Challenges confronting cross-sex friendships: “Much ado about nothing?”

This research was an investigation into four challenges purported to confront cross-sex friends. One hundred and thirty eight individuals (females = 86, males = 52) completed two surveys designed to explore the extent to which the sexual, emotional bond, audience, and equality challenges were present in their cross-sex friendships. Over 98% of the participants were heterosexual, 99% were Caucasian, and approximately 5% were Hispanic. Data gathered from the first survey were analyzed using a three-way analysis of variance, with gender, type of friendship, and romantic status as the independent variables, and three of the four challenges as the dependent variables. The first survey also included open-ended questions designed to explore the nature and existence of the challenges. The second survey was in a diary format. Respondents kept a frequency count for three weeks of discussions they had with their cross-sex friend concerning the challenges, and thoughts that they had as individuals concerning those challenges. Results from both surveys indicate that though the challenges exist and have powerful effects on a small percentage of individuals in cross-sex friendships, for the majority of participants the challenges are not perceived as salient.     

Gts and interrogative tableaux

A variant of the standard deductive tableau system is introduced, and interrogative rules are added, resulting in a so-called interrogative tableau system. A game-theoretical account of entailment is sketched, and the deductive tableau system is interpreted in these terms. Finally, it is shown how to extend this account of entailment into an account of interrogative entailment, thereby providing a semantics for the interrogative tableau system.     

Vasopressin, glucose homeostasis, and sucrose taste preferences

Previous research indicates that vasopressin-containing (LE) rats are capable of adapting to the stress of food restriction, whereas vasopressin-deficient (DI) rats cannot adapt to this stressor. It has been postulated that abnormalities in glucose metabolism may be one of the factors leading to the demise of food-restricted DI rats. The present study was conducted to determine if taste preferences are altered in DI animals and if the presentation of exogenous glucose, in the form of sucrose solutions, can ameliorate the effects of the stress of food restriction. Four different concentrations of sucrose solutions were presented to LE and DI rats under the food-restricted condition. In both strains, an 8% sucrose solution was preferred over 0%, 16%, and 32% concentrations, with DI rats consuming more of this concentration than LE rats. Thus, when DI rats had the opportunity of maintaining glucose homeostasis by exogenous supplements, they maintained body weight, displayed no stomach pathology, and survived.     

Stress and family support as predictors of distress and rejection in people who care for a relative with schizophrenia

Relatives (N=121) of adult schizophrenia patients were interviewed to investigate predictors of their level of psychological distress and of rejecting attitudes toward the sufferer. The relatives' total stress, particularly that associated with poor communication skills in the sufferer, predicted several measures of their psychological distress, and the same variables plus turbulence of sufferer behavior (i.e., violence and disruptiveness) predicted rejection of the sufferer by the relative. In each case, adequacy of family support moderated the influence of the stressors, although this effect was more marked for distress outcomes than for rejection. The results have important implications for the sorts of professional and peer support which relatives may need to encourage their performance of this potentially burdensome role. In addition, the results fit a classic stress management model and provide a feasible alternative to the Expressed Emotion Model of the relationship between relatives' rejection and patients' illness severity.     

Human sensitivity to temporal proximity: The role of spatial and temporal speed gradients

Estimates of temporal proximity (sometimes called time-to-collision) from random-dot flow patterns are shown to be based upon retinal speed, rather than upon changes in dot density. Neither the spatial nor the temporal gradient of motion is essential to the task, but estimates can be made from either alone. Performance is unaffected by the addition of rotational motion, suggesting that observers axe capable of extracting the radial component of motion, which contains all the relevant information, from complex stimuli.     

Social-Cognitive and Behavioral Correlates of Aggression and Victimization in Boys' Play Groups

A contrived play group procedure was utilized to examine the behavioral and social-cognitive correlates of reactive aggression, proactive aggression, and victimization via peers. Eleven play groups, each of which consisted of six familiar African-American 8-year-old boys, met for 45-min sessions on five consecutive days. Social-cognitive interviews were conducted following the second and fourth sessions. Play group interactions were videotaped and examined by trained observers. High rates of proactive aggression were associated with positive outcome expectancies for aggression/assertion, frequent displays of assertive social behavior, and low rates of submissive behavior. Reactive aggression was associated with hostile attributional tendencies and frequent victimization by peers. Victimization was associated with submissive behavior, hostile attributional bias, reactive aggression, and negative outcome expectations for aggression/assertion. These results demonstrate that there is a theoretically coherent and empirically distinct set of correlates associated with each of the examined aggression subtypes, and with victimization by peers.     

An Evaluation of the Health Belief Model for Predicting Perceived and Actual Dietary Quality1

The health belief model was evaluated for its ability to predict perceived and actual dietary quality. The assessment relied upon data collected from 1,502 respondents by the US. Department of Agriculture in its 1991 Continuing Survey of Food Intakes by Individuals and the Diet and Health Knowledge Survey. The health belief model provided good prediction of perceived dietary quality, but provided moderate to weak prediction of 7 measures of actual dietary quality that were calculated from food intake records. Implications are suggested for using the health belief model to understand the determinants of dietary quality.     

Gender and aggression II: Personal aggressiveness

To investigate how gender, ethnicity, age and education influence aggressiveness, we surveyed 115 male and female college students (56% male; 50% Anglo and 26% Hispanic) and 79 persons (72% male; 92% Anglo) working on a military base. Participants were administered the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire and asked about their own aggressive behaviors. In both samples, men scored significantly higher than women on the Physical Aggression scale of the Aggression Questionnaire but not on the other scales. In the military sample, men indicated that they expected to behave more aggressively than women. Positive correlations among different aspects of aggressiveness were found for both men and women. Increasing age and education were associated with lower aggressiveness in both genders, suggesting that aggressiveness may be susceptible to modification over the course of one's life.We would like to thank Angela Bennett, Gail Bliss, Kayleigh Carabajal, Julie Depree, Carmen Gonzales, Deborah Good, Scott Griffin, Gladys Herrera, George Selix, Ruth Tangman, and Jon Woodland for their assistance with the development, distribution, and coding of the questionnaire.     

Beliefs about stories: Parents' and therapists' explanations of childhood difficulties

Therapists and parents were given vignettes describing the behavioural and emotional difficulties of two nine-year-old children and were asked to rate the importance of a number of possible explanations for such difficulties. Broad agreement was found between parents and therapists, but also there were a number of significant differences. Parents endorsed more child centered explanations and put greater emphasis on physical and developmental factors, while therapists endorsed relationships factors and saw the beliefs of other family members as important. Therapists who were parents showed a pattern of responses that lay between those of parents and non-parent therapists.     

Further tests of a meta-model of youthful marijuana use

This paper tests a meta-model of youthful marijuana use on students in Grades 11, 12 and 13. Although the specific models for each grade varied in detail, all followed a meta-model making the following assumptions: (1) that use or nonuse of marijuana depends primarily on attitude towards use; (2) that attitude largely reflects the perceived functional and dysfunctional consequences of use; and (3) that what people perceive as functional or dysfunctional depends on relevant personality characteristics. All three models showed satisfactory goodness-of-fit in terms of nonsignificant overidentification tests (minimum P > 0.25) and small discrepancies between observed correlations and the corresponding theoretically implied correlations. A notable feature of the Grade 13 data in contrast to those for Grade 12 and previously reported findings was the seeming unimportance of the perceived value of marijuana use for gaining acceptance from peers. It was suggested that this might reflect the selective survival into Grade 13 in the sampled community of more independently-oriented students.