Peers, Parents and Pornography: Exploring Adolescents’ Exposure to Sexually Explicit Material and Its Developmental Correlates

On the basis of an online survey of 352 teenagers aged between 16 and 19, the use of pornographic video clips and films was investigated along with the connection between this use and indicators of adolescents?? perceived autonomy, peer group influences, and notions of sexuality. We found that many adolescents regularly use pornographic video clips or films. Respondents who regard themselves as less independent of their environment, especially their parents, use pornography more frequently themselves. For girls, this also applies if they assess the use within their peer group as particularly extensive, and for boys, if they frequently discuss pornography within their peer group. A high level of consumption of sexually explicit media also goes hand in hand with the assumption that people generally have sexual intercourse earlier in life and that people generally favor more varied sexual techniques.     

Development and Construct Validation of the Individuation Test for Emerging Adults (ITEA)

This article presents the construction, exploratory dimensionality analysis (Study 1), and validation (Study 2) of the self-report and 36-item Individuation Test for Emerging Adults (ITEA). It is the first instrument to measure different aspects of individuation (in relation to mother and father) specifically in emerging adulthood. The construct validity of the final 5-factor structure (Support Seeking, Connectedness, Intrusiveness, Self-Reliance, and Fear of Disappointing the Parent) was satisfactory. The results of multigroup analyses demonstrated that the factor structure is stable across male and female emerging adults for ITEA assessments in relation to both mother and father. The ITEA scales also show good internal consistency and concurrent validity against Emotional, Conflictual, and Functional Dependence scales of the Psychological Separation Inventory.     

Patients’ Perceptions of Risky Developments During Psychotherapy

Research on risks and unwanted effects is largely missing in psychotherapy. Using exploratory factor analysis six dimensions of personal therapy situation were identified in a preliminary study, three of them were associated with risky developments during the psychotherapeutic process: (1) (poor) quality of therapeutic relationship, (2) burden caused by psychotherapy, and (3) dependency/isolation. Based on the finding of this study an online survey was performed to examine these three dimensions. Aside from these three factors another variable was associated with risky therapy developments: the online questionnaire also asked for premature terminations of psychotherapy as a consequence of risky conditions for the therapeutic development. Risky conditions were found to be associated with the following variables: (1) the combination of female patient–male therapist, (2) the therapeutic orientation (particularly with the psychodynamic approaches) and (3) the duration of therapy. Fewer humanistic and systemic psychotherapies were found among the high risk-prone group of patients who were at risk in at least three of the four variables which were associated with risky developments. Differences in the findings of the study regarding the four therapeutic orientations stress the importance of an extensive differential indication and a cooperative partnership between patient and therapist, in order to facilitate a positive patient participation towards the choice of therapy method and subsequent successful participation throughout the course of treatment. Further studies should also focus on female patient and male therapist psychotherapies.     

The integration of object levels and their content: a theory of global/local processing and related hemispheric differences

This article presents and tests the authors' integration hypothesis of global/local processing, which proposes that at early stages of processing, the identities of global and local units of a hierarchical stimulus are represented separately from information about their respective levels and that, therefore, identity and level information have to be integrated at later stages. It further states that the cerebral hemispheres differ in their capacities for these binding processes. Three experiments are reported in which the integration hypothesis was tested. Participants had to identify a letter at a prespecified level with the viewing duration restricted by a mask. False reporting of the letter at the nontarget level was predicted to occur more often when the integration of identity and level could fail. This was the case. Moreover, visual-field effects occurred, as expected. Finally, a multinomial model was constructed and fitted to the data.     

The influence of adaptation and stochastic fluctuations on spontaneous perceptual changes for bistable stimuli

Spontaneous perceptual change was studied by measuring the probabilities of the first two spontaneous pattern switches as a function of time following the onset of a bistable apparent quartet for which either horizontal or vertical motion is perceived. Contrary to the classical satiation hypothesis (Köhler & Wallach, 1944),differential time-dependent adaptation of the perceived compared with the unperceived motion directions was not necessary to account for the first spontaneous switch. In addition, adaptation of the perceived motion accompanied by recovery from adaptation of the unperceived motion was not necessary to account for the increased probability of the second spontaneous switch. It was concluded that regardless of possible adaptation effects, stochastic fluctuations are necessary for the actual reversal of activation levels that produces the spontaneous switch. When the difference in detector activation is reduced by differential adaptation of competing motion detectors (or by the occurrence of a prior spontaneous pattern change), smaller stochastic fluctuations are sufficient to reverse the relative activation of competing detectors. Thus, adaptation can increase the probability of spontaneous switches without directly causing them.     

THE BEHAVIORAL THEORY OF TIMING: TRANSITION ANALYSES

Gibbon and Church (1990, 1992) have recently confirmed an important, parameter-free prediction of the behavioral theory of timing (Killeen & Fetterman, 1988): The times of exiting from a bout of activity are positively correlated with the times of entrance to it. The correlations were slightly less than predicted, however, and the correlations between the start of an activity and the time spent engaged in that activity were negative, rather than zero. We adapted their serial model as an augmented (one-parameter) version of the behavioral theory, positing a lag between the receipt of a pulse from the pacemaker and transition into the next class of responses. The augmented version of the behavioral theory further improved the correspondence between the theory and the correlational data reported by Gibbon and Church. It also accounts for previously unpublished data from our laboratory derived from a new timing technique, the “peak choice” procedure. We show that the measured variance of movement times from one key to another closely approximates the estimated variance of transition times recovered from fits of the augmented model to the data. Such correspondence both attests to the correct identification of this source of variance and suggests ways to remove it, both from behavior and from our models of behavior.     

Evidence for generalized motor programs using gait pattern analysis

Human intra limb gait kinematics were analyzed via statistical and structural pattern recognition methods to determine the role of relative timing of limb segments within and between modes of gait. Five experienced runners were filmed while walking (3-6 km/hour) and running (8-12 km/hour) on a motor driven treadmill. Kinematic data consisted of relative timing of the four phases of the Philippson step cycle and intersegmental limb trajectories, determined from angle-angle diagrams. Despite marked decreases in absolute time durations within gaits remained constant over the speeds which were studied. Although a 2-fold increase in locomotor speed occurred in walking and a 1.5-fold speed increase occurred within running, the percentage of time spent in each of the Philippson phases was not significantly changed. However, significant differences in the time percentages and sequences of the step cycle phases were found between walking and running. Correlations between limb segment trajectories occurring in the different gaits showed strong coherence for overall step cycle patterns, but within step cycle phases and across speeds, selective phases displayed little correspondence.     

Binocular single vision achieved by fusion and suppression

The occurrences of fusion and suppression were determined from stereograms which produced two retinal images located at equal distances but in opposite directions from the fovea. Subjects reported whether the dichoptic stimulus appeared single or not, and if single whether it appeared in the center of the visual field. The report of centrality is predicted by the fusion theory of single vision and that of noncentrality by the suppression theory. Experiment 1, with eight subjects, showed that for small disparities perceived singleness was the percept predicted by the fusion theory; for larger disparities, the percepts could sometimes be predicted by the fusion theory and other times by the suppression theory. Experiment 2, with 16 subjects, showed that with larger stimuli the percept predicted by the fusion theory is more likely to occur. Experiment 3, with four subjects, showed that the centrality was reported when the stimuli were presented for 100 msec. This result provided support for our interpretation that the centrality reports in Experiments 1 and 2 were not due to fixation error and suppression.