Demographic factors,childhood maltreatment and psychological functioning among university students' in Ghana: A retrospective study

This study retrospectively investigates the influence of child (i.e., gender), care‐giver (e.g., who grew up with), household size (i.e., number of siblings grew up with) and community (i.e., rural versus urban) factors on childhood maltreatment, as well as the impacts of maltreatment on psychological functioning. A cross‐sectional survey and self‐report methodology is used to gather data from 300 students of the University of Ghana. The results show that being a male, growing up in rural areas, living with more than 3 siblings in the same household and being raised by both biological parents have significant main effects on childhood maltreatment. Analyses of the interaction effects show that living with more than 5 siblings in a rural household with “other” parents (i.e., non‐biological parents) has a significant effect on physical abuse. Furthermore, males from rural households consisting of more than 3 siblings and who did not grow up with both biological parents endorsed significantly more physical abuse and physical neglect, compared with the females. With respect to the psychological outcome, childhood maltreatment significantly predicts and account for significant variance in depression (34%), self‐efficacy (18%) and life satisfaction (22%). The findings and the implications of the study are briefly discussed.     

Conceptual and non-conceptual repetition priming in category exemplar generation: Evidence from bilinguals

One measure of conceptual implicit memory is repetition priming in the generation of exemplars from a semantic category, but does such priming transfer across languages? That is, do the overlapping conceptual representations for translation equivalents provide a sufficient basis for such priming? In Experiment 1 (N=96) participants carried out a deep encoding task, and priming between languages was statistically reliable, but attenuated, relative to within-language priming. Experiment 2 (N=96) replicated the findings of Experiment 1 and assessed the contributions of conceptual and non-conceptual processes using a levels-of-processing manipulation. Words that underwent shallow encoding exhibited within-language, but not between-language, priming. Priming in shallow conditions cannot therefore be explained by incidental activation of the concept. Instead, part of the within-language priming effect, even under deep-encoding conditions, is due to increased availability of language-specific lemmas or phonological word forms.     

Subject relative clauses are not universally easier to process: Evidence from Basque

Studies from many languages consistently report that subject relative clauses (SR) are easier to process than object relatives (OR). However, Hsiao and Gibson (2003) report an OR preference for Chinese, a finding that has been contested. Here we report faster OR versus SR processing in Basque, an ergative, head-final language with pre-nominal relative clauses. A self-paced reading task was used in Experiments 1 and 2, while ERPs were recorded in Experiment 3. We used relative clauses that were ambiguous between an object or subject-gap interpretation and disambiguated later in the sentence. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 showed that SR took longer to read than OR in the critical disambiguating region. In addition, Experiment 3 showed that SR produced larger amplitudes than OR in the P600 window immediately after reading the critical disambiguating word. Our results suggest that SR are not universally easier to process. They cast doubts on universal hypotheses and suggest that processing complexity may depend on language-specific aspects of grammar.     

Lazos que Atan: The Influence of Normative Gender Beliefs on Sexual Risk Behaviors of Latino Men and Women

Not all Latino men and women conform to proscribed gender roles. Nonetheless, their sexual risk taking may well be influenced by traditional beliefs concerning these roles. We explored the relationship between gender beliefs that are normative in Latino culture, and the sexual risk behaviors of 152 Latino men and women who participated in a behavioral rapid needs assessment survey in Houston, TX. Path—analytic results indicate that normative gender beliefs are influenced by respondents' sex and their levels of acculturation and that these 2 variables influence sexual risk behaviors, including unprotected sex and multi partnerism. Our results suggest that beliefs about gender influence sexual behavior and, therefore, are an important factor that should be considered in understanding sexual risk taking among Latinos.     

