What If the Energizer Bunny Were Female? Importance of Gender in Perceptions of Advertising Spokes-Character Effectiveness

An experiment was designed to determine whether and in what way gender makes a difference in the ratings of advertising spokes-characters. It was hypothesized and results confirmed that gender and product type affect the likability of spokes-characters and perceptions of target audience. A male spokes-character is perceived as more appropriate for a male-oriented product; however, a female spokes-character and a male product created the impression that the product was not quite so male oriented. It was also hypothesized that the spokes-character with the most positive ratings would be the most memorable. Results did not bear this out.     

EPS Prize Lecture. Learning to read words

The ease with which we process the written word belies its complexities and makes it easy to forget that it is a highly skilled behaviour and one that takes time to master. In this paper, I argue that our ability to read words has its roots in our capacity for language. Good progress has been made towards understanding how children discover the systematic relationship between speech sounds and the letters used to represents those sounds, very early in reading development. However, we understand much less about how beginning readers become skilled readers. To understand this, I argue that it is important to view the visual word recognition system within the context of a broader language system, one that incorporates a rich network of semantic and episodic knowledge.     

Exploring Causes of the Self‐serving Bias

The self‐serving bias refers to a tendency for people to take personal responsibility for their desirable outcomes yet externalize responsibility for their undesirable outcomes. We review a variety of explanations for this attribution bias. Although researchers have historically pitted cognitive and motivational explanations for the self‐serving bias against one another, cognitive and motivation processes often work in tandem to lead people to conclude that they are responsible for the desirable but not the undesirable outcomes.     

Adolescents' co‐rumination and stress predict affective changes in a daily‐diary paradigm

Co‐rumination has been related to both high quality friendship and depressive symptoms. However, little is known regarding the extent to which co‐rumination may be detrimental, its distinction from rumination and potential gender differences in co‐rumination. This study used a modified version of Rose's Co‐rumination Questionnaire (Rose, 2002) to examine the behaviour of daily co‐rumination with daily stress and negative affect among adolescents. Results demonstrated that co‐rumination did not have a main effect in predicting negative affect, but did evidence a significant interaction with life stress. Additionally, co‐rumination demonstrated incremental utility above that of rumination. Finally, gender differences were not supported. In conclusion, this investigation revealed that co‐rumination exacerbates the effects of life stress and is predictive of increased internalising symptoms.     

Structural and Community Change Outcomes of the Connect‐to‐Protect Coalitions: Trials and Triumphs Securing Adolescent Access to HIV Prevention,Testing, and Medical Care

Connect to Protect (C2P), a 10‐year community mobilization effort, pursued the dual aims of creating communities competent to address youth's HIV‐related risks and removing structural barriers to youth health. We used Community Coalition Action Theory (CCAT) to examine the perceived contributions and accomplishments of 14 C2P coalitions. We interviewed 318 key informants, including youth and community leaders, to identify the features of coalitions’ context and operation that facilitated and undermined their ability to achieve structural change and build communities’ capability to manage their local adolescent HIV epidemic effectively. We coded the interviews using an a priori coding scheme informed by CCAT and scholarship on AIDS‐competent communities. We found community mobilization efforts like C2P can contribute to addressing the structural factors that promote HIV‐risk among youth and to community development. We describe how coalition leadership, collaborative synergy, capacity building, and local community context influence coalitions’ ability to successfully implement HIV‐related structural change, demonstrating empirical support for many of CCAT's propositions. We discuss implications for how community mobilization efforts might succeed in laying the foundation for an AIDS‐competent community.     

Emotion Regulation and Loss of Control Eating in Community-Based Adolescents

The current study investigated concurrent and prospective associations between emotion-related constructs and loss of control (LOC) eating in adolescents. Community-based females (N?=?588) completed annual self-report assessments of LOC eating, emotional awareness, emotion regulation strategies, and neuroticism from ages 16 to 18 years. Linear regressions and a regression-based multiple mediation model using bootstrapping were computed to examine the relationships among emotion-related constructs and LOC eating frequency. In the concurrent model, age 18 emotional awareness and emotion regulation strategies were associated with age 18 LOC eating, F(6, 416)?=?12.11, p?<?0.001, accounting for 4.5 % of the variance after controlling for demographics, body mass index, and neuroticism, F change?=?10.81, p?<?0.001. In the prospective model, age 17 emotional awareness predicted age 18 LOC eating, F(7, 425)?=?11.67, p?<?0.001, accounting for 1.7 % of unique variance beyond the effects of age 16 LOC eating and age 17 demographics, body mass index, and neuroticism, F change?=?4.26, p?=?0.015. In the multiple mediation model, age 18 emotion regulation strategies mediated the association between age 17 neuroticism and age 18 LOC eating, indirect effect estimate?=?0.003, 95 % confidence interval?=?0.001–0.005, after controlling for age 16 LOC eating and age 17 demographics, body mass index, and emotion regulation variables. Results suggest that deficient emotion regulation may contribute to the onset and maintenance of LOC eating in adolescence (although effects were small), and may partially explain the well-established prospective relationship between negative emotionality and later LOC eating. Prevention and early intervention programs should seek to improve adaptive coping in at-risk populations.     

