Sexual victimization among sorority women: Exploring the link between sexual violence and institutional practices

This study investigates the incidence and nature of sexual coercion among sorority women. Particular emphasis is placed on sexual coercion that occurs within the context of fraternal life. Overall, almost half of those studied had experienced some form of sexual coercion, 24% experienced attempted rape, and 17% were victims of completed rape. Almost half of the rapes occurred in a fraternity house, and over half occurred either during a fraternity function or was perpetrated by a fraternity member. This study provides evidence that fraternities represent a social context that tolerates, if not actually encourages, sexual coercion of women, including sorority women.     

A psychological interview process for career assessment

The authors present a comprehensive four-step process for conducting initial career assessment by interview. The process assesses skills, interests, values, non-work relationships, goals and activities, and psychological aspects such as self-esteem and work attitudes. The interview process is flexible, internally consistent and portable. Step One analyzes the client's work history and includes reasons why such a history may be inadequate. Step Two examines work-related preferences. Step Three investigates lifestyle context, and Step Four produces a summary of all the accumulated interview information, including options the client wishes to avoid. Detailed worksheets accompany the article.This article has been adapted, with permission, from Chapter 3, Promoting Client Self Understanding, in Yost, E. B., and Corbishley, M. A.Career Counseling: A Psychological Approach. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1987.     

Functionalism and type-type identity theories

Conclusion Token-token identity theorists do not and need not deny that it may frequently be the same (kind of) brain state which on different occasions fills the functional rôle definitive of a given mental state. That is not at issue. What is at issue is whether functionally-oriented identity theorists should make two claims or three claims.The two claims they customarily make are, first, that each instance of a mental state is an instance of a brain state, and, secondly, that being in a mental state is having in one a state filling the relevant functional rôle. But to be in a mental state is to have that state in one. To be in pain is to have pain, to desire water is to have desire for water, and so on; just as to be poisoned is to have poison in you. (It is to have what is poison for you at the time, of course; and likewise for pain, desire and so on.)Our paper has been about a third sort of claim — relating particularly not to being in a mental state, nor to instances of that state, but to the mental state itself. We have argued that functionally-oriented identity theorists can and should make, in addition to the first two claims, the third type-type identity claim that mental states are brain states. Consequently a token brain state is a token of pain in a derivative sense. What makes it a token of pain is that it is a token of the type of brain state which realizes the pain-rôle for the organism at the time.     

Mental shock can produce retrograde amnesia

Subjects in three experiments saw a short film of a mentally shocking event in which a young boy is violently shot in the face. Compared to other subjects who saw a nonviolent version of the same film, those who saw the mentally shocking version showed poorer retention of the details of the film. Retention was poorer whether measured by recognition or recall. Furthermore, impaired memory occurred only when the event was mentally upsetting, and not when it was merely unexpected but not upsetting. These results suggest that mentally shocking episodes may disrupt the lingering processing necessary for full storage of information in memory.     

The fractionation of arithmetical skills: A single case study

A single case study of a patient with a selective impairment of arithmetical calculation is reported. DRC became severely acalculic after sustaining a left parietal intra-cerebral haematoma. His numeracy skills were documented as fully as possible. It was found that his knowledge of the significance of individual numbers and his concept of quantity appeared to be intact, but simple addition, subtraction and multiplication were all performed laboriously and inaccurately and his performance was inconsistent from trial to trial. Further it was shown that it was his knowledge of arithmetical facts not his knowledge of arithmetical operations which was impaired. The findings are discussed in relation to models of arithmetical calculation and it is concluded that for DRC there was a deficit in accessing one category of verbal semantic knowledge systems, namely arithmetical facts.     

A prescriptive paradigm for sequencing instruction in physical education

Recent advances in the understanding of the neurological basis of motor control have made possible an explanation of motor skill acquisition in terms of the notion of programs of muscle synergies. The progressive development of an individual's capacity to control these synergies may be presented as a kind of hierarchical organization of processing levels based upon changes in the neurological location of motor control and the ability of the individual to make adjustments in the programs. This paper is an attempt to apply this information about the processing levels of motor control to the problem of the identification of a paradigm to assist practitioners in the design of sequences of motor skill learning experiences. Such a paradigm is proposed as a reformulation of Jewett's Movement Process Category System, a model originally created for use in curriculum decision-making.The proposed reformulation identifies three subphases of adaptive skill acquisition: skill construction, where a program of synergies is first automated; skill stabilization, where that program is then schematized; and skill differentiation, where that program is finally modularized. Within each of the subphases, processing levels are defined to enable the practitioner to give directions and design learning environments which will focus upon the students' gaining progressive control of the program of synergies selected for acquisition. Comments made throughout this presentation are intended to bridge the gap between motor control research and the teaching of skills, as well as encourage researchers in the motor learning/motor development areas to consider the notion of programs of muscle synergies as the fundamental explanatory unit for motor skill acquisition.     

Fat,Four-Eyed,and Female: Stereotypes of Obesity,Glasses, and Gender1

In a between-subjects design, 46 male and 101 female Australian university students rated a target person described as male or female, overweight or average weight, and wearing glasses or not, on twelve 7-point rating scales. As predicted, a negative stereotype of the overweight person and a complex one of the person with glasses were found. However, there was no significant effect of sex of target except on the ratings of masculine and feminine and no interaction of sex of target with either the glasses or obesity variables. Nor did sex of subject influence the ratings. The results suggest that, although stereotypes of obesity and glasses do exist, they may be as severe for men as for women.     

Religious faith and adjustment to long-term hemodialysis

This study examines religious faith as associated with adjustment to end-stage renal failure and its treatment regimen of maintenance hemodialysis. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected initially and after a three-year interval in order to observe changes over time. The variable of the patient's perception of the import of religious faith was found to be positively related to interactional behavior and sick role behavior and to be inversely associated with alienation. Content analysis of qualitative responses for the item of perceived import of religious faith revealed a pattern of increasingly more positive patient attitudes occurring over time.     

Perceived depth vs. structural relevance in the object-superiority effect

When subjects must identify a barely visible line in a briefly flashed display, their accuracy depends on the configuration of the context in which the target line appears. Weisstein and Harris (1974) found that accuracy is highest when the target is part of a pattern that resembles a unified, three-dimensional object, and lowest in a flat-looking pattern composed of disconnected lines; they labeled this phenomenon the object-superiority effect. In the three experiments reported here, identification accuracy was found to correlate highly and significantly (r =.78) with the judged depth of the patterns. Judged structural relevance of the target line to the pattern (McClelland & Miller, 1979) was uncorrelated with accuracy (r=?.28). Even when the target line appeared as an isolated fragment within the context pattern, a pattern perceived as three-dimensional yielded higher identification accuracy than one perceived as flat.