The effects of intensive,extensive, structured study on GRE scores

Thirty-eight undergraduate students engaged in self-paced self-study using standard materials in one of five Graduate Record Examination (GRE) preparatory courses, lasting 5.5 to 7.5 weeks, offering 66 to 140 hours of study, and using attendance and participation incentives. Statistically and practically significant improvements were found from pretest to posttest verbal, quantitative, and combined scores. In one series of courses, the mean combined scores improved 96 points, increasing from 842 (pretest) to 938 (posttest). In the other, the mean improved 186 points, increasing from 888 to 1074. Earlier published research involved brief training (3 to 9 hours) and showed no benefits. The present research suggests that intensive, structured training can produce a mean improvement of at least 96 points, which is a socially significant accomplishment.     

Psychological distress and well-being in advanced cancer: The effects of optimism and coping

This study examined the relations among optimism, coping, functional status, and psychological adjustment in 75 adults diagnosed with cancer. Both the positive and the negative aspects of psychological adjustment were assessed. All participants had been diagnosed with advanced stages of cancer (i.e., Stages II, III, and IV). Participants completed three assessments across a 4-month time period. Both optimism and coping were associated with psychological adjustment, even after controlling for functional status and prior adjustment. Additionally, optimism and coping were differentially related to distress and well-being. Optimism was strongly and positively associated with well-being and inversely related to distress. Escape-Avoidance coping was positively associated with distress and Accepting Responsibility coping was negatively associated with well-being. Comparisons between the current and prior studies indicated that individuals who are diagnosed with more advanced stages of cancer or who have survived bone marrow transplantation exhibit higher levels of optimism than do healthy individuals and individuals with early-stage disease.     

Completion norms collected from younger and older adults for 198 sentence contexts

Completion responses were collected from younger and older adults for 198 highly constrained sentence contexts that were designed to elicit the same response (i.e., the best completion) in the vast majority of subjects. For each context, completions and their respective frequency of occurrence are provided. Overall, individuals of all ages produced highly similar terminal words. Results of formal analyses indicated that greater socioeconomic status and higher levels of education were mildly associated with a greater probability of producing a best completion response. Although increasing age also correlated with greater probability of producing a best completion, this very weak association would not preclude use of these stimuli with a wide age range.     

When Two Heads Aren't Better Than One: AIDS Risk Behavior in College-Age Couples1

Individuals in intimate relationships engage in higher levels of HIV risk behavior than do individuals engaging in casual sex (e.g., Bowen & Michal-Johnson, 1989; Misovich, Fisher, & Fisher, 1996). While there are many possible reasons for this consistent pattern of effects, few studies have focused on identifying the underlying causes. Therefore, same-gender focus groups were conducted with college-age men and women in intimate relationships as participants in order to examine, qualitatively, factors particular to relationships which are associated with HIV risk. Focus-group members indicated that concerns about questioning interpersonal trust and commitment in their relationship through the introduction of condoms or HIV testing were often strong impediments to these practices. Recommendations for future HIV-prevention interventions specific to individuals in relationships are discussed.     

Cross-language facilitation,semantic blindness,and the relation between language and memory: A reply to Altarriba and Soltano

This comment corrects some inaccuracies, points to some methodological problems, and makes three substantive observations regarding the Altarriba and Soltano (1996) article. First, token individuation theory does not explain what is new and interesting in the Altarriba and Soltano data, namely cross-language semantic facilitation in lists and a list-sentence effect, that is, a large difference in the effect of semantic repetition when identical translation equivalents occurred in sentences versus lists. Second, Altarriba and Soltano’s small and nonsignificant semantic blindness effect for translation equivalents in split-language sentences is attributable to the peculiar nature of their materials, procedures, analyses, and experimental design. These problems nullify their conclusion that semantic blindness does not occur, and we discuss several clear cases where semantic blindness has been demonstrated. Finally, we suggest an explanation for Altarriba and Soltano’s unexplained effects (cross-language facilitation and the list-sentence effect) and show why these effects are important for the general issue of relations between language and memory.     

Personality and modulation of the startle reflex by emotionally-toned filmclips

Several researchers have found that pleasant foreground stimuli attenuate the eyeblink component of the startle reflex while unpleasant foreground stimuli potentiate it. The effects of personality factors on such modulation of the eyeblink response, as measured by electromyographic (EMG) activity in reaction to loud acoustic startle probes, were examined in subjects viewing emotionally-toned (pleasant, unpleasant and neutral) filmclips. During the main part of the experiment, introverts had higher baseline EMG activity and lower response probability than extraverts; no differences were observed at the beginning of the experiment, during an acclimatization session. Reflex modulation, as measured by response latency, was influenced by the Psychoticism (P) factor of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire: subjects high on P showed longer latencies to eyeblink onset when probed during viewing of pleasant filmclips than subjects low on this dimension; no significant differences were observed between subjects low and high on P for neutral and unpleasant filmclips. No influence of personality factors was found on affective modulation as measured by response amplitude/magnitude. The results are discussed in relation to Gray's and Eysenck's theories of personality.     

An Exploration of Right-Hemisphere Contributions to the Pragmatic Impairments of Autism

This study examined the potential contribution of the right hemisphere to the communicative impairments of autism. Pragmatic language measures sensitive to right-hemisphere damage were administered to nonretarded adults with autism and to controls matched on age and intellectual ability. The experimental battery included measures of humor, inference, and indirect request comprehension. Autistic subjects performed significantly less well than controls on all measures, replicating results of an earlier investigation by Rumsey and Hanahan (Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology,12,81, 1990). The performance of the autistic group on the three tasks was also similar to that of right-hemisphere stroke patients reported previously (Molloy, Brownell, & Gardner, in Y. Joanette and H. M. Brownell (Eds.),Discourse ability and brain damage: Theoretical and empirical perspectives,New York: Springer-Verlag, 1990, pp. 113–130). Generalizability of these results and implications for the neuropathology of autism are discussed.