The Problematization of Sexuality among Women Living with HIV and a New Feminist Approach for Understanding and Enhancing Women’s Sexual Lives

In the context of HIV, women’s sexual rights and sexual autonomy are important but frequently overlooked and violated. Guided by community voices, feminist theories, and qualitative empirical research, we reviewed two decades of global quantitative research on sexuality among women living with HIV. In the 32 studies we found, conducted in 25 countries and composed mostly of cis-gender heterosexual women, sexuality was narrowly constructed as sexual behaviours involving risk (namely, penetration) and physiological dysfunctions relating to HIV illness, with far less attention given to the fullness of sexual lives in context, including more positive and rewarding experiences such as satisfaction and pleasure. Findings suggest that women experience declines in sexual activity, function, satisfaction, and pleasure following HIV diagnosis, at least for some period. The extent of such declines, however, is varied, with numerous contextual forces shaping women’s sexual well-being. Clinical markers of HIV (e.g., viral load, CD4 cell count) poorly predicted sexual outcomes, interrupting widely held assumptions about sexuality for women with HIV. Instead, the effects of HIV-related stigma intersecting with inequities related to trauma, violence, intimate relations, substance use, poverty, aging, and other social and cultural conditions primarily influenced the ways in which women experienced and enacted their sexuality. However, studies framed through a medical lens tended to pathologize outcomes as individual “problems,” whereas others driven by a public health agenda remained primarily preoccupied with protecting the public from HIV. In light of these findings, we present a new feminist approach for research, policy, and practice toward understanding and enhancing women’s sexual lives—one that affirms sexual diversity; engages deeply with society, politics, and history; and is grounded in women’s sexual rights.     

A systematic review of cognitive functioning among young people who have experienced homelessness,foster care,or poverty

Young people who have experienced homelessness, foster care, or poverty are among the most disadvantaged in society. This review examines whether young people who have these experiences differ from their non-disadvantaged peers with respect to their cognitive skills and abilities, and whether cognitive profiles differ between these three groups. Three electronic databases were systematically searched for articles published between 1 January 1995 and 1 February 2015 on cognitive functioning among young people aged 15 to 24 years who have experienced homelessness, foster care, or poverty. Articles were screened using pre-determined inclusion criteria, then the data were extracted, and its quality assessed. A total of 31 studies were included. Compared to non-disadvantaged youth or published norms, cognitive performance was generally found to be impaired in young people who had experienced homelessness, foster care, or poverty. A common area of difficulty across all groups is working memory. General cognitive functioning, attention, and executive function deficits are shared by the homeless and poverty groups. Creativity emerges as a potential strength for homeless young people. The cognitive functioning of young people with experiences of impermanent housing and poverty has been relatively neglected and more research is needed to further establish cognitive profiles and replicate the findings reviewed here. As some aspects of cognitive functioning may show improvement with training, these could represent a target for intervention.     

It's a Museum,But Not as We Know It: Issues for Local Residents Accessing the Museum of Old and New Art

The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), in Australia's island state of Tasmania, bears all the hallmarks of the new museology and a flagship museum. Located in a largely working class area, there are expectations of visitors from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, particularly local residents. However most visitors are tourists, middle-class, and highly educated. In this article, the authors ask, “What are the issues affecting accessibility to MONA for local residents?” In asking this, they aim to better understand local engagement with MONA and shed light on potential socio-cultural transformation. Using a survey, interviews, and focus groups with local residents, the authors found that accessibility at MONA is defined along familiar socioeconomic lines, though there are indications of change that warrant further investigation. The expense of food and beverage, concern about children's behavior, and the explicit nature of some art all impact on accessibility, particularly for those with less cultural capital.     

Navigating through apertures: perceptual judgements and actions of children with Developmental Coordination Disorder

Passing through a narrow gap/aperture involves a perceptual judgement regarding the size of the gap and an action to pass through. Children with DCD are known to have difficulties with perceptual judgements in near space but whether this extends to far space is unknown. Furthermore, in a recent study it was found that adults with DCD do not scale movements when walking through an aperture in the same way as their peers. The current study, therefore, considered perceptual judgements and motor behaviour of children with DCD while looking at or walking through apertures. Twenty‐nine children with DCD and 29 typically developing (TD) children took part. In Experiment 1, participants completed a perceptual task, where they made passability judgements. Children with DCD showed a significantly smaller critical ratio (aperture size at which a participant first rotates the shoulders to pass through) compared to their TD peers. In Experiment 2, participants completed an action task where they walked through the same apertures. Children with DCD showed a significantly larger critical ratio than TD peers when body size alone was accounted for. Taken together these results suggest that perception within a static context is different from that within a dynamic context for children with DCD. However, despite this difference we have demonstrated a clear relationship between perception and action in children with DCD. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/SABXFrAJtF8