Body image,dieting tendencies,and sex role traits in urban black women

The present study examined body image satisfaction, dieting tendencies, and sex role traits among a sample of black urban women. While women who felt “too fat” were more likely than other women to engage in both restrictive and nonrestrictive dieting tendencies, in general, the women's body weight and body image did not compel them to utilize extremely restrictive dieting practices. A sizable proportion of the sample reported body image dissatisfaction and weight concerns, yet this did not appear to exert an overwhelmingly negative influence over other aspects of their lives, such as participation in sports, exercise, and sexual activity. Body image satisfaction and sex role traits were related. Dieting tendencies were also related with body image satisfaction. These findings and implications for further research are discussed.     

Rationality ideals and mentality

Mackenzie, this journal, this issue, convincingly shows that in certain dialogue games (commitment games) there are procedural restrictions similar to those that I impose on rationality idealizations. But, whereas my rationality analysis is set in the context of belief games, commitment games do not postulate beliefs. Is this significant? I suggest that mackenzie thinks that it is. There follow discussions of Psychologism and Behaviourism.     

Long latency auditory evoked potentials

Experiment 1 elicited the P1, N1, P2, and N2 components of the long latency auditory evoked potential (AEP) using a 1000 Hz tone presented at 30, 50, or 70 dB SPL and 1-, 3-, or 5- second inter-stimulus intervals to assess the relative effects of the combination of these variables on component amplitude and latency. Four blocks of 16 tone presentations each were recorded from each subject to determine if changes in the AEP would occur because of short-term habituation. Both stimulus factors interacted significantly in a systematic fashion for the amplitude measures, with increases in latency also associated with increases in intensity and inter-stimulus interval. Only minor changes across the four trial blocks for either the amplitude or latency measures were observed over the various stimulus presentation conditions. Experiment 2 employed the same tone stimulus presented at 50 dB SPL and a 3-second inter-stimulus interval. Eight blocks of 64 trials were recorded from each subject on each day for four days to investigate long-term habituation effects. No substantial changes in any of the component amplitudes or latencies were obtained across the 32 trial blocks. It was concluded that intensity and inter-stimulus interval interact to determine AEP amplitude as well as latency values and that the constituent components do not change appreciably with repeated stimulus presentations, even after several days.     

Is rapid performance improvement across short precue-target delays due to masking from peripheral precues?

The role of lateral masking in more rapid performance improvement with peripheral than with central precuing was investigated. A peripheral precue to the inside of the target location provided less masking at zero precue-target delay than a precue to the outside (experiment 1) or a precue involving a partial target at the target location (experiment 2). There was no significant interaction between precue-target delay and precue type in a comparison of inside precues and precues involving a briefly-brightened box around the target location, although overall performance was significantly poorer with the latter (experiment 3). Performance was better at short precue-target delays with inside precues than with central precues (experiment 4), yet it did not improve significantly more rapidly. Minimizing lateral masking with peripheral precues thus eliminates the dramatic performance improvement sometimes observed across short precue-target delays, causing performance to be consistently better than with central precues across these delays.     

Line bisecting as a predictor of personal optimism and desirability of risky behaviors.

Our goal was to test whether current hemisphere predominance is a predictor of scores on standardized measures of personal optimism and preference for risk. In two between-subject experiments, current hemisphere predominance was measured by the direction and extent of line bisecting errors. Pearson correlations and median splits of the line bisecting errors showed significantly greater personal optimism and preference for risk with left hemisphere predominance. These results support previous research in which manipulation of hemisphere predominance produced similar effects on personal optimism in normal individuals and on risk taking in lesioned and normal samples. We conclude that the association of optimism and risk with left hemisphere predominance can be observed in resting as well as in manipulated situations.     

Smooth-pursuit eye movement dysfunction and liability for schizophrenia: implications for genetic modeling.

Forty-one nonpsychiatric subjects, 38 probands with schizophrenia, and 99 of their relatives were studied. Oculomotor functioning was bimodally distributed for probands and relatives. Oculomotor dysfunction was not present in all families with a schizophrenic proband. In those families in which it was present, there were significant phenotypic correlations between oculomotor functioning and schizophrenia-related characteristics. The patterns of familial resemblance in the families in whom oculomotor dysfunction was present were consistent with nonadditive genetic variance contributing both to oculomotor dysfunction and to the relationship between oculomotor dysfunction and clinical symptoms. These results suggest that schizophrenia may be etiologically heterogeneous and that oculomotor dysfunction may help to identify nonadditive genetic variance for this disorder.     

Hypnosis, reporting bias, and suggested negative hallucinations.

We examined the role of reporting bias in hypnotic negative hallucinations by using a paradigm in which reporting bias was assessed independently of perceptual change. In Experiment 1, highly hypnotizable subjects reported significant loudness reductions when tested for hypnotic deafness. Later, however, these subjects biased their reported loudness reductions in the absence of perceptual change, and their reporting bias scores were almost as large as their hypnotic deafness reports. Subjects also biased their ratings of strategy use. In Experiment 2, ratings of blindness given in response to a hypnotic negative visual hallucination suggestion were significantly correlated with reporting bias scores obtained in this paradigm. Although hypnotic blindness and hypnotic deafness correlated significantly, the partial correlation between these variables was nonsignificant when reporting bias scores were statistically controlled. Theoretical implications are discussed.     

Depression and social problem solving.

Twenty depressed patients with major depressive disorder, 20 nondepressed matched control subjects, and 17 patients with anxiety disorders were compared in different measures of social problem solving. Problem solving was assessed with the Means-Ends Problem-Solving Test (Study 1), the solution of personal problems, and a problem-solving questionnaire (Study 2). Results showed that, as predicted, depressed subjects suffered from a deficit in problem solving in all three measures. The majority of these deficits were also displayed by the clinical control group rather than being specific to a diagnosis of depression. However, depressed subjects produced less effective solutions than did normal and clinical control subjects. The results suggest that depressed and anxious patients may have difficulties at different stages of the problem-solving process.     

Hypnotically created pseudomemories: further investigation into the "memory distortion or response bias" question.

In order to study whether pseudomemories represent actual memory distortions or are a result of response bias, 60 highly hypnotizable subjects and subjects from the general population were divided into 4 experimental groups and were tested for pseudomemory manifestation after receiving a false suggestion. Of the 4 groups of subjects, 3 were offered a monetary reward as a motivation to distinguish false suggestion from actual occurrence. Pseudomemory manifestation was found to be significantly higher among subjects not offered a reward than among subjects who were offered such an reward. The implications of these findings are discussed.