Memory span and general intelligence: A latent-variable approach

There are several studies showing that working memory and intelligence are strongly related. However, working memory tasks require simultaneous processing and storage, so the causes of their relationship with intelligence are currently a matter of discussion. The present study examined the simultaneous relationships among short-term memory (STM), working memory (WM), and general intelligence (g). Two hundred and eight participants performed six verbal, quantitative, and spatial STM tasks, six verbal, quantitative, and spatial WM tasks, and eight tests measuring fluid, crystallized, spatial, and quantitative intelligence. Especial care is taken to avoid misrepresenting the relations among the constructs being studied because of specific task variance. Structural equation modelling (SEM) results revealed that (a) WM and g are (almost) isomorphic constructs, (b) the isomorphism vanishes when the storage component of WM is partialed out, and (c) STM and WM (with its storage component partialed out) predict g.     

The use of Afrocentric features as cues for judgment in the presence of diagnostic information

Prior research has shown that within racial category, group members with more Afrocentric facial features are presumed to have more stereotypic traits than those with less Afrocentric features. The present experiment investigated whether this form of feature‐based stereotyping occurs when more diagnostic information is available. The participants were provided with photographs and information about the aggressive (or non‐aggressive) behaviour of 64 African Americans in four different situations, and asked to predict the likelihood of aggression in a fifth situation. As expected, each instance of aggression increased estimates that a target would behave aggressively in the unknown situation. With degree of displayed aggression controlled, however, targets with more Afrocentric features were judged as significantly more likely to behave aggressively than targets with less Afrocentric features. Thus, stereotyping based on Afrocentric features occurs even when other obviously‐relevant information is available. This suggests that it may be difficult to detect and avoid. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Work Values and Their Effect on Work Behavior and Work Outcomes in Female and Male Managers

A longitudinal sample of over 800 MBA graduates surveyed across a 16-year period was recruited to investigate the relationship of work values to work effort, salary levels, and other work outcomes. As predicted, certain work values were related to higher salary levels and to the number of hours worked. Changing companies more often and receiving more promotions were also significantly related to work values. Work values did not differ for women and men in the sample, except that women were higher in the value of wanting to do an excellent job. Controlling for work values did not explain significantly higher salaries for men as compared to women. Implications of these data are discussed.     

Effects of social isolation and environmental enrichment on atherosclerosis in ApoE-/- mice

Social support and a stimulating environment have been suggested to reduce stress reactions and cardiovascular risk. The aim of this study was to assess the role of environmental enrichment and social interaction for development of atherosclerosis in atherosclerosis prone mice. Male ApoE-/- mice were divided into four groups and followed during 20 weeks: (i) enriched environment (E, n=12), (ii) deprived environment (ED, n=12), (iii) enriched environment with exercise (E-Ex, n=12) and (iv) socially deprived by individual housing (SD, n=10). Plasma lipid and cytokine concentrations were measured. Atherosclerosis was quantified in cross-sections of innominate artery and en face in thoracic aorta. Plaque area was significantly increased in SD mice in the innominate artery (P<0.05 vs. all other groups), but not in the thoracic aorta. Plasma lipids were increased in SD mice (P<0.001 vs. all for total cholesterol, P<0.05 vs. E and P<0.01 vs. ED for triglycerides). Plasma concentration of granulocyte-colony stimulating factor (G-CSF) was decreased in SD mice compared to E mice (P<0.05). Thus, social isolation increased atherosclerosis and plasma lipids in ApoE-/- mice. Reduction in plasma G-CSF levels may hamper endothelial regeneration in the atherosclerotic process. While environmental enrichment did not affect atherosclerosis, social isolation accelerated atherosclerosis.     

Clinical validation of the trait and state versions of the Food Craving Questionnaire

This is the first study to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Food Craving Questionnaire-Trait (FCQ-T), and Food Craving Questionnaire-State (FCQ-S) measures using a clinically heterogeneous sample of eating disorder patients (N = 177) recruited from seven different outpatient eating disorder treatment centers in Spain. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) corroborated the factor structures of the FCQ-T and FCQ-S. The measures' scores and their factor-derived scale-scores yielded internal consistency reliability indexes that ranged from adequate to excellent. The measures were predictive of eating disorder symptoms. As expected, the FCQ-T was more strongly associated with eating disorder psychopathology than the FCQ-S. The results replicated the psychometric properties of the FCQ-T and FCQ-S in eating disorder populations and could become useful tools in clinical and research settings.