Housework Allocation,Negotiation Strategies,and Relationship Satisfaction in Cohabiting Emerging Adult Heterosexual Couples

Sex Roles - The purpose of the current study was twofold; first, to examine the association between equity and equality by comparing heterosexual romantic partners’ distribution of time as a...     

Scores on the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for children in a longitudinal study of pubertal Spanish youth.

Changes in scores on the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children for a sample of 534 pubertal adolescents were longitudinally studied over a period of 4 years. Biological development and other variables were investigated. For the 310 boys, A-trait scores decreased significantly with age. The 224 girls showed significantly higher scores than boys in all years of the study. No significant relationship was found between anxiety and pubertal maturity. The year-to-year persistence in symptomatology of anxiety ranged between 55.6% and 66.1% for girls and between 48.5% and 53.1% for boys. Girls showed bi- and tri-annual persistence between 31% and 50%, and boys between 13% and 27%. Neuroticism scores formed the best predictor of A-trait scores. Symptomatology of anxiety is not transient during early adolescence, so personality may provide a risk indicator in the development of anxiety.     

Why we walk the way we do

By using inverse dynamics and forceplate recordings, this study established the principle of oscillating systems and the influence of gravity and body parameters on the programming of the gait parameters, step frequency and length. Calculation of the ratio of the amplitude of the center of mass (CM) and the center of foot pressure (CP) oscillations yielded an equation and established a biomechanical constant, the natural body frequency (NBF). NBF appears to be an absolute invariant parameter, specific to human standing posture and gait in terrestrial gravity, which influences the relative positions of CM and CP and whose value separates the frequency bands of standing posture from those for gait. This equation was tested by using the experimental paradigm of stepping in place and then used in calculating the magnitude of CM oscillations during gait. The biomechanical analysis of the experimental observations allows one to establish the relationships between body parameters and gravity and the central programming of locomotor parameters.     

Organizational self-evaluation: An emerging frontier for organizational improvement

The authors have been working to improve clients’ institutional performance through a framework for institutional assessment and self-assessment. In this framework, performance is defined in terms of mission fulfillment, efficiency, and ongoing relevance (the extent to which the organization adapts to changing conditions in its environment). The framework implies that certain contextual forces drive performance: the internal capacities and motivation of an organization and its external environment. The article presents the framework as well as case studies of several institutions that are using the framework to assess themselves.     

Convenient fixation location within isolated words of different length and structure

When a word is visually presented in a naming or comparison task in such a way that the eye is initially fixated at different locations within the word, a very strong effect of fixation location is found. The effect appears as a U-shaped curve. Naming time and total fixation time (gaze duration) have a minimum for an initial fixation location between the third and fifth letter of the word (for words that are 5-11 letters long). When initial fixation location deviates from this optimum position, times increase at the surprisingly fast rate of 20-30 ms per letter of deviation. By manipulating the internal lexical structure of the words, we show that at least part of the fixation location effect is caused by mechanisms related to ongoing lexical processing. This is demonstrated by the fact that the fixation location effect takes a different form when the most informative part of a word (as determined by dictionary counts) occurs at the beginning or the end of the word.     

Effects of post-trial administration of naloxone and beta-endorphin on shock-induced fighting in rats

To study the involvement of endogenous opioid peptides in the development of shock-induced fighting, naloxone (2 mg/kg) or beta-endorphin (10 micrograms/kg) was administered subcutaneously immediately after the session and during nine consecutive daily sessions to rats repeatedly exposed to electric shocks. beta-Endorphin blocked the development of shock-induced fighting while naloxone facilitated it but only when shock-induced fighting occurred at a low rate. The effects of beta-endorphin were time dependent since when beta-endorphin was injected 90 min after the shock session instead of immediately after, its impairing effect disappeared. In addition, naloxone blocked the impairment produced by beta-endorphin. Differential postsession treatment of each member of pairs of rats with naloxone and beta-endorphin resulted in a higher probability of rats treated with naloxone to be dominant over rats treated with beta-endorphin in the test situation. These results are discussed in relation with the possible involvement of endogenous opioids in the modulation of the physiological consequences of defensive behavioral responses to shock.     

Phonological priming in spoken word recognition: Task effects

In two experiments, we examined the role of phonological relatedness between spoken items using both the lexical decision task and the shadowing task. In Experiment 1, words were used as primes and overlaps of zero (control), one, two, or all four or five (repetition) phonemes were compared. Except for the repetition conditions, in which facilitation was found, phonological overlap resulted in interference on word responses. These effects occurred in both tasks but were larger in lexical decision than in shadowing. The effects that were evident in shadowing can be attributed to an attentional mechanism linked to the subjects' expectancies of repetitions. The extra effects obtained in lexical decision can be interpreted by taking into account both activation of the response corresponding to the prime's lexical status and postlexical processes that check for phonological congruency between prime and target. In Experiment 2, some modifications were introduced to prevent the involvement of strategic factors, and pseudowords were used as primes. No effect at all was observed in shadowing, whereas in lexical decision interference effects occurred, which is consistent with the hypothesis that lexical decision may be negatively affected by finding a phonological discrepancy at the same time as the primed response is reactivated. Neither experiment provided evidence for the occurrence of phonological priming in the perceptual processing of words.     

Identity and sociocultural change: Comparing young indigenous people in Chiapas who have different sociodemographic trajectories

One of the most commonly used distinctions in cross‐cultural studies is the one between individualism and collectivism. One of the criticisms levelled at this distinction is that it fails to incorporate the differences that may exist when comparing people from a rural context with little formal education to people from the same group who live in an urban context where formal education is the norm. Bearing in mind these sociodemographic factors, we have compared the self‐concepts among 104 young indigenous people in Chiapas (Mexico), having divided them into three groups: “rural‐traditional,” “rural–urban” and “urban.” These people's self‐concepts were analysed using a task that contrasts personal self‐concept with social self‐concept and a technique in which participants draw themselves along with the things and people they consider most important to them. The results reveal significant differences between the three groups. The personal categories are given a higher value in the “urban” group while the social categories score higher in the “rural‐traditional” group. Regarding the results of the indigenous self‐portraits, from the content analysis of the drawings, 16 categories emerged. These findings are discussed in the light of Greenfield's theory of social change and human development.