Timely Completion of Class Requirements: Effects of Student and Faculty Gender

Male and female students have displayed different reactions to the gender of their faculty. This research was designed to explore whether biases exist early in the school term. Students unfavorable attitudes toward instructors were measured by the extent to which they delayed completing a course requirement: participation in a subject pool. Students scheduled a date upon which to participate in a research study. Discrepancies between their scheduled and their actual participation dates reveal that male students delayed their requirement (a) more when their instructors were female than when they were male, and (b) more than female students when the instructors were female. Supporting data suggest that the delayed completion time reflects lower evaluations of female faculty. Discussion focuses on implications in academic settings.     

Mothers and Models of Disability

Based on a qualitative anthropological study of American mothers of infants and young children newly diagnosed with disability, this essay examines how mothers understand their children and define disability in relation to publicly available discourses of disability and identity. In seeking to improve their children's opportunities in mainstream society, mothers appear to comply with the medical model. But over time and in the process of providing meaning to their experience, mothers retool models, drawing both on the social and minority group models' rejection of a problem-based definition of disability as inherently caused by impairment and on their own intimate engagement with impairment as an embodied experience.     

Children's evaluation of sources of information about traits

Children's assessment of the value of different sources of information about psychological traits was investigated among 6- to 7-year-olds and 10- to 11-year-olds across 5 studies (N = 330). Older children were more likely than younger children to reject self-report as a source of information about the highly evaluative traits smart and honest, but no such age-related difference was seen for the less evaluative comparison traits outgoing and nervous. A similar pattern of age-related differences was seen when children were asked to identify which of 4 sources of information--self-report, teacher report, peer report, or direct observation--would be most useful for obtaining information about the evaluative and comparison traits. The age-related increase in skepticism about self-report as a source of information for evaluative traits was associated with an increased appreciation of the role that social desirability plays in self-presentational processes.     

Relationships among compulsive hoarding, trauma, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

The current study investigated aspects of post-traumatic stress disorder and attention deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) among hoarders. Compared to a sample of 36 controls, hoarders (n=26) reported a significantly greater number of different types of trauma, more frequent traumatic experiences, more symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity, and greater comfort derived from possessions. These findings are consistent with previous reports of extensive comorbidity associated with hoarding behaviors, and may reflect the potential usefulness of assessing PTSD and ADHD symptoms at the outset of hoarding treatments, as well as considering alternative pharmacological interventions.     

Analysis of group differences in processing speed: Where are the models of processing?

Recently, Myerson, Adams, Hale, and Jenkins (2003) replied to arguments advanced by Ratcliff, Spieler, and McKoon (2000) about interpretations of Brinley functions. Myerson et al. (2003) focused on methodological and terminological issues, arguing that (1) Brinley functions are not quantile-quantile (QQ) plots of distributions of mean reaction times (RTs) across conditions; that the fact that the slope of a Brinley function is the ratio of the standard deviations of the two distributions of means has no implications for the use of slope as a measure of processing speed; that the ratio of slopes of RT functions for older and young subjects plotted against independent variables equals the Brinley function slope; and that speed-accuracy criterion effects do not account for slowing with age. We reply by showing that Brinley functions are plots of quantiles against quantiles; that the slope is best estimated by the ratio of standard deviations because there is variability in the distributions of mean RTs for both older and young subjects; that the interpretation of equality of the slopes Brinley functions and plots of RTs against independent variables in terms of processing speed is model dependent; and that speed-accuracy effects in some, but not all, experiments are solely responsible for Brinley slopes greater than 1. We conclude by reiterating the point that was not addressed in Myerson et al. (2003), that the goal of research should be modelbased accounts of processing that deal with correct and error RT distributions and accuracy.     

Jamaican child-rearing practices: the role of corporal punishment

The family is the most prominent social group that exists. It prepares its members for the various roles they will perform in society. Yet, the literature has unequivocally singled out the family as the most violent social group, with parental violence against children being the most prevalent type of family violence. While societies like the United States, Japan, and Sweden have taken a hard line on physical punishment and shifted to a gentler approach to discipline, harsh disciplining of children persists elsewhere. In the Caribbean, and Jamaica in particular, child-rearing and disciplinary practices that would warrant child abuse charges in other Western societies are rampant. This article examines the child-rearing techniques of Jamaican adults and their assumed effects on child outcomes. It also examines the plausibility of the assumption that the harsh physical punishment meted out to children is partially responsible for the current social problems of that island nation. We recommend approaches to tackle the broad goals of addressing familial and societal practices that compromise children's development and well-being.     

Meaning through syntax: language comprehension and the reduced relative clause construction

A new explanation is proposed for a long standing question in psycholinguistics: Why are some reduced relative clauses so difficult to comprehend? It is proposed that the meanings of some verbs like race are incompatible with the meaning of the reduced relative clause and that this incompatibility makes sentences like The horse raced past the barn fell unacceptable. In support of their hypotheses, the authors show that reduced relatives of The horse raced past the barn fell type occur in naturally produced sentences with a near-zero probability, whereas reduced relatives with other verbs occur with a probability of about 1 in 20. The authors also support the hypotheses with a number of psycholinguistic experiments and corpus studies.     

Central galanin administration blocks consolidation of spatial learning

Galanin is a neuropeptide that inhibits the evoked release of several neurotransmitters, inhibits the activation of intracellular second messengers, and produces deficits in a variety of rodent learning and memory tasks. To evaluate the actions of galanin on encoding, consolidation, and storage/retrieval, galanin was acutely administered to Sprague-Dawley rats at time points before and after training trials in the Morris water maze. Intraventricular administration of galanin up to 3h after subjects had completed daily training trials in the Morris water task impaired performance on the probe trial, indicating that galanin-blocked consolidation. Pretreatment with an adenylate cyclase activator, forskolin, prevented the deficits in distal cue learning produced by galanin. Di-deoxyforskolin, an inactive analog of forskolin, had no effect. These results provide the first evidence that galanin interferes with long-term memory consolidation processes. A potential mechanism by which galanin produces this impairment may involve the inhibition of adenylate cyclase activity, leading to inhibition of downstream molecular events that are necessary for consolidation of long-term memory.