AN INVESTMENT MODEL ANALYSIS OF RELATIONSHIP STABILITY AMONG WOMEN COURT-MANDATED TO VIOLENCE INTERVENTIONS

This investigation examined relationship stability among 60 women court-mandated to violence interventions by applying a general model (i.e., Rusbult's 1980 Investment Model) to predict intentions to leave current relationships. As in past research, results showed that Investment Model predictions were supported such that court-mandated women who reported lesser relationship satisfaction, greater alternatives, and fewer investments in current relationships endorsed lower levels of commitment and greater intentions to leave those relationships. Secondary analyses showed that court-mandated women's violence perpetration and experiences of being victimized were minimally related to model factors or women's intentions to leave. Taken together, results of this study provide additional evidence that general models should be used to predict relationship termination decisions among women involved in violent relationships, and violence experiences alone do not affect that decision.     

Prototypicality in sentence production

Three cued-recall experiments examined the effect of category typicality on the ordering of words in sentence production. Past research has found that typical items tend to be mentioned before atypical items in a phrase—a pattern usually associated with lexical variables (like word frequency), and yet typicality is a conceptual variable. Experiment 1 revealed that an appropriate conceptual framework was necessary to yield the typicality effect. Experiment 2 tested ad hoc categories that do not have prior representations in long-term memory and yielded no typicality effect. Experiment 3 used carefully matched sentences in which two category members appeared in the same or in different phrases. Typicality affected word order only when the two words appeared in the same phrase. These results are consistent with an account in which typicality has its origin in conceptual structure, which leads to differences in lexical accessibility in appropriate contexts.     

The factor structure of the MMPI-2 Restructured Clinical (RC) scales

We investigated the MMPI-2 Restructured Clinical (RC) scales (Tellegen et al., 2003) to determine if they had a more differentiated factor structure than the MMPI-2 Clinical scales. When factored alone, the RC scales had a 5-dimensional structure; the Clinical scales had 3 dimensions. When factored in combination with the Content scales, both sets of scales produced 5 dimensions. However, the RC and Content factors generally provided more efficient and logical markers of psychopathology than the Clinical and Content factors. We discuss interpretive considerations.     

Individual differences in insular sensitivity during loss anticipation predict avoidance learning

The anterior insula has been implicated in both the experience and the anticipation of negative outcomes. Although individual differences in insular sensitivity have been associated with self-report measures of chronic anxiety, previous research has not examined whether individual differences in insular sensitivity predict learning to avoid aversive stimuli. In the present study, insular sensitivity was assessed as participants anticipated monetary losses while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. We found that insular responsiveness to anticipated losses predicted participants' ability to learn to avoid losses (but not to approach gains) in a behavioral test several months later. These findings suggest that in addition to correlating with self-reported anxiety, heightened insular sensitivity may promote learning to avoid loss.     

Social information processing and cardiac predictors of adolescent antisocial behavior

The relations among social information processing (SIP), cardiac activity, and antisocial behavior were investigated in adolescents over a 3-year period (from ages 16 to 18) in a community sample of 585 (48% female, 17% African American) participants. Antisocial behavior was assessed in all 3 years. Cardiac and SIP measures were collected between the first and second behavioral assessments. Cardiac measures assessed resting heart rate (RHR) and heart rate reactivity (HRR) as participants imagined themselves being victimized in hypothetical provocation situations portrayed via video vignettes. The findings were moderated by gender and supported a multiprocess model in which antisocial behavior is a function of trait-like low RHR (for male individuals only) and deviant SIP. In addition, deviant SIP mediated the effects of elevated HRR reactivity and elevated RHR on antisocial behavior (for male and female participants).