Music lessons enhance IQ

The idea that music makes you smarter has received considerable attention from scholars and the media. The present report is the first to test this hypothesis directly with random assignment of a large sample of children (N = 144) to two different types of music lessons (keyboard or voice) or to control groups that received drama lessons or no lessons. IQ was measured before and after the lessons. Compared with children in the control groups, children in the music groups exhibited greater increases in full-scale IQ. The effect was relatively small, but it generalized across IQ subtests, index scores, and a standardized measure of academic achievement. Unexpectedly, children in the drama group exhibited substantial pre- to post-test improvements in adaptive social behavior that were not evident in the music groups.     

Sex, sexual orientation, and identification of positive and negative facial affect

Sex and sexual orientation related differences in processing of happy and sad facial emotions were examined using an experimental facial emotion recognition paradigm with a large sample (N = 240). Analysis of covariance (controlling for age and IQ) revealed that women (irrespective of sexual orientation) had faster reaction times than men for accurate identification of facial emotion and were more accurate in identifying male faces than female ones, whereas men performed the same regardless of the sex of the face. However, there were no overall sex differences in accuracy. These findings suggest a limited role for sex in the perception of facial affect.     

Onset of frailty in older adults and the protective role of positive affect

The aim of this study was to examine the longitudinal association between positive affect and onset of frailty for 1,558 initially nonfrail older Mexican Americans from the Hispanic Established Populations for Epidemiological Studies of the Elderly database. The incidence of frailty increased 7.9% during the 7-year follow-up period. High positive affect was found to significantly lower the risk of frailty. Each unit increase in baseline positive affect score was associated with a 3% decreased risk of frailty after adjusting for relevant risk factors. Findings add to a growing positive psychology literature by showing that positive affect is protective against the functional and physical decline associated with frailty.     

A dual-process model of reactions to perceived stigma

The authors propose a theoretical model of individual psychological reactions to perceived stigma. This model suggests that 2 psychological systems may be involved in reactions to stigma across a variety of social contexts. One system is primarily reflexive, or associative, whereas the other is rule based, or reflective. This model assumes a temporal pattern of reactions to the stigmatized, such that initial reactions are governed by the reflexive system, whereas subsequent reactions or "adjustments" are governed by the rule-based system. Support for this model was found in 2 studies. Both studies examined participants' moment-by-moment approach-avoidance reactions to the stigmatized. The 1st involved participants' reactions to persons with HIV/AIDS, and the 2nd, participants' reactions to 15 different stigmatizing conditions.     

A comparative study of values and attitudes of inner-city and middle-class postpartum women

This study compared postpartum women from the inner city (n = 94) and postpartum women from the urban middle class (n = 80) on values and goals for themselves and their newborn children. Terminal values of inner-city women for themselves related more to social and religious goals in contrast to the more intrapersonal and personal goals of middle-class women. Instrumental values of inner-city women for their newborn children demonstrated concern with conformity and control, whereas for the middle class there was more concern with competence. Goals for the near future of the inner-city mothers were based on a desire for jobs and education.     

Ego Constriction

The terms ego constriction, ego inhibition, and ego restriction have not been clearly differentiated in their usage in the literature. In this paper a rationale for "ego constriction" as an entity distinct from both ego inhibition and ego restriction is given, despite its clear similarities to each. In a person with an ego inhibition, the ego inhibits a part of its own functioning because a particular function is linked to an unacceptable impulse. It is an internalized conflict. The person with an ego restriction, in contrast, avoids psychological pain triggered from an area in the outside world by restricting activity in that area. Like each of these problems but different, a person with an ego constriction first externalizes an internalized conflict associated with important functions or activities. Then, only through a series of particular obligatory steps can the person "overcome" the ego constriction--albeit temporarily. It is noted in this paper that the function of the specified obligatory steps is structurally parallel to the rigid obligatory behavior necessary for genital gratification in the perversions. As the recognition of this distinction arose in the course of an analysis of a mental health professional, something of the necessarily shared nature of analytic work is noticeable, shining through as the background for the work of this paper.     

Phonological underspecification and mapping mechanisms in the speech recognition lexicon

The problem of recognizing phonological variations in the speech input has triggered numerous treatments in speech processing models. Two areas of current controversy are the possibility of phonological underspecification in the mental lexicon and the nature of the mapping mechanism from the speech signal to the abstract lexical entry. We present data from cross-modal repetition priming experiments in English designed to test the differing predictions of speech recognition models regarding tolerance of phonological mismatch in speech. The results show effects of underspecification, supporting models using underspecified lexical entries (e.g. Lahiri & Marslen-Wilson, 1991; Reetz & Lahiri, 2001) over those using fully specified lexical entries (e.g., McClelland & Elman, 1986). The results also show no effects of context, thus favoring context-independent mapping, such as that in the three-way matching mechanism of the Lahiri and Reetz FUL model ( Lahiri, 1999; Reetz, 1998 and Reetz, 1999; Reetz & Lahiri, 2001) over context-dependent mapping used in phonological inference rules ( Gaskell and Marslen-Wilson, 1996 and Gaskell and Marslen-Wilson, 1998).     

Inconsistency in serial choice decision and motor reaction times dissociate in younger and older adults

Intraindividual variability (inconsistency) in reaction time (RT) latencies was investigated in a group of younger (M=25.46 years) and older (M=69.29 years) men. Both groups performed 300 trials in 2-, 4-, and 8-choice RT conditions where RTs for decision and motor components of the task were recorded separately. A dissociation was evident in that inconsistency was greater in older adults for decision RTs when task demands relating to the number of choices and fatigue arising from time-on-task were high. For younger persons, a weak trend toward greater inconsistency in motor RTs was evident. The results are consistent with accounts suggesting that inconsistency in neurobiological mechanisms increases with age, and that attentional lapses or fluctuations in executive control contribute to RT inconsistency.     

Liking and memory for musical stimuli as a function of exposure

Three experiments examined changes in liking and memory for music as a function of number of previous exposures, the ecological validity of the music, and whether the exposure phase required focused or incidental listening. After incidental listening, liking ratings were higher for music heard more often in the exposure phase and this association was stronger as ecological validity increased. After focused listening, liking ratings followed an inverted U-shaped function of exposure for the most ecologically valid stimuli (initial increases followed by decreases), but this curvilinear function was attenuated or nonexistent for less valid stimuli. In general, recognition improved as a function of previous exposure for focused listeners, but the effect was attenuated or absent for incidental listeners.