Gender,gender role,and body image

The relationship between gender role and body image was examined in this research. Females and males who differed in their gender roles (i.e., masculine, feminine, androgynous, or undifferentiated) completed the Body-Self Relations Questionnaire (B. A. Winstead & T. F. Cash, Reliability and Validity of the Body-Self Questionnaire: A New Measure of Body Image, paper presented at the meeting of the Southeastern Psychological Association, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1984) and a measure of self-esteem. Results indicated that feminine females evaluated their physical appearance less favorably than androgynous females, although physical appearance was equally important to both groups. The importance of the masculine component of gender role was reflected in the favorable body-image ratings of androgynous and masculine females in all domains (i.e., physical appearance, physical fitness, and physical health), and in the unfavorable ratings of feminine males in the physical fitness domain. Regression analyses to predict body-image ratings indicated that while self-esteem was an important predictor, it did not account for the relationships between gender, gender role, and body image. Implications of the findings for future research on the relationships between gender role, body image, and indices of mental health are discussed.The authors would like to thank the consulting editor for her invaluable comments on earlier drafts of this article.     

The effect of semantic and syntactic structure on verbal memory in Alzheimer's disease

This study examined the ability of 17 patients with Alzheimer's disease and 17 normal-old subjects to recall short sentences that were normal, or had a disruption in either their semantic structure, their syntactic structure, or both their semantic and syntactic structure. Results showed that sentence recall performance was affected similarly in the demented and normal-old subjects by both the syntactic and semantic structure of the sentences. The presence of either type of language structure appeared to allow both normal and demented subjects to organize strings of words into multiword chunks for more efficient memory encoding.     

Trait vs. nontrait conceptualizations of intrinsic/extrinsic motivational orientation

The present study questioned whether intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation should be conceptualized as a trait among elementary school students. Previous instruments employing question formats that pit an intrinsic orientation against an extrinsic orientation typically result in normal distributions around the midpoint of the scale. Such a pattern could only result from a majority of children endorsing both intrinsic and extrinsic items. In the present study we investigated the hypothesis that such children may be intrinsically motivated in some school subjects but extrinsically motivated in others. Questions designed to assess motivational orientation in each of four academic subjects (math, social studies, English, and science) revealed three types of students: (a) those that were intrinsic in some subjects but extrinsic in others, (b) those that were intrinsic in all school subjects, and (c) those that were extrinsic in all school subjects. It was concluded that for the first group, motivational orientation does not function as a trait, but rather is specific to the academic content. However, for the second and third groups, motivational orientation does appear to be trait-like since children consistently report the same orientation across academic subjects. A similar analysis was applied to consistency vs. change over time where three groups were also identified. Discussion focused on the larger issues involving trait- vs. situation-specific approaches.     

Memory for Duration: Role of Hippocampus and Medial Prefrontal Cortex

In this task rats had to learn that a three-dimensional object stimulus (a rectangle) that was visible for 2 s would result in a positive (go) reinforcement for one object (a ball) and no reinforcement (no go) for a different object (a bottle). However, if the rectangle stimulus was visible for 8 s then there would be no reinforcement for the ball (no go), but a reinforcement for the bottle (go). After rats learned this conditional discrimination by responding differentially in terms of latency to approach the object, they received large (dorsal and ventral) lesions of the hippocampus, lesions of the medial prefrontal cortex (anterior cingulate and precentral cortex), lesions of the cortex dorsal to the dorsal hippocampus, or served as sham-operated controls. Following recovery from surgery they were retested. The results indicate that there were major impairments following hippocampal lesions, in contrast to cortical control and medial prefrontal cortex lesions, as indicated by smaller latency differences between positive and negative trials on postsurgery tests. In order to ensure that the deficits observed with hippocampal lesions were not due to a discrimination problem, new rats were trained in an object (gray cylinder) duration discrimination task. In this go/no go procedure, the rats were reinforced for a 2-s exposure (duration) of the gray cylinder, but not a 10-s duration, or vice versa. The results indicate that after hippocampal lesions, there was an initial deficit followed by complete recovery. There were no significant changes for the medial prefrontal, cortical control, or sham-operated animals. It appears that the hippocampus, but not the medial prefrontal cortex, is actively involved in representing in short-term memory temporal attribute information based on the use of markers for the beginning and end of the presence (duration) of a stimulus (object).     

Adolescents' Conceptualization of Adult Roles: Relationships with Age,Gender, Work Goal,and Maternal Employment

This study concerns the construction of thepersonal stereotypes of “adult” andadulthood roles and the influence of gender, maternalemployment, and employment goals of adolescents informulating a concept of “adult” during twoperiods in adolescence. A sample of 237 adolescents, 12%non-Caucasian, responded to statements reflectinginterpersonal expectations and gender responsibilities attributed to adults. Exploratory factoranalysis indicated a four-factor structure in attitudestoward familial and career roles, ideology of fairness,social status, and rational characteristics, which were gender differentiated by contexts and normreferences. Analyses of variance on the factor scoreindicated girls' and young boys' conceptualizations of“adult” were related to maternal employment status and their career goals; older adolescentboys structured the roles ofparent,worker,and spouse astraditionally gender typed.     

Racial Differences on the Conners Teacher Rating Scale

Factor congruence and mean differences on the Conners Teacher Rating Scale were assessed across African-American and Caucasian school children. Factor analyses conducted separately by gender revealed similar factors across races for males and females. The main differences in factor structure within gender were the presence of an Antisocial factor in black males and an Inattention factor in white females. Across both males and females, teachers tended to rate black children higher than white children on factors relating to externalizing behaviors. Whether mean differences are a result of teacher bias or actual behavioral differences in the classroom needs further research.     

A responsibility model for the practice of professional school psychology: Psychoeducational therapy

This paper discusses from first-hand experience the need for, and development of, a program of psychoeducational therapy within a school system. Conditions in the schools that support and influence the therapy, as well as therapy characteristics, are considered in some detail. Reasons are delineated that make this a responsibility model of school psychology practice. The therapy program is part of a larger supporting thrust in intervention, features of which are briefly referred to.     

Counterconditioning and exposure-only in the treatment of specific (conditioned suppression) and generalized fear in rats

In Experiment 1 the conditioned suppression technique was used to condition specific fear, suppression of operent lever pressing for food to a discrete CS. The efficacy of four treatment conditions on fear reduction was evaluated. Counterconditioning in which exposure to the CS was contiguously paired with food was significantly less effective than noncontiguous CS exposure and food. An exposure-only effect was indicated by the superiority of all three treatments involving CS exposure (the above two plus a typical conditioned suppression extinction procedure) to treatment consisting of food only. The reverse counterconditioning effect and the exposure effect are consistent with current views that emphasize the centrality of aversive stimulus exposure in fear reduction. Experiment 2 investigated elimination of generalized fear produced by unsignalled, inescapable shocks in the lever-pressing apparatus. Two treatments (counterconditioning and exposure-only) were equally effective and they were superior to no exposure control treatment. The results of the two experiments reinforce recent attempts toward a reevaluation of the role of anxiety-competing responses in elimination of fear.     

Period analytic algorithms for the estimation of selected spectral properties of short segments of EEG data

The accuracy and computational speed of three algorithms (spectral analysis, period analysis, and period amplitude analysis) for the extraction of spectral estimates from time-series data are empirically evaluated in the context of a neuropsychological experiment that requires estimates of power in the standard electroencephalographic frequency bands.