Neosexism Among Male Managers: Is It a Matter of Numbers?1

In the last 2 decades, the number of women entering the managerial field has increased. However, this increase has not been equally distributed at all levels. The interest of this study lies in understanding how this sudden surge of women in managerial fields and their unequal distribution across levels are associated with men's reactions toward women. Do men feel threatened by the introduction of women as their coworkers, and if so does this change trigger prejudicial views of women? In all, 123 male managers employed in a Canadian federal agency participated in this study. According to the final path model, as the estimate of the representation of female managers increases, so does male managers' feeling of threat. Feeling threatened along with the estimate of an increase of new female recruits is linked to heightened neosexist views. In turn, neosexism is related to a pro-male bias in the evaluation of women's and men's competence. Additionally, neosexism is negatively associated with men's willingness to support women. Theoretical as well as practical implications of results are discussed.     

Personal Relative Deprivation: A Look at the Grievous Consequences of Grievance

Stouffer et al. (1949) have first coined the term ‘relative deprivation’ to account for unexpected grievance expressed by members of a fortunate group. Many researchers have built on this work and have concluded that a person's feeling of deprivation is relative rather than absolute. In other words, deprivation stems from a social comparison with better‐off persons. In this chapter, a brief summary of the ground‐breaking research on relative deprivation is presented followed by an overview of research on overt and covert responses to personal relative deprivation. In accounting for the silent reactions of the underprivileged, we mainly focus on recent research linking personal relative deprivation to psychological disengagement. Turning to the responses of members of privileged groups, we take into account personal relative deprivation and gratification. Our concluding remarks suggest that responses of both the underprivileged and the privileged concur to the maintenance of the status quo.     

Syllable onsets are perceptual reading units

Syllable onsets are defined as the initial consonant or consonant cluster in a syllable (e.g., BR in BREAD). In the present study, using a letter detection paradigm and French words, we tested whether syllable onsets are processed as units by the reading system. In Experiment 1, we replicated Gross, Treiman, and Inman's (2000) result of observing no difference between the detection latencies of letters embedded in a multi-letter syllable onset (e.g., c in ECLATER) relative to a single-letter syllable onset (e.g., C in ECARTER). In Experiment 2, participants took longer to detect the target letter when it was in the second position of a multi-letter onset (e.g., L in TABLIER) than when it was a single-letter onset (e.g., L in ECOLIER). In Experiment 3, this position effect was replicated for graphemes. In Experiment 4, we tested and ruled out an alternative explanation of the unitization effect, in terms of lateral masking. These results indicate that syllable onsets are processed as perceptual units by the reading system and that the unitization effect is position dependent.     

The heterogeneity of picture-supported narratives in Alzheimer's disease

This study describes discourse patterns produced by 46 Alzheimer disease (AD) patients and 53 normal elderly subjects in two picture-supported narratives. Nine measures derived from a cognitive model of discourse processing were obtained and submitted to cluster analysis. Results indicate that discourse patterns elicited from both stimuli were heterogeneous. Further, they fail to clearly differentiate between normal aging and AD in half of the AD patients. Discourse patterns are examined in light of various sources of heterogeneity including severity of cognitive impairment, subject characteristics, and task demands. The usefulness of discourse as a diagnostic and therapeutic tool is discussed.     

Auditory ERP in extremely premature 5-year-old children

The aim of this research was to test the hypothesis of a functional impairment in the automatic detection of deviant tones in 141 children born after 25 to 28 weeks of gestational age, as compared to 45 age-matched full-term control children. All of them were assessed at age 5 years 9 months and instructed to listen passively to two different pure tones (1000 vs 1200 Hz; 20 vs 80%) counterbalanced between ears. Rarity was thus defined by specific ear by tone combinations. The temporal N100 showed a clear contralateral functional organization of the central auditory pathway, especially for the left ear, but without group difference. By contrast, in full-term controls but not in premature children, the central N200 was specifically increased over frontal leads to rare stimuli as compared to frequent. Premature children demonstrated a lack of brain response when more complex processing integrating different informations was required.