Age of onset of marijuana use and executive function

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 26(3) of Psychology of Addictive Behaviors (see record 2011-29227-001). Figure 1 should have been presented in color. All versions of this article have been corrected.] Marijuana (MJ) remains the most widely abused illicit substance in the United States, and in recent years, a decline in perceived risk of MJ use has been accompanied by a simultaneous increase in rates of use among adolescents. In this study, the authors hypothesized that chronic MJ smokers would perform cognitive tasks, specifically those that require executive function, more poorly than control subjects and that individuals who started smoking MJ regularly prior to age 16 (early onset) would have more difficulty than those who started after age 16 (late onset). Thirty-four chronic, heavy MJ smokers separated into early and late onset groups, and 28 non-MJ smoking controls completed a battery of neurocognitive measures. As hypothesized, MJ smokers performed more poorly than controls on several measures of executive function. Age of onset analyses revealed that these between-group differences were largely attributed to the early onset group, who were also shown to smoke twice as often and nearly 3 times as much MJ per week relative to the late onset smokers. Age of onset, frequency, and magnitude of MJ use were all shown to impact cognitive performance. Findings suggest that earlier MJ onset is related to poorer cognitive function and increased frequency and magnitude of MJ use relative to later MJ onset. Exposure to MJ during a period of neurodevelopmental vulnerability, such as adolescence, may result in altered brain development and enduring neuropsychological changes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Gender differences in leisure-need activity patterns

A gender-by-leisure choice model predicting four different leisure-choice-by-need patterns, based on gender restricted or unrestricted choice by same or different needs, is described and tested. Assessment of leisure-choice-by-need patterns was made by determining the relevance of a set of 13 need attributes for 16 different leisure activities. Gender differences in need attributes for each activity were identified using stepwise discriminant analysis. Results revealed significant discriminations for 12 of the 16 activities. Analyses further indicated that somewhat different clusters of need attributes were associated with each activity. Results provided tentative support for the proposed model, suggesting that participation in some activities is related to the same needs for males and females, while participation in other activities is related to different needs.     

Gender differences in the perceptions of self's and others' use of power strategies

The utility of P. B. Johnson's [Women and Interpersonal Power, in D. N. Ruble & G. L. Zellman (Eds.), Women and Sex Roles, New York: W. W. Norton, 1978] framework for the sex typing of power strategies was examined. Female and male subjects rated the extent to which they used a number of power strategies in order to get their way with others. Subjects also rated their perceptions of the extent to which either men-in-general or women-in-general used the strategies. Partial support for Johnson's framework was found in that males reported greater use of masculine-typed strategies than did females, though they did not report using these strategies more than feminine-typed ones. Females did not report significantly greater use of feminine strategies than did males, though they reported using more feminine- than masculine-typed strategies. Data also indicated that both males and females held similar gender-consistent sex-stereotyped perceptions of the power strategies used by men-in-general and women-in-general. Comparison of self-report ratings with usage attributions for men-in-general and women-in-general revealed that both male and female subjects perceived themselves to use most of the strategies less often and to be more inclined to use socially desirable strategies involving reason and logic and compromise.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 29th annual meeting of the Southeastern Psychological Association, March 1983.     

Cognitive development and adolescent contraception: integrating theory and practice

The cognitive skills that develop during adolescence are crucial to successful contraceptive practice because most birth control methods require at least a minimal ability to plan for, acquire, and utilize them at the appropriate time. Consequently, we must understand the special developmental setting in which adolescent sexual growth and experimentation occurs in order to have an impact on their contraceptive use. To provide optimal service to adolescents, the developmental and medical aspects should be taken into account in order to determine the best choice for each patient. This article demonstrates how mental health and medical providers can work together to better serve the adolescent population.     

Factor and discriminant analysis of the Bem Sex-Role Inventory

Several studies have recently recommended that items which fail to load substantially (< .40) on one of several primary factors characterizing the Bem Sex-Rote Inventory (BSRI) could be deleted without substantial loss of interpretability. This recommendation is questioned on the basis that the extent of interrelatedness of the items is an insufficient indicator of the contribution each item makes towards the classification (identifying sex-types by Bem's median split technique) efficiency of the inventory. Empirical support of this contention was provided by conducting several discriminant analyses (predicting sex-types) on a sample of 1117 BSRI protocols and excluding the various items suggested by the earlier research. These results were then compared with the results of a discriminant analysis using the 40 masculine and feminine items. The analyses using less. than all 40 items produced substantially poorer discrimination than when all 40 items were included. The results Suggest that decisions to exclude items on the basis of factor analysis may be inappropriate and risk serious loss of power in classifying individuals by sex-type.     

Expertise and hierarchical knowledge representation in chess

Summary In two experiments the structure of knowledge representation in chess experts and average players was examined. Pattern-recognition theory explains expertise through the existence of many small, unrelated knowledge units. Recent research stresses the structure of knowledge representations. However, the standard paradigm does not allow for the detection of relations between chunks; the theoretical shift has to be accompanied by a methodological shift. In Experiment 1, by means of a partitioning task, evidence was provided for a hierarchical representation of chess positions. Chess masters formed larger and more complex knowledge units than average players. In Experiment 2, the typicality of the positions was varied. The more typical the positions were, the larger and more coherent the constructed knowledge units were. The greatest differences between both groups occurred in more typical positions. This reflects the experts' ability to relate several knowledge units with one another.     

Autonomic physiological activity in mental rotation tasks

The electrodermal response (EDR) during a mental rotation (MR) task performance was investigated. For 6 males and 8 females (16-25 years old) there was a progressive increase in the number of EDRs as the angle of rotation (complexity) of the task was increased. These results support previous findings that autonomic physiological activity varies with the amount of information processing or its difficulty.     

Reflective and ruminative processing of positive emotional memories in bipolar disorder and healthy controls

Recent evidence suggests that reflective (i.e., distanced-why), as compared to ruminative (i.e., immersed-why), processing of negative memories is associated with reductions in negative affect. The present study extended this line of work by examining the effect of these two processing conditions on positive memories among persons with bipolar disorder (BD; n = 27) and a healthy control group (CT; n = 27). After a resting baseline period, participants were instructed to recall a happy autobiographical memory. Using a within-subjects design, participants were asked to process the happy memory in two different experimental conditions (reflective, ruminative) while their experiential, behavioral, and autonomic responses were measured. Consistent with hypotheses, reflective processing was associated with lower self-reported positive affect, positive thoughts, and heart rate compared to ruminative processing for all participants. When current symptoms were controlled for, BD participants reported greater positive affect across both conditions relative to CT participants. Prospective studies are needed to test the extent to which processing of positive emotion contributes to the course of symptoms in bipolar disorder.