Career development of trauma survivors: expectations about counseling and career maturity

Trauma survivors include individuals who have been affected by a severe physical or psychologically threatening experience. This study compared the expectations for career counseling and the level of career maturity among trauma survivors and nonsurvivors (individuals who have had no trauma experience) who participated in a program at a midwestern social service agency. The findings indicated that trauma survivors were more motivated and open to counseling than nonsurvivors, but expected their counselors to be less empathic. No significant differences were noted on career maturity. Implications for counselor training and future research are also discussed.     

Intruders of differing reproductive status alter aggression differentially in early and late pregnant mice

Independent groups of early and late pregnant mice, housed individually, were observed with an intruder in their home cage. The intruders were either males, virgin, early, or late pregnant females. Male intruders were sniffed less, but more frequently and more severely attacked, than any type of female intruder, both by early and by late pregnant residents. While early pregnant females behaved similarly with the three types of female intruders, late pregnant animals treated them differently: they showed practically no aggression to late pregnant intruders, more to early pregnant ones and were most aggressive towards virgin female intruders. The possible relation of these findings to reproductive behaviour is discussed.     

The integration of multidimensional scaling and multivariate analysis with optimal transformations

The recent history of multidimensional data analysis suggests two distinct traditions that have developed along quite different lines. In multidimensional scaling (MDS), the available data typically describe the relationships among a set of objects in terms of similarity/dissimilarity (or (pseudo-)distances). In multivariate analysis (MVA), data usually result from observation on a collection of variables over a common set of objects. This paper starts from a very general multidimensional scaling task, defined on distances between objects derived from one or more sets of multivariate data. Particular special cases of the general problem, following familiar notions from MVA, will be discussed that encompass a variety of analysis techniques, including the possible use of optimal variable transformation. Throughout, it will be noted how certain data analysis approaches are equivalent to familiar MVA solutions when particular problem specifications are combined with particular distance approximations.This research was supported by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). An earlier version of this paper was written during a stay at McGill University in Montréal; this visit was supported by a travel grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). I am grateful to Jim Ramsay and Willem Heiser for their encouragement and helpful suggestions, and to the Editor and referees for their constructive comments.     

Controlling Stroop effects by manipulating expectations for color words

An important characteristic of automatic processing is its uncontrollability. The Stroop phenomenon is regarded as a prototypical example of this characteristic of automatic processing, hence, the Stroop effect should not change when the percentages of color words versus neutral stimuli are manipulated to induce controlled processing. We found that Stroop interference decreased as the percentage of color words increased. Furthermore, the magnitude of the inhibitory component of the Stroop effect was negatively correlated with the percentage of color words; the facilitatory component was insensitive to the manipulation. These results suggest that the Stroop effect is controllable (see Logan, 1980) and that the locus of control is postlexical. The results also suggest that facilitation and inhibition are produced by different mechanisms and challenge those models of the Stroop phenomenon (e.g., Cohen, Dunbar, & McClelland, 1990; Phaf, Van der Heijden, & Hudson, 1990) that assume that a single processing mechanism causes facilitation and inhibition and that control affects facilitation and inhibition alike (Logan, 1980).     

SEXUAL ASSAULT HISTORY AND WOMEN'S REPRODUCTIVE AND SEXUAL HEALTH

Associations of sexual assault history with reproductive and sexual symptoms were evaluated in 3,419 women randomly selected from two communities. Sexual assault was associated with excessive menstrual bleeding, genital burning, and painful intercourse (whether or not attributable to disease or injury), medically explained missing two menstrual periods, and medically unexplained dysmenorrhea, menstrual irregularity, and lack of sexual pleasure. Physically violent assaults and those committed by strangers were most strongly related to reproductive symptoms. Multiple assaults, assaults accomplished by persuasion, spouse assault, and completed intercourse were most strongly related to sexual symptoms. Assault was occasionally associated more strongly with reproductive symptoms among women with lower income or less education, possibly because of economic stress or differences in assault circumstances. Associations with unexplained menstrual irregularity were strongest among African American women; ethnic differences in reported circumstances of assault appeared to account for these differences. Assault was associated with sexual indifference only among Latinas.