Sex differences in comments made during conflict within close heterosexual pairs

Questionnaires were used to investigate (1) stereotypes about what young couples do and say during their conflicts and (2) reports (by actual young couples) of what each one is likely to do or say. The two sets of data yielded much the same pattern of results. The female is expected and reported to cry and sulk and to criticize the male for lack of consideration of her feelings and for insensitivity to his effect on her. The male is expected and reported to show anger, to reject the female's tears, to call for a logical and less emotional approach to the problem, and to give reasons for delaying the discussion. The Study I expectations for sex differences during conflict are held to about the same degree by the female and male respondents. In both studies, the differences were found to depend primarily on sex of the person and not on the particular problem involved in the conflict. The results are interpreted in terms of the interaction between a conflict-avoidant person (the male) and his partner (the female), who is frustrated by the avoidance and asks that the problem and the feelings associated with it be confronted.     

Care For Pastors: Learning From Clergy and Their Spouses

Pastors and their spouses face unique challenges because of the nature of pastoral work, and yet most manage these challenges successfully. Five studies are presented which help distinguish between intrapersonal, family, and community forms of care. Pastors rely heavily on intrapersonal forms of coping such as spiritual devotion, hobbies, exercise, and taking time away from work. The marriage relationship is also quite important for most clergy and spouses. Relationships outside the immediate family are not commonly identified as coping resources. Implications are discussed.     

Does task-set reconfiguration create cognitive slack?

C. Oriet and P. Jolicoeur (2003) reported 2 experiments in which the perceptual contrast of stimuli was manipulated in a task-switching paradigm. They failed to observe an interaction in the reaction time data between task switching, perceptual contrast, and response-stimulus interval. Using the locus of slack logic, they concluded from these results that early perceptual processing of stimuli awaits the completion of a task-set reconfiguration stage, rather than proceeding in parallel with it. Here, an assumption necessary for this argument is questioned, and it is shown that an existing computational model of task switching, without successive stages for task-set reconfiguration and perceptual processing, produces a similar pattern of data. Thus, C. Oriet and P. Jolicoeur's data are compatible with models in which early perceptual processing and task-set reconfiguration take place in parallel.     

The least likely of times: how remembering the past biases forecasts of the future

Atypical events are both memorable and unrepresentative of their class. We tested the hypotheses that (a) people tend to recall atypical instances of events, and (b) when they are unaware of this, they rely on these atypical instances in forecasting their affective reactions to future events. In three studies, participants who were asked to recall an instance of an event and participants who were asked to recall an atypical instance of an event recalled equally atypical instances. However, only the former participants made extreme forecasts about their reactions to future events. The results suggest that the impact bias (the tendency to overestimate the affective impact of future events) may be due in part to people's reliance on highly available but unrepresentative memories of the past.     

Complex response patterns during temporally spaced responding

A series of experiments is reported in which two monkeys emitted complex response patterns, not specified by the experimental program, during the DRL component of a multiple schedule. Administration of sodium pentobarbital and dl-amphetamine, drugs which disrupted the DRL performance, were also observed to suppress these collateral responses. Sequences of these collateral responses appear to mediate, at least in part, the timing process required for reinforced performance on the DRL schedule.