Stereotypes and steroids: using a psychobiosocial model to understand cognitive sex differences

To further our understanding of cognitive sex differences, we studied the relationship between menstrual phase (via serum estradiol and progesterone levels) and cognitive abilities and cognitive performance in a sample of medical students in eastern Turkey. As expected, we found no sex differences on the Cattell "Culture Fair Intelligence Test" (a figural reasoning test), with females scoring significantly higher on a Turkish version of the Finding A's Test (rapid word knowledge) and males scoring significantly higher on a paper-and-pencil mental rotation test. The women showed a slight enhancement on the Finding A's Test and a slight decrement in Cattell scores during the preovulatory phase of their cycle that (probably) coincided with a rise in estrogen. There were also small cycle-related enhancements in performance for these women on the mental rotation test that may reflect cyclical increases in estrogen and progesterone. Additional analyses showed an inverted U-shaped function in level of estradiol and the Cattell Test. Finally, for women who were tested on Day 10 of their menstrual cycle, there was a negative linear relationship between their Cattell scores and level of progesterone. Stereotypes about the cognitive abilities of males and females did not correspond to performance on the mental rotation or Finding A's Test, so the sex-typical results could not be attributed to either stereotype threat or stereotype activation. For practical purposes, hormone-related effects were generally small. Variations over the menstrual cycle do not provide evidence for a "smarter" sex, but they do further our understanding of steroidal action on human cognitive performance.     

Family psychology from an Israeli perspective

A perspective of family psychology in Israel is drawn against a background of evolving indigenous elaboration suited to Israel's unique circumstances (J. I. Good & A. Ben-David, 1995). Its development shows a progression from the original source of an enriching but dominant culture (J. J. Gergen, A. Gulerce, A. Lock, & G. Misra, 1996; E. Halpern, 1985) to a discipline growing within the Israeli geopolitical reality, constraints of academic infrastructures, and training resources. One can currently recognize a discipline that is increasingly congruent with its cultural texture as well as the histories and traditions of individual families in a multifaceted society. This evolution is thought to bear similarities to the course that family therapy originally took and to where the roots of family psychology can be found. To echo F. W. Kaslow's (1987, 1991) analysis of this evolution in the United States, the heritage of family psychology in Israel also basically lies in mainstream psychology.     

Pilot Effectiveness of a Stress Management Program for Sheltered Homeless Adults With Mental Illness: A Two-Group Controlled Study

This study examined the effectiveness of a stress management intervention for sheltered homeless adults with mental illness. Twelve intervention participants received a 6-week, 1-hour psychoeducation group combined with a 20-minute meditation. Eleven matched pairs did not receive intervention and served as controls. At 1 week post study, intervention participants reported a statistically significant reduction in perceived stress (Z=??2.285, p < .02, d=??1.176) compared to controls. No differences were found at 1 week post study between intervention and control participants on reported quality of life. This study provides pilot data on the effectiveness of an occupation-based stress management program for sheltered homeless adults and warrants further study.     

Mental scanning in auditory imagery for songs

Four experiments examined how people operate on memory representations of familiar songs. The tasks were similar to those used in studies of visual imagery. In one task, subjects saw a one-word lyric from a song and then saw a second lyric; then they had to say if the second lyric was from the same song as the first. In a second task, subjects mentally compared pitches of notes corresponding to song lyrics. In both tasks, reaction time increased as a function of the distance in beats between the two lyrics in the actual song, and in some conditions reaction time increased with the starting beat of the earlier lyric. Imagery instructions modified the main results somewhat in the first task, but not in the second, much harder task. The results suggest that song representations have temporal-like characteristics.     

Stimulus mislocalization depends on spatial frequency.

It was previously reported that briefly presented peripheral stimuli are perceived closer to fixation than continuously presented stimuli at the same eccentricity; this effect has, however, not proved consistently replicable. In this study it was investigated whether the misperception of location might depend upon the spatial frequency content of the stimulus. Spatial-frequency-filtered vertical bars were displayed briefly and their locations were judged relative to continuously visible comparison spots. For monocular stimuli, a significant foveopetal mislocalization of the bar was obtained that increased in size as spatial frequency was lowered. Even larger mislocalizations were obtained for dichoptically presented horizontally disparate pairs of bars, and this effect also increased at low spatial frequencies. Possible underlying mechanisms are discussed, and spatial frequency is suggested to have been the confounding factor in previous studies.     

Contextual information and memory for unfamiliar tunes in older and younger adults

We examined age differences in the effectiveness of multiple repetitions and providing associative facts on tune memory. For both tune and fact recognition, three presentations were beneficial. Age was irrelevant in fact recognition, but older adults were less successful than younger in tune recognition. The associative fact did not affect young adults' performance. Among older people, the neutral association harmed performance; the emotional fact mitigated performance back to baseline. Young adults seemed to rely solely on procedural memory, or repetition, to learn tunes. Older adults benefitted by using emotional associative information to counteract memory burdens imposed by neutral associative information.