Sexually Explicit Internet Material and Adolescents’ Sexual Performance Orientation: The Mediating Roles of Enjoyment and Perceived Utility

Little is known about how exposure to sexually explicit Internet material (SEIM) relates to a performance-focused orientation toward sex. Based on a three-wave panel study among adolescents (N = 1,022), we found that watching SEIM predicted a sexual performance orientation from Wave (W) 2 to W3, but not from W1 to W2. A sexual performance orientation at W2 predicted adolescents’ exposure to SEIM at W3. The relationship between exposure to SEIM and a sexual performance orientation was explained by a two-step mediation model. The more adolescents were exposed to SEIM at W1, the more they enjoyed consuming this content at W2. In turn, enjoyment of SEIM (W2) predicted adolescents’ perceived utility of SEIM (W2). This increased perceived utility at W2 predicted a more intense performance orientation towards SEIM at W3. Within this 2-step model, we also found full support for a reciprocal relationship between using SEIM (W1/W2/W3) and enjoyment of SEIM (W1/W2/W3) and partial support for a reciprocal relationship between sexual performance orientation (W2) and perceived utility of SEIM (W3).     

Does sunshine prime loyal? Affective priming in the naming task

Recent work has found an affective priming effect using the naming task: In pronouncing target words, pronunciation latencies were consistently shorter when the target (e.g., loyal) was preceded by an evaluatively congruent (e.g., sunshine) rather than incongruent prime word (e.g, rain). Using the naming task, no affective priming was found in the present studies irrespective of prime-set size and target-set size (Experiment 1), irrespective of stimulus-onset asynchrony (Experiment 2), and even when a nearly exact replication of previous work that demonstrated the effect was conducted (Experiment 3). Finally, bilingual German/English speakers exhibited strong associative priming, but no affective priming, in both the English as well as the German language (Experiment 4). The results show that priming for evaluatively related words is not a general finding.     

Preadolescents' and adolescents' online communication and their closeness to friends

The 1st goal of this study was to investigate how online communication is related to the closeness of existing friendships. Drawing from a sample of 794 preadolescents and adolescents, the authors found that online communication was positively related to the closeness of friendships. However, this effect held only for respondents who primarily communicated online with existing friends and not for those who mainly talked with strangers. The 2nd goal was to refine 2 opposing hypotheses, the rich-get-richer and the social compensation hypotheses. Consistent with the rich-get-richer hypothesis, socially anxious respondents communicated online less often than did nonsocially anxious respondents. However, socially anxious respondents perceived the Internet as more valuable for intimate self-disclosure than did nonsocially anxious respondents, and this perception in turn led to more online communication. This result is consistent with the social compensation hypothesis. Online communication and closeness to friends increased with age. There was a curvilinear relationship between age and perceived value of the Internet for intimate self-disclosure, such that 15-year-olds were at the epitome of online self-disclosure. Girls were closer to friends and more socially anxious than were boys.     

Procedural fairness, outcome favorability, and judgments of an authority's responsibility

Fairness theory (R. Folger & R. Cropanzano, 1998, 2001) postulates that, particularly in the face of unfavorable outcomes, employees judge an organizational authority to be more responsible for their outcomes when the authority exhibits lower procedural fairness. Three studies lent empirical support to this notion. Furthermore, 2 of the studies showed that attributions of responsibility to the authority mediated the relationship between the authority's procedural fairness and employees' reactions to unfavorable outcomes. The findings (a) provide support for a key assumption of fairness theory, (b) help to account for the pervasive interactive effect of procedural fairness and outcome favorability on employees' attitudes and behaviors, and (c) contribute to an emerging trend in justice research concerned with how people use procedural fairness information to make attributions of responsibility for their outcomes. Practical implications, limitations, and suggestions for future research also are discussed.     

Neural correlates of conceptual implicit memory and their contamination of putative neural correlates of explicit memory

During episodic recognition tests, meaningful stimuli such as words can engender both conscious retrieval (explicit memory) and facilitated access to meaning that is distinct from the awareness of remembering (conceptual implicit memory). Neuroimaging investigations of one type of memory are frequently subject to the confounding influence of the other type of memory, thus posing a serious impediment to theoretical advances in this area. We used minimalist visual shapes (squiggles) to attempt to overcome this problem. Subjective ratings of squiggle meaningfulness varied idiosyncratically, and behavioral indications of conceptual implicit memory were evident only for stimuli given higher ratings. These effects did not result from perceptual-based fluency or from explicit remembering. Distinct event-related brain potentials were associated with conceptual implicit memory and with explicit memory by virtue of contrasts based on meaningfulness ratings and memory judgments, respectively. Frontal potentials from 300 to 500 msec after the onset of repeated squiggles varied systematically with perceived meaningfulness. Explicit memory was held constant in this contrast, so these potentials were taken as neural correlates of conceptual implicit memory. Such potentials can contaminate putative neural correlates of explicit memory, in that they are frequently attributed to the expression of explicit memory known as familiarity. These findings provide the first neural dissociation of these two memory phenomena during recognition testing and underscore the necessity of taking both types of memory into account in order to obtain valid neural correlates of specific memory functions.     

Validating neural correlates of familiarity

Familiarity is a pervasive memory phenomenon that occurs in its most basic form when someone recognizes a repeated stimulus without recollecting other aspects of the requisite prior learning episode. Theoretical controversy currently abounds with respect to both the cognitive and neural characteristics of familiarity. Here, we show that the extant data, particularly brain-potential data, are insufficient for validating putative neural correlates of familiarity, and we outline strategies for making progress on this problem. Conceptual priming is an implicit-memory phenomenon that often occurs together with familiarity; experiments that conflate the two phenomena can be misleading. Avoiding this conflation is required to understand familiarity and to determine the extent to which the neurocognitive processes that support priming also drive familiarity.     

Does implicit learning in non-demented Parkinson’s disease depend on the level of cognitive functioning?

We investigated the influence of the level of cognitive functioning on sequence-specific learning in Parkinson's disease (PD). This was done by examining the relationship between the scales for outcomes in Parkinson's disease-cognition [SCOPA-COG, Marinus, J., Visser, M., Verwey, N. A., Verhey, F. R. J., Middelkoop, H. A. M.,Stiggelbout, A., et al. (2003). Assessment of cognition in Parkinson's disease. Neurology, 61, 1222-1228] and the serial reaction time (SRT) task [Nissen, M. J., & Bullemer, P. T. (1987). Attentional requirements for learning: Evidence from performance measures. Cognitive Psychology, 19, 1-32] in a homogeneous sample, consisting of 25 PD patients diagnosed in Stage 3 of the Hoehn and Yahr [Hoehn, M. M., & Yahr, M. D. (1967). Parkinsonism: onset, progression, and mortality. Neurology, 17, 427-442] scale. Six patients in the low scoring cognitive group, 11 patients in the average scoring and eight patients in the high scoring group, conducted a SRT task with a deterministic sequence. Sequence-specific learning was assessed by inserting a random block to determine whether the acquisition of sequence movements differed between groups. Our results indicate an association between cognitive functioning in PD patients and sequence learning. These findings emphasize the use of assessing cognition in addition to the well-known motor aspects in PD.