Prevention of depression with primary care patients: A randomized controlled trial

The prevention of major depression is an important research goal which deserves increased attention. Depressive symptoms and disorders are particularly common in primary care patients and have a negative impact on functioning and well-being comparable with other major chronic medical conditions. The San Francisco Depression Prevention Research project conducted a randomized, controlled, prevention trial to demonstrate the feasibility of implementing such research in a public sector setting serving low-income, predominantly minority individuals: 150 primary care patients free from depression or other major mental disorders were randomized to an experimental cognitive-behavioral intervention or to a control condition. The experimental intervention group reported a significantly greater reduction in depressive levels. Decline in depressive levels was significantly mediated by decline in the frequency of negative conditions. Group differences in the number of new episodes (incidence) of major depression did not reach significance during the 1-year trial. We conclude that depression prevention trials in public sector primary care settings are feasbile, and that depressive symptoms can be reduced even in low-income, minority populations. To conduct randomized prevention trials that can test effects on incidence with sufficient statistical power, subgroups at greater imminent risk have to be identified.     

Verbal and behavioral responses to familiar and unfamiliar music

Thirty adult subjects completed an Operant Music Listening Recorder (OMLR) task with two unfamiliar and two familiar music channels (one “popular” and one “classical” in each case), then rated the music on each channel on seven-point scales for liking, quality, and familiarity. The two familiar music channels received significantly higher ratings than the two unfamiliar channels on all three rating scales, and there were no significant main effects or interactions involving musical style. The predictions (a) that subjects would spend more time listening to the familiar channels on the OMLR task, and (b) that measures of listening time would display higher correlations with ratings of liking than with those of quality both received weak support from the direction of the results, but neither was confirmed by statistical significance tests. The results are discussed in terms of the fragmentation between the affective and evaluative components of attitudes toward music.     

Psychosocial Adjustment in Male-to-Female Transsexuals: An Overview of the Research Evidence

Transsexualism has been defined as an extreme gender dysphoria; it refers to unhappiness with one's biological sex and the desire to have the body of the opposite sex and to be regarded by others as a member of that other sex. Transsexualism is not a common condition, but its prevalence is not yet known. A large number of transsexuals receive hormonal treatment and sex reassignment surgery (SRS). In spite of years of poor quality research, due in part to methodological problems, recent research on surgical outcomes has provided important information. However, psychological research into transsexualism has ignored the cognitive style and psychological functioning of transsexuals, and very little effort has been made to incorporate research findings into the development of psychological treatments to improve the quality of life for transsexuals.     

There are many ways to be rich: Effects of three measures of semantic richness on visual word recognition

Previous studies have reported that semantic richness facilitates visual word recognition (see, e.g., Buchanan, Westbury, & Burgess, 2001; Pexman, Holyk, & Monfils, 2003). We compared three semantic richness measures--number of semantic neighbors (NSN), the number of words appearing in similar lexical contexts; number of features (NF), the number of features listed for a word's referent; and contextual dispersion (CD), the distribution of a word's occurrences across content areas-to determine their abilities to account for response time and error variance in lexical decision and semantic categorization tasks. NF and CD accounted for unique variance in both tasks, whereas NSN accounted for unique variance only in the lexical decision task. Moreover, each measure showed a different pattern of relative contribution across the tasks. Our results provide new clues about how words are represented and suggest that word recognition models need to accommodate each of these influences.     

Female “Thin Ideal” Media Images and Boys' Attitudes Toward Girls

Both boys and girls are exposed repeatedly to “thin-ideal” images in the media, that is, images of unrealistically thin and attractive women. As yet, however, little research has examined the impact of these images on boys. In the present study we investigated the effect of exposure to televised thin-ideal images on boys' attitudes toward girls. The participants were 354 boys aged 13–15 years, who viewed either 20 commercials that epitomized the thin-ideal for women or 20 commercials that contained no such images. They then rated the importance of 10 characteristics, including slimness and physical attractiveness, in their choice of partner or girlfriend. Appearance schematicity, a trait measure of the extent of investment in appearance as the basis for self-evaluation, was also assessed. It was found that schematicity was positively related to boys' importance ratings of attractiveness, slimness, athletic ability, muscularity, and popularity in a girlfriend. Further, boys who scored medium (but not high or low) on appearance schematicity were influenced by the commercials. These findings suggest that the media may have an indirect impact on girls' body image through influence on boys' expectations and evaluations of girls' appearance.     

Music, IQ, and the executive function

This article is a commentary on 'Examining the association between music lessons and intelligence' (Schellenberg, 2011).     

Gender bias in the evaluation of new age music

Eminent composers in Western European art music continue to be predominantly male and eminence in contemporary pop music is similarly male dominated. One contributing factor may be the continuing under-valuation of women's music. Possible anti-female bias in a contemporary genre was investigated using the Goldberg paradigm to elicit judgments of New Age compositions. Since stronger stereotyping effects occur when information provided about individuals is sparse, fictitious male and female composers were presented either by name only or by name with a brief biography. Evidence for anti-female bias was found in the name-only condition and was stronger when liking for the music was controlled. Other findings were the tendency for females to give higher ratings, and the association of gender differences in liking of the music with ratings of quality in the name-only condition. These results are relevant to the design of formal assessment procedures for musical composition.     

Social categorization, self-esteem, and the estimated musical preferences of male adolescents.

The authors investigated the intergroup processes of male adolescents within the context of social identity theory (SIT; H. Tajfel, 1978; H. Tajfel & J. C. Turner, 1979). The participants were English male adolescents (age = 14-15 years). They estimated in-group and out-group musical preferences and evaluated the in-group and out-group along a series of scales. The results showed in-group favoritism effects along the musical preference and evaluative dimensions. The participants reported greater liking for the in-group. Compared with the out-group, they associated the in-group more with positively stereotyped music and less with negatively stereotyped music. Compared with the out-group, they rated the in-group as more fun, more masculine, more sporty, less boring, less snobbish, and less weird. The participants with lower levels of self-esteem showed greater differentiation between groups and greater derogation of the out-group. The results supported the predictions of SIT and demonstrated the applicability of SIT for the study of adolescent behavior.     

The Effects of Musical and Voice “Fit” on Responses to Advertisements1

Research on musical “fit” suggests that listeners might recall more of a radio advertisement if it features musical/voice content that corresponds with features of the advertised brand. This is because the music/voice should prime certain aspects of listeners' knowledge. Two studies were carried out to test this, each involving 5 specially prepared radio ads. The first indicated that musical fit enhanced recall of the products advertised, the brands advertised, and specific claims made during the course of the ad copy; and also participants' ratings of liking for the ad and likelihood of purchasing the advertised product. A second similar study considered voice fit and found that this could also promote recall of specific product claims and lead to higher ratings of liking for the ad and likelihood of purchasing the advertised product. These results confirm that both musical and voice fit can prime certain aspects of listeners' knowledge and also increase liking for ads, such that it might improve knowledge-based and affective responses to advertising. The theoretical implications of this are discussed in terms of the concept of involvement and what precisely is meant by musical/voice fit.