Children’s and adults’ use of spelling-sound information in three reading tasks

This research examined the effects of irregular spelling and irregular spelling-sound correspondences on word recognition in children and adults. Previous research has established that, among skilled readers, these irregularities influence the reading of only lower frequency words. However, this research involved the lexical decision and naming tasks, which differ from the demands of normal reading in important ways. In the present experiments, we compared performance on these tasks with that on a task requiring words to be recognized in sentence contexts. Results indicated that adults showed effects of spelling and spelling-sound irregularities in reading lower frequency words on all three tasks, whereas younger and poorer readers also showed effects on higher frequency words. The fact that irregular spelling-sound correspondences affected performance on the sentence task indicates that access of phonological information is not an artifact of having to read a word aloud or perform a lexical decision. Two other developmental trends were observed: As children became more skilled in reading, the effects of irregular spelling were overcome before the effects of irregular spelling-sound correspondences; the latter effects were eliminated on silent reading tasks earlier than on the naming task.     

The effects of stimulus dimensionality on the rate of gain of information

Hick's paradigm as extended to an absolute judgment task by Doherty was used to study the effects of dimensionality on the rate of stimulus identification in two experiments. Two undimensional conditions, size and brightness, and two bidimensional conditions, size-brightness redundant and size-brightness non-redundant, were employed. The significant linear components of the regression of choice reaction time on transmitted information for the undimensional and bidimensional stimuli supported and extended Hick's law. The finding of nearly identical slopes for the two undimensional and redundant bidimensional condition regression lines suggests a stage of processing which has a constant capacity in bits/s and which is independent of stimulus dimensionality. An increase in slope for the non-redundant condition is attributed to a difference in response requirements.     

A model of memory in concept learning

A concept learning model was developed and tested in two conjunctive attribute identification tasks. The model includes assumptions about the focus of attention, decision making, and memory for stimulus information and prior decisions. Predictions are made about how S changes his hypothesis following an error. Procedures in both tasks allowed inference of the subject's current hypothesis. The hypothesis selections and error statistics were in the majority of cases accurately predicted by the model. Deviations from predictions on hypothesis sampling occurred for naive Ss but not for trained Ss who were required to state a hypothesis on each trial.     

Genetic Counseling Outcomes: Perceived Risk and Distress After Counseling for Hereditary Colorectal Cancer

Genetic counseling may turn risk information into cancer prevention behavior by modifying health beliefs and cancer-related distress. We assessed the effect of genetic counseling on these factors in 101 adult first-degree-relatives of colorectal cancer patients from families with known or suspected hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer. Before counseling and once afterward, subjects completed self-report measures of perceived lifetime risk and cancer-distress. Most persons overestimated their cancer risk, and higher perceived risk was associated with believing that colorectal cancer cannot be prevented. Individual perceived risk changed after counseling, although mean perceived risk was unchanged. After adjusting for baseline risk, older persons and those with higher estimated objective cancer risk had larger postcounseling decreases. Distress after counseling was positively correlated with baseline distress and anxiety symptoms, and inversely correlated with tolerance for ambiguity. The findings suggest counseling interventions that should increase the likelihood of screening and offer hypotheses for future research.     

Task Demands and Sentence Comprehension in Patients with Dementia of the Alzheimer's Type

