HIV/STD Risk Factors for Women with Violent Male Partners

This study compared 167 women, categorized as nonabused, emotionally abused, or physically abused in their primary relationships, on sexual risk factors. Physically abused women differed in several ways: greater STD risk, psychosocial distress, and substance use; more traditional gender role beliefs; lower self-esteem; more likely to have been raped and to engage in sex for pay; and less likely to attend the project's STD/HIV risk reduction groups. Within primary relationships, they differed in amount of decision-making power about safer sex, likelihood of nonmonogamy, use of substances before sex, and self-efficacy about initiating condom use. African American women reported higher rates of emotional abuse than White women, a finding related mainly to their lower socioeconomic status in this sample.     

Movement related EMGs become more variable during learning of fast accurate movements

Human subjects performed simple flexion and extension movements about the elbow in a visual step-tracking paradigm. Movements were self-terminated. Subjects were instructed to increase movement velocity while maintaining end-point accuracy during practice. The effects of practice on the pattern and variability of EMG activity of the biceps and triceps muscles were studied. Initial movements were performed using reciprocal phasic activation of agonist and antagonist muscles as indicated by surface EMGs. With practice, increases in movement speed were associated with larger agonist and antagonist bursts and an earlier onset of the antagonist burst. Decreased duration of the premovement antagonist silence was also observed during practice. Decreases in variability of movements during practice were not accompanied by equivalent decreases in variability of the associated EMGs. Surprisingly, both agonist and antagonist EMGs were more variable in faster, practiced movements. The combined agonist-antagonist EMG variability depended on both movement speed and trajectory variability. Lower variability in movements in the presence of greater variability in the related EMGs occurred because of linked variations in agonist and antagonist muscle activities. Variations in the first agonist burst were often compensated for by associated variations in the antagonist and late agonist bursts. These linked variations maintained the limb trajectory relatively constant in spite of large variations in the first agonist burst. Modifications to impulse-variability models are therefore needed to explain compensations for variability in accelerative impulses (produced by the first agonist burst) by linked variations in impulses for deceleration (produced by the antagonist and late agonist bursts).     

In search of the silver lining: the justice motive fosters perceptions of benefits in the later lives of tragedy victims

Past research has demonstrated that people's need to perceive the world as fair and just leads them to blame and derogate victims of tragedy. The research reported here shows that a positive reaction--bestowing additional meaning on the lives of individuals who have suffered--can also serve people's need to believe that the world is just. In two studies, participants whose justice motive was temporarily heightened or who strongly endorsed the belief that reward and punishment are fairly distributed in the world perceived more meaning and enjoyment in the life of someone who had experienced a tragedy than in the life of someone who had not experienced tragedy, but this pattern was not found for participants whose justice motive was not heightened or who did not strongly endorse a justice belief. These results suggest that being motivated to see the world as just--a motivation traditionally associated with victim derogation--also leads people to perceive a "silver lining" to tragic events.     

Ideologies of Diversity and Inequality: Predicting Collective Action in Groups Varying in Ethnicity and Immigrant Status

Ideological positions regarding social diversity and status inequality are examined as predictors of people's willingness to engage in collective action. Using social dominance theory and social identity theory, we hypothesized that the relationships between ideology, ethnic identification, and orientation toward collective action will vary depending on the position of one's group. Comparisons were made between four U.S. groups: White natives, White immigrants, Black/Latino natives, and Black/Latino immigrants. Groups differed in their endorsement of social diversity and social inequality, as well as in their orientation toward collective action and their ethnic group identification. For all groups, ethnic identity mediated the link between ideology and collective action, but the valence and magnitude of paths differed as a function of ethnicity and immigrant status. Social diversity was more critical for U.S. immigrants (White and Black/Latino); social inequality accounted for more variance in native-born U.S. groups (although in opposite directions for the two groups).     

A Sense of Powerlessness Fosters System Justification: Implications for the Legitimation of Authority,Hierarchy, and Government

In an attempt to explain the stability of hierarchy, we focus on the perspective of the powerless and how a subjective sense of dependence leads them to imbue the system and its authorities with legitimacy. In Study 1, we found in a nationally representative sample of U.S. employees that financial dependence on one's job was positively associated with the perceived legitimacy of one's supervisor. In Study 2, we observed that a general sense of powerlessness was positively correlated with the perceived legitimacy of the economic system. In Studies 3 and 4, priming experimental participants with feelings of powerlessness increased their justification of the social system, even when they were presented with system‐challenging explanations for race, class, and gender disparities. In Study 5, we demonstrated that the experience of powerlessness increased legitimation of governmental authorities (relative to baseline conditions). The processes we identify are likely to perpetuate inequality insofar as the powerless justify rather than strive to change the hierarchical structures that disadvantage them.     

Longitudinal assessment of short‐term memory deterioration in a logopenic variant primary progressive aphasia with post‐mortem confirmed Alzheimer's Disease pathology

In the field of dementia research, there are reports of neurodegenerative cases with a focal loss of language, termed primary progressive aphasia (PPA). Currently, this condition has been further sub‐classified, with the most recent sub‐type dubbed logopenic variant (PPA‐LV). As yet, there remains somewhat limited evaluation of the characteristics of this condition, with no studies providing longitudinal assessment accompanied by post‐mortem examination. Moreover, a key characteristic of the PPA‐LV case is a deterioration of phonological short‐term memory, but again little work has scrutinized the nature of this impairment over time. The current study seeks to redress these oversights and presents detailed longitudinal examination of language and memory function in a case of PPA‐LV, with special focus on tests linked to components of phonological short‐term memory function. Our findings are then considered with reference to a contemporary model of the neuropsychology of phonological short‐term memory. Additionally, post‐mortem examinations indicated Alzheimer's disease type pathology, providing further evidence that the PPA‐LV presentation may reflect an atypical presentation of this condition.