stories and images of adversity and resiliency, and (c) the access to a collective voice.     

Processing of Numerical and Proportional Quantifiers

Quantifier expressions like “many” and “at least” are part of a rich repository of words in language representing magnitude information. The role of numerical processing in comprehending quantifiers was studied in a semantic truth value judgment task, asking adults to quickly verify sentences about visual displays using numerical (at least seven, at least thirteen, at most seven, at most thirteen) or proportional (many, few) quantifiers. The visual displays were composed of systematically varied proportions of yellow and blue circles. The results demonstrated that numerical estimation and numerical reference information are fundamental in encoding the meaning of quantifiers in terms of response times and acceptability judgments. However, a difference emerges in the comparison strategies when a fixed external reference numerosity (seven or thirteen) is used for numerical quantifiers, whereas an internal numerical criterion is invoked for proportional quantifiers. Moreover, for both quantifier types, quantifier semantics and its polarity (positive vs. negative) biased the response direction (accept/reject). Overall, our results indicate that quantifier comprehension involves core numerical and lexical semantic properties, demonstrating integrated processing of language and numbers.     

Revealing Gender Double Standards in the Parenthood Norm Depends on Question Order

Becoming a parent has been described as a dominant social norm, especially for women. Though some research has indicated changes toward more flexible gendered parenthood norms, methodological issues may be masking the continued presence of a gender double standard. In line with the condition for activation of double standards, we postulated that endorsement of the parenthood norm would vary depending on the response context. Our aim was to analyze the parenthood norm for women and for men taking into account the response context in a quantitative survey. In a French nationally-representative sample, more than 4,000 female and male adults were asked whether a woman/man can have a fulfilled life without having children in two questions presented in a random order. Based on the literature on question-order effects, the answer to the first question should be influenced by the participant’s personal background (e.g., gender, parental status), i.e., the personal background context, whereas the question asked second should be influenced by the comparison with the first question, i.e. the social relational context. In the personal background context, the own-gender parenthood norm was endorsed more strongly than the other-gender parenthood norm by both female and male participants. In contrast, in the social relational context, the parenthood norm for women was endorsed more strongly than the parenthood norm for men by both female and male participants. Our results showed a strong gender double standard observed only in the comparative context and illustrates the need to use appropriate survey methodology to examine the presence of gendered social norms.

     

Intact Procedural Knowledge in Patients with Alzheimer's Disease: Evidence from Golf Putting

Can Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients efficiently learn to perform a complex motor skill when relying on procedural knowledge? To address this question, the authors compared the golf-putting performance of AD patients, older adults, and younger adults in 2 different learning situations: one that promotes high error rates (thus increasing the reliance on declarative knowledge) or one that promotes low error rates (thus increasing the reliance on procedural knowledge). Motor performance was poorer overall for AD patients and older adults relative to younger adults in the high-error condition but equivalent between similar groups in the low-error condition. Also, AD patients in the low-error condition had better performance at the final putting distance relative to those in the high-error condition. This performance facilitation for AD patients likely stems from intact procedural knowledge.     

Context-dependent activation of reduced autobiographical memory specificity as an avoidant coping style

According to the affect-regulation hypothesis (Williams et al., 2007), reduced autobiographical memory specificity (rAMS) or overgeneral memory (OGM) might be considered a cognitive avoidance strategy; that is, people learn to avoid the emotionally painful consequences associated with the retrieval of specific negative memories. Based on this hypothesis, one would predict significant negative associations between AMS and avoidant coping. However, studies investigating this prediction have led to equivocal results. In the present study we tested a possible explanation for these contradictory findings. It was hypothesized that rAMS (in part) reflects an avoidant coping strategy, which might only become apparent under certain conditions, that is, conditions that signal the possibility of 'danger.' To test this hypothesis, we assessed AMS and behavioral avoidance but experimentally manipulated the instructions. In the neutral condition, two parallel versions of the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT) were presented under neutral instructions. In the threat condition, the first AMT was presented under neutral instructions, while the second AMT was presented under 'threat instructions.' Results showed no significant correlations between avoidance and OGM under neutral conditions but significant and markedly stronger correlations under threat conditions, with more avoidance being associated with fewer specific and more categoric memories. In addition, high avoiders showed a stronger reduction in AMS in the threat condition as compared with the neutral condition, while low avoiders showed no such difference between conditions. The data confirm that OGM can be considered as part of a broader avoidant coping style. However, more importantly, they show that, at least in nonclinical individuals, the activation of this coping style may depend on the context.     

When less is heard than meets the ear: change deafness in a telephone conversation

During a conversation, we hear the sound of the talker as well as the intended message. Traditional models of speech perception posit that acoustic details of a talker's voice are not encoded with the message whereas more recent models propose that talker identity is automatically encoded. When shadowing speech, listeners often fail to detect a change in talker identity. The present study was designed to investigate whether talker changes would be detected when listeners are actively engaged in a normal conversation, and visual information about the speaker is absent. Participants were called on the phone, and during the conversation the experimenter was surreptitiously replaced by another talker. Participants rarely noticed the change. However, when explicitly monitoring for a change, detection increased. Voice memory tests suggested that participants remembered only coarse information about both voices, rather than fine details. This suggests that although listeners are capable of change detection, voice information is not continuously monitored at a fine-grain level of acoustic representation during natural conversation and is not automatically encoded. Conversational expectations may shape the way we direct attention to voice characteristics and perceive differences in voice.