Patients with dementia of the Alzheimer's type (DAT) and matched normal controls were given three tests of syntactic comprehension in which nonlinguistic visual and memory task demands were varied. In all tasks, subjects were presented spoken semantically reversible sentences with a variety of syntactic structures and required to match the sentence to a picture. In the first experiment, subjects matched the spoken sentence to one of two pictures that appeared either before or immediately following the presentation of the sentence. The target picture depicted the spoken sentence correctly and the foil depicted the reversed thematic roles to those in the sentence (i.e., it was a syntactic foil). The second experiment employed a sentence video-verification task in which subjects were required to determine if the spoken sentence matched a videotaped depiction of the action in the sentence or a syntactic foil. In the third experiment, in different conditions, subjects were required to determine whether the spoken sentence matched a single picture or to choose the picture that matched the sentence from an array of two or three pictures. In this experiment, both lexical and syntactic foils were used. In all tasks, DAT patients were affected by the number of propositions in the presented sentence, but not by the syntactic complexity of the sentence. Control subjects also were unaffected by the syntactic complexity of the sentence; the number-of-proposition effect was present in some experiments in the control population. Comparison of performance across the one-, two-, and three-picture versions of the task showed that the magnitude of the effect of number of propositions increased as the number of pictures in the array increased. In addition, analysis of the data from each of the tasks separately showed that the effect of number of propositions only occurred when subjects were attempting to match the target to a syntactic foil (one-picture version) or to choose between the target and a syntactic foil (two- and three-picture versions). The results support the view that patients with DAT do not have disturbances affecting syntactic processing. In addition, they suggest that the effect of number of propositions arises at a stage of analysis that is partially separate from assigning sentence meaning, such as in holding a representation of the sentence in memory until the pictures can be analyzed and encoded and/or in comparing the results of the picture analysis with a stored representation of the sentence meaning.     

Factors Influencing Condom Use Among African American Women: Implications for Risk Reduction Interventions

Examined factors associated with condom use in a community-based sample of 423 sexually active African American women. Measures were selected to reflect the components in prevailing models of health behavior. Condom users were higher on AIDS health priority, prevention attitudes, stage of change, behavioral intentions, reported more frequent and comfortable sexual communication with partners, perceived greater partner and peer approval for condom use, and reported that peers also used condoms. Women in exclusive relationships evidenced earlier stage of change, lower intentions to use condoms, fewer peers who engaged in preventive behaviors, perceived themselves to have lower risk, and had lower rates of condom use, higher education, and family income. Women in fluid relationships were at particularly high risk, with lower rates of condom use relative to women not in a relationship and greater sexual risk for HIV. Implications for HIV-risk reduction interventions with African American women are discussed.     

Judgments of Hate Speech: The Effects of Target Group, Publicness, and Behavioral Responses of the Target

Judgments of offensiveness and accountability of hate speech as a function of contextual factors of the speech and characteristics of the observers were examined. A sample of 212 college students and 53 community participants responded to 12 scenarios describing incidents of hate speech. The within-subject variables manipulated in the scenarios were the target of the speech (ethnic groups, women, and gays), the publicness of the speech, and the behavioral response of the target. Ethnic speech was rated more offensive than gender-or gay-targeted speech; public speech was rated more offensive and more accountable than private speech; and public speech was rated more offensive and accountable when a response occurred and private speech was rated more offensive when a response did not occur. The gender and ethnicity of the raters moderated the effects of the experimental variables, as well as showing main effects. The findings of this study suggest that responses to hate speech are complex and contextual.     

Gender and survival vs. death in slasher films: A content analysis

The content of slasher films was examined, focusing on what portion of the violence is directed toward and committed by women vs. men and the survival rates, the juxtaposition of sex and violence for male and female victims, and differences between male and female survivors vs. nonsurvivors. Five student coders analyzed 56 slasher films (474 victims). Female and male victims were portrayed equally frequently in these films. Male characters were as likely to die as female characters as a result of the attack; however, more female than male characters survived the attacks. The slashers were primarily men. Sexiness was paired with nonsurvival of female victims, whereas male nonsurvivors were portrayed as possessing negative masculine traits. The reinforcement of the good vs. bad woman dichotomy and the portrayed cost of unmitigated extreme masculinity in men in slasher films are discussed.The authors wish to thank four coders — June Cline, Susan Malinowski, Camille Mayers, and Misty Sherman — for their work in coding the slasher films.     

Is valentine still doubtful? A workshop model for children of divorce

We present this eight-session structured workshop format aimed at school-aged children of divorce who are considered psychologically healthy by family and teachers, in which we review the situations most frequently encountered by these families.In the workshop we offer an understanding vision of divorce while providing the children with the experience of working with therapists who are able to deal with highly troublesome issues in a caring atmosphere.Acknowledgements are expressed to Bernardita Cruz, school counselor, and Ilana Meler and Patricia Tahl, child psychologists.