Marital Status Bias in Perceptions of Employees

Three studies documented effects of marital status on perceptions of employees or prospective employees. In Experiment 1, participants rated a married female job applicant as less suitable for employment than a single counterpart. In Experiment 2, participants again perceived a female job applicant less favorably when she was married; in contrast, a male applicant was perceived more favorably when married. In Experiment 3, participants predicted that a recently married woman's job performance and dedication would decline, whereas a recently married man's dedication was predicted to rise; this difference made participants more willing to lay off the woman than the man.     

Out of sight, out of mind: the rarity of assessing and reporting participants' visual abilities when studying perception of linguistic stimuli

Variations in visual abilities are widespread in the adult population and have profound effects on processing linguistic stimuli (text, words, letters). However, a review of articles (1442) investigating the processing of visually presented linguistic stimuli by non-clinical adult participants, published in 2000-2010 in five leading journals (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance; Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition; Memory & Cognition; Perception & Psychophysics/Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics; and Perception), showed that the majority of articles (73.5%) made no mention of participants' visual abilities (62.1%) or relied merely on participants' self-report (11.4%). 25.2% reported participants' visual abilities with no assessment, and only 1.2% reported participants' visual abilities following objective assessment; the highest percentage of articles within this laudable minority was in Perception. The indications are that objective visual assessments in studies of visually presented linguistic stimuli are rare and greater use would facilitate better understanding of the visuo-cognitive processes involved.     

A Comparison of Multidimensional Health Profiles across Three Trauma-Exposed Diagnostic Groups

Posttraumatic stress disorder has been associated with adverse health outcomes. The extent to which the health effects of PTSD differ from other diagnoses has not been explored empirically. The current study investigated the Multidimensional Health Profile (including both Psychosocial and Health factors), across three diagnostic groups and one group of well-adjusted participants (N = 92) in a contrasted-groups design. Participants were all trauma-exposed and were assessed using structured clinical interviews. The PTSD and depression groups tended to differ from the social phobia and well-adjusted groups. Both the PTSD and depression groups demonstrated elevated profiles on variables assessing psychological distress, negative social exchange, and hypochondriasis. Results are consistent with prior research suggesting PTSD is associated with worse psychological and health functioning relative to trauma-exposed individuals without PTSD, although these health outcomes seem to differ little between those with PTSD and those with depression.     

A qualitative inquiry of Latino immigrants' work experiences in the Midwest

Latino immigrants are the largest source of immigrant workers in the United States. In this study, 11 first-generation Latino immigrants (8 men, 3 women) living in the Midwest were interviewed about their work experiences. Interview data were analyzed using consensual qualitative research methods (Hill, Thompson, & Williams, 1997). Five domains associated with the data included work for survival and power, work for social connections, work as self-determination, work barriers in the Midwest, and access to work in the Midwest. We identify ways in which vocational psychologists can intervene to work effectively with Latino newcomers seeking employment in the United States and to support their transition into new settlement communities. Suggestions for future research with immigrant workers are discussed.     

Effects of increased letter spacing on word identification and eye guidance during reading

The effect of increasing the space between the letters in words on eye movements during reading was investigated under various word-spacing conditions. Participants read sentences that included a high- or low-frequency target word, letters were displayed normally or with an additional space between adjacent letters, and one, two, or three spaces were present between each word. The spacing manipulations were found to modulate the effect of word frequency on the number and duration of fixations on target words, indicating, more specifically, that letter spacing affected actual word identification under various word-spacing conditions. In addition, whereas initial fixations landed at the preferred viewing position (i.e., to the left of a word’s center) for sentences presented normally, landing positions were nearer the beginnings of words when letter spacing was increased, and even nearer the beginnings of words when word boundary information was lacking. Findings are discussed in terms of the influence of textual spacing on eye movement control.     

Generating anagrams from multiple core strings employing user-defined vocabularies and orthographic parameters

Anagrams are used widely in psychological research. However, generating a range of strings with the same letter content is an inherently difficult and time-consuming task for humans, and current computer-based anagram generators do not provide the controls necessary for psychological research. In this article, we present a computational algorithm that overcomes these problems. Specifically, the algorithm processes automatically each word in a user-defined source vocabulary and outputs, for each word, all possible anagrams that exist as words (or as nonwords, if required) as defined by the same source vocabulary. Moreover, we show how the output of the algorithm can be filtered to produce anagrams within specific user-defined orthographic parameters. For example, the anagrams produced can be filtered to produce words that share, with each other or with other words in the source vocabulary, letters in only certain positions. Finally, we provide free access to the complete Windows-based program and source code containing these facilities for anagram generation.     

熟悉性对外群体同质性效应的影响

两个实验考查了年龄和性别群体中是否存在外群体同质性效应以及熟悉性对该种效应的影响。结果表明：1．年龄群体中存在明显的外群体同质性效应,这与青年群体和老年群体彼此不够熟悉有关;2．性别群体中不存在外群体同质性效应,这与青年男女群体彼此较为熟悉有关。     

Growth to Freedom or Support for Life?

This article reviews the recent contributions of Amartya Sen and John McMurtry to theory of international development and social justice. The author argues that both fail to give an adequate account of the current transformation of collective life and the provision of collective goods. Without such an analysis, theories of justice are incomplete. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.