Susceptibility to peer influence: using a performance-based measure to identify adolescent males at heightened risk for deviant peer socialization

A substantial amount of research has suggested that adolescents' attitudes and behaviors are influenced by peers; however, little is known regarding adolescents' individual variability, or susceptibility, to peer influence. In this study, a performance-based index from an experimental paradigm was used to directly measure adolescents' susceptibility to peers. A total of 36 adolescent boys participated in a "chat room" experiment in which they ostensibly were exposed to deviant or risky social norms communicated either by high-peer-status (i.e., popular, well-liked) or low-peer-status (i.e., unpopular, disliked) grade mates who actually were electronic confederates. Changes in adolescents' responses before and after exposure to peer norms were used as a measure of peer influence susceptibility. These same adolescents completed a questionnaire assessment at the study outset and again 18 months later to assess their actual engagement in deviant behavior and their perceptions of their best friend's engagement in deviant behavior. Only among adolescents with high levels of susceptibility to high-status peers was a significant longitudinal association revealed between their best friend's baseline deviant behavior and adolescents' own deviant behavior 18 months later. Findings support the predictive validity of a performance-based susceptibility measure and suggest that adolescents' peer influence susceptibility may generalize across peer contexts.     

Training social cognition: from imitation to Theory of Mind

Evidence for successful socio-cognitive training in typical adults is rare. This study attempted to improve Theory of Mind (ToM) and visual perspective taking in healthy adults by training participants to either imitate or to inhibit imitation. Twenty-four hours after training, all participants completed tests of ToM and visual perspective taking. The group trained to inhibit their tendency to imitate showed improved performance on the visual perspective-taking test, but not the ToM test. Neither imitation training, nor general inhibition training, had this effect. These results support a novel theory of social cognition suggesting that the same self-other discrimination process underlies imitation inhibition and perspective taking. Imitation, perspective taking and ToM are all pro-social processes--ways in which we reach out to others. Therefore, it is striking that perspective taking can be enhanced by suppressing imitation; to understand another, sometimes we need, not to get closer, but to pull away.     

The effects of emotional arousal and gender on the associative memory deficit of older adults

In this study we assessed the potential moderating roles of stimulus type (emotionally arousing) and participants’ characteristics (gender) in older adults’ associative memory deficit. In two experiments, young and older participants studied lists that included neutral and emotionally arousing word pairs (positive and negative) and completed recognition tests for the words and their associations. In Experiment 1, the majority of the word pairs were composed of two nouns, whereas in Experiment 2 they were composed of adjective–noun pairs. The results extend evidence for older adults’ associative deficit and suggest that older and younger adults’ item memory is improved for emotionally arousing words. However, associative memory for the word pairs did not benefit (and even showed a slight decline) from emotionally arousing words, which was the case for both younger and older adults. In addition, in these experiments, gender appeared to moderate the associative deficit of older adults, with older males but not females demonstrating this deficit.     

Exploring outcomes through narrative: the long-term impacts of Better Beginnings, Better Futures on the turning point stories of youth at ages 18-19

This study examined the long-term effects of the Better Beginnings, Better Futures project, a community-based early childhood development program, on 18–19 year-old youths’ narratives about turning points in their lives. The sample consisted of youth who participated in Better Beginnings from ages 4–8 (n = 62) and youth from a comparison community who did not participate in Better Beginnings (n = 34). Controlling for covariates, significant differences favoring youth from the Better Beginnings sites were found on several dimensions of the turning point stories: ending resolution, personal growth, meaning-making, coherence, and affect transformation. Effect sizes ranged from .45 to .76 for these outcome dimensions, indicating moderate to large effects. Also, turning point story dimensions were found to be significantly correlated with two standardized measures of well-being: youths’ self-esteem and community involvement. Youths’ self-esteem was directly related to story ending resolution, personal growth, and meaning making, and youths’ community involvement was directly related to story specificity, meaning making, and coherence. Family functioning was also examined in relation to these narrative dimensions but was not found to be significantly related to them. The findings suggest the utility of a narrative approach for the evaluation of the long-term outcomes of early childhood development programs.     

The role of the magnocellular visual pathway in the attentional blink

Visual attention has temporal limitations. In the attentional blink (AB) a stream of stimuli such as letters or digits are presented to a participant on a computer monitor at a rapid rate. Embedded in the stream are two targets that the participant must try to identify. Identification of the second target is severely impaired if it is presented within approximately 500ms of the first target. This is the 'blink' in visual attention. In this study we examined the role of the magnocellular visual pathway in the AB. This fast conducting pathway has high temporal resolution and contrast sensitivity. It is also insensitive to the direction of chromatic contrast, and this attribute was exploited in order to isolate its contributions to temporal attention. Colour defined, luminance noise masked AB streams were compared to AB streams of varying achromatic contrast. The four observers, (2F and 2M) aged between 21 and 35years, had normal visual acuity and colour vision. The colour stimuli produced a similar blink to the moderate contrast achromatic stimuli. This indicates that the magnocellular pathway does not have a privileged role in the attentional blink. We provide an explanation of previous apparently contradictory findings in terms of the role of different types of visual masking in the attentional blink.     

Standard errors and confidence intervals in within-subjects designs: Generalizing Loftus and Masson (1994) and avoiding the biases of alternative accounts

Repeated measures designs are common in experimental psychology. Because of the correlational structure in these designs, the calculation and interpretation of confidence intervals is nontrivial. One solution was provided by Loftus and Masson (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 1:476-490, 1994). This solution, although widely adopted, has the limitation of implying same-size confidence intervals for all factor levels, and therefore does not allow for the assessment of variance homogeneity assumptions (i.e., the circularity assumption, which is crucial for the repeated measures ANOVA). This limitation and the method's perceived complexity have sometimes led scientists to use a simplified variant, based on a per-subject normalization of the data (Bakeman & McArthur, Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers 28:584-589, 1996; Cousineau, Tutorials in Quantitative Methods for Psychology 1:42-45, 2005; Morey, Tutorials in Quantitative Methods for Psychology 4:61-64, 2008; Morrison & Weaver, Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers 27:52-56, 1995). We show that this normalization method leads to biased results and is uninformative with regard to circularity. Instead, we provide a simple, intuitive generalization of the Loftus and Masson method that allows for assessment of the circularity assumption.     

Is Smoking Queer? Implications of California Tobacco Denormalization Strategies for Queer Current and Former Smokers

ABSTRACT

This article is concerned with normative conceptions of health structuring tobacco control strategies designed to “denormalize” tobacco use. Analysis of 201 interviews with non-heterosexual and/or non-cisgender adults in California revealed that participants implicated tobacco use in exacerbating health inequities and perpetuating harmful narratives of queer suffering, but also regarded smoking as a critical tool for self-care and symbol of resistance. Participant narratives suggest that using stigma in health promotion efforts which reinforce normative conceptions of health may be harmful to queer people whose social identities exist within ongoing legacies of pathology, health stigma, and deviance from hegemonic structural norms.