Self-reported parental abuse relates to autobiographical memory style in patients with eating disorders

Previous research has shown a relationship between levels of self-reported childhood abuse and overgeneral memory style. This relationship was further clarified in patients with an eating disorder (ED). Patients and healthy controls completed a task in which they had to generate specific autobiographical memories to emotional cue words. The results showed that first, the ED group, relative to the controls, produced more first memories that were "overgeneral" and fewer first memories that were specific. Second, in the ED group, the level of self-reported parental abuse was positively correlated with the tendency to produce overgeneral memories to negative cues. This effect remained significant even after levels of depressed mood were controlled for.     

When cues collide: use of stress and statistical cues to word boundaries by 7- to 9-month-old infants

Prior research suggests that stress cues are particularly important for English-hearing infants' detection of word boundaries. It is unclear, though, how infants learn to attend to stress as a cue to word segmentation. This series of experiments was designed to explore infants' attention to conflicting cues at different ages. Experiment 1 replicated previous findings: When stress and statistical cues indicated different word boundaries, 9-month-old infants used syllable stress as a cue to segmentation while ignoring statistical cues. However, in Experiment 2, 7-month-old infants attended more to statistical cues than to stress cues. These results raise the possibility that infants use their statistical learning abilities to locate words in speech and use those words to discover the regular pattern of stress cues in English. Infants at different ages may deploy different segmentation strategies as a function of their current linguistic experience.     

Behavioral dysexecutive symptoms in normal aging

Executive deficits of normal aging such as deficits in planning, organization or decision making are likely to affect elderly individuals in their daily life functioning. Therefore, executive functioning in aging seems to be interesting to study not only in cognitive terms but also in relation to the behavioral area. This pilot study aimed to investigate the nature of behavioral dysexecutive problems in a sample of normal elderly adults as measured by the Dysexecutive Questionnaire. Factor analysis showed that five interpretable factors could be derived from the DEX: intentionality (factor 1), interference management (factor 2), inhibition (factor 3), planning (factor 4), and social regulation (factor 5), suggesting that different components may underlie the behavioral dysexecutive symptoms of normal aging. The relationship between these factors and neuropsychological measures of Executive Functions were also briefly explored.     

A biosocial interaction in predicting early onset of offending

Research has shown several factors increase the likelihood of early onset of offending; however, interactions among prenatal risk factors and sociological factors in predicting early onset have been a neglected area of research. The purpose of this study was to test the interactive effect of material cigarette smoking during pregnancy and the absence of the father from the household in predicting early onset of offending. The longitudinal data utilized for this study of 215 inner-city, African-American youth offenders were taken from the Philadelphia portion of the Collaborative Perinatal Project. A logistic regression analysis indicated that the combined effect of maternal cigarette smoking and absence of father from the household had a significant influence in predicting early onset of offending beyond the direct effects of the independent variables while controlling for sex of youth.     

Searching for one versus two identical targets: when visual search has a memory

A recent study has suggested that observers' visual explorations of the external world can proceed unimpaired when the visual environment precludes the operation of memory processes (as, for instance, when the display elements change locations every 100 ms). One theoretical limitation of this study was that distractors were the only elements that had the potential to be tagged during visual search. The present study sought to clarify the amnesic-search hypothesis by investigating whether memory processes can guide search in other contexts in which targets also have the potential to be tagged. Accordingly, the experimental conditions of the previous study were repeated using a different search task in which observers had to decide whether one target or two were present among a variable number of similar distractors. Under these search conditions, the present findings provided strong evidence that memory processes can guide visual search.     

Feeling safe at work: Development and validation of the Psychological Safety Inventory

Psychological safety, defined as perceptions that an individual within a team is supported and feels safe to take interpersonal risks, voice opinions, and share ideas, is vital for organizational effectiveness. However, there is no consensus on how workplace psychological safety should be measured. We developed the Psychological Safety Inventory (PSI) in response to organizational needs to accurately assess psychological safety. A 70-item version of the PSI was administered to 497 employees from Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Based on factor analytic findings, we reduced the preliminary PSI to a 30-item, five-factor scale. The PSI showed high reliability and correlated as anticipated with convergent measures. Overall, the PSI is a valid and reliable measure of workplace psychological safety.     

Making Room for the Mental

Philosophical Studies -     

Talking about subject choice at secondary school and career aspirations: conversations with students of Chinese background

Interviews with 15 boys and 12 girls from Chinese backgrounds are reported. The interviews, which centred on option/subject choices and career aspirations, were based on the results of a survey of 794 secondary-school students. This survey had indicated that the Chinese students included were more similar in their responses to ethnic-majority than to other ethnic-minority students. Conversation analysis of the interviews revealed three themes: students attributed their choices to (i) their liking for the subject/teacher; (ii) the link between school subjects and careers; and (iii) institutional frameworks. There was a marked omission of reference to issues related to ethnicity or gender. These findings are discussed in the context of other studies of Chinese ethnicity.     

SEXUAL HARASSMENT AND ASSAULT

An extensive body of literature has documented the widespread and damaging nature of sexual harassment and assault on college campuses, yet little research has investigated the impact of such victimization on the academic climate. This study examined experiences of sexual harassment and assault among 1,037 female undergraduate and graduate students, with a particular focus on educational outcomes. Multivariate analyses of variance revealed significant negative effects of harassment and assault on perceptions of academic climate. We also investigated the extent and effects of double victimization (i.e., experiences of both harassment and assault), as well as the relationships among sexual harassment types, incidence rates, and frequencies. Issues of sexual orientation and race/ethnicity are explored throughout the article, with membership in different groups affecting victimization incidence rates as well as harassment labeling.