Sex Roles,Gender, and Fear

Male and female college students classified as masculine, feminine, androgynous, or undifferentiated on the Bern (1974) Sex Role Inventory (N = 199) were given the Wolpe (1969) Fear Inventory. Significant differences in average fear scores were seen between men and women and between the four sex-role categories, with sex role and gender contributing equally to the variability. The argument is raised here that excessive fearfulness or fearlessness might be as much a product of sex-role conditioning as a product of gender.     

Internal consistency reliability and validity of the Hebrew translation of the Oxford Happiness Inventory

The Hebrew translation of the Oxford Happiness Inventory and the short form Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire were completed by 298 undergraduate women in Israel. The findings confirm the internal reliability of the Hebrew translation of the Oxford Happiness Inventory and support the construct validity according to which "happiness is a thing called stable extraversion."     

The angular gyrus in developmental dyslexia: task-specific differences in functional connectivity within posterior cortex

Converging evidence from neuroimaging studies of developmental dyslexia reveals dysfunction at posterior brain regions centered in and around the angular gyrus in the left hemisphere. We examined functional connectivity (covariance) between the angular gyrus and related occipital and temporal lobe sites, across a series of print tasks that systematically varied demands on phonological assembly. Results indicate that for dyslexic readers a disruption in functional connectivity in the language-dominant left hemisphere is confined to those tasks that make explicit demands on assembly. In contrast, on print tasks that do not require phonological assembly, functional connectivity is strong for both dyslexic and nonimpaired readers. The findings support the view that neurobiological anomalies in developmental dyslexia are largely confined to the phonological-processing domain. In addition, the findings suggest that right-hemisphere posterior regions serve a compensatory role in mediating phonological performance in dyslexic readers.     

Discrepant Self-Views and Young Women's Sexual and Emotional Adjustment

Young women in the United States receive conflicting messages about being sexually moral versus sexually desirable. Drawing from self-discrepancy theory, we hypothesized that women's internalization of messages about morality and desirability influence their ought and ideal self-guides for sexuality, respectively. Further, we expected that women who viewed their actual selves as significantly less positive/more negative than their self-guides would endorse greater sexual and emotional problems. In Study 1, never-married undergraduate women (N = 242) completed measures of sexual self-views, ought self-guides, and sexual adjustment. In Study 2, another sample (N = 170) also completed measures of ideal self-guides, depression, and anxiety. Participants were predominantly Caucasian and from upper middle-class backgrounds. Both negative actual:ought and actual:ideal discrepancies were associated with poorer sexual adjustment. Negative actual:ought discrepancies were associated with anxiety but not depression, whereas negative actual:ideal discrepancies were associated with both anxiety and depression. Self-discrepancy theory is a useful framework for understanding how self-standards for sexual morality versus desirability are associated with young women's emotional and sexual adjustment.     

A proposed index of the conformity of one sociometric measurement to another

An index is proposed to measure the extent of agreement of the data of a sociometric test with another test made at an earlier time or on another test criterion. The index is used to define an index of concordancebetween the two tests. It is shown how the index may be used for either individuals or groups. Tests of the hypothesis that agreement is random are given for all cases and applied to an example.Work done under the sponsorship of the Office of Naval Research.     

Metaphoric relationships: The role of feature saliency

The saliency of specific features has been given a prominent role in the comprehension and production of metaphors by some recent models of metaphoric processing. These models have been generally mute on how one could operationalize feature saliency. In the present study, four distinctive indices of feature saliency were examined: associative dominance, typicality, fluency, and imaginal distinctiveness. Participants rated 112 sentences in which the subjects and predicates were linked as in a nominal metaphor. The judged metaphor goodness of these sentences was predicted by only one measure of feature saliency, i.e., the typicality of the shared feature. Typicality of the feature associated both to the sentential predicate (vehicle) and to the subject (topic) was shown to be related to goodness ratings even when the effects of the other saliency measures were partialed out. Manipulation checks based on (1) having people produce a common feature for each sentence and (2) having people rate the reverse relationship for metaphoric goodness both indicated the importance of the shared feature. Cognitive processes suggested by these data were discussed.This research was supported by a grant (A7040) from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.