Under Pressure: Differentiating Adolescents’ Expectations Regarding Stereotypic Masculine and Feminine Behavior

The present study provided a novel way to compare the pressure felt by adolescents to engage in same gender behavior and other gender behavior. A new scale of felt pressure was developed which measured the reactions participants anticipated from others if they were to engage in masculine or feminine stereotyped behaviors. The scale was tested on a sample of 297 Australian adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17. Factor analysis indicated two factors which corresponded to Masculine-Typed and Feminine-Typed behaviors. Items related to feminine-typed behaviors were designated as same gender for young women and other gender for young men, and vice versa for masculine-typed items. Analyses indicated that young men reported higher felt pressure to conform to same gender behavior than did young women, and young women reported felt pressure to conform to other gender behavior whereas young men reported pressure to avoid other gender behavior. In addition, high same gender felt pressure was associated with higher self-perceived same gender typicality and lower other gender typicality. Conversely, high other gender felt pressure was associated with high levels of other gender typicality and lower levels of same gender typicality. The presence of same and other gender felt pressure encourages theorists and practitioners to be mindful of the impact of both these influences on adolescents’ gender identity development and psychosocial adjustment.

     

Searching for faces in crowd chokepoint videos

Investigations of face identification have typically focussed on matching faces to photographic IDs. Few researchers have considered the task of searching for a face in a crowd. In Experiment 1, we created the Chokepoint Search Test to simulate real-time search for a target. Performance on this test was poor (39% accuracy) and showed moderate associations with tests of face matching and memory. In addition, trial-level confidence predicted accuracy, and for those participants who were previously familiar with one or more targets, higher familiarity was associated with increased accuracy. In Experiment 2, we found improvements in performance on the test when three recent images of the target, but not three social media images, were displayed during searches. Taken together, our results highlight the difficulties inherent in real-time searching for faces, with important implications for those security personnel who carry out this task on a daily basis.     

Socialization and cognition in children between the age of 18 and 24 months

A cross-cultural study of mother–child dyads was set up to test the hypothesis that sociocultural differences, mediated by variations of maternal intervention, influence the way in which the child manipulates objects and, thereby, his cognitive and social competences. Two series of observations were conducted with three groups of children aged 18–24 months (15 from the American middle class, 15 from French families and 15 from North African families—the last two groups both underprivileged): (a) ‘naturalistic’ observations of two systems of interaction (child–mother and child–children interaction) showed that each child is characterized by one type of object manipulation (protected, induced, activated or autonomous) and that maternal intervention varies with the sociocultural background; assessment of the child's behavioural sequences unravelled his strategies for solving and avoiding conflicts with his peers; (b) observations of the child with a standardized material permitted an evaluation of his cognitive competences for spontaneous problem-solving. Regarding the assumptions of our hypothesis, the results furnish the following conclusions: (1) social and cognitive competences are related to the object manipulation type. In all samples, children characterized by ‘activated’ and ‘autonomous’ manipulation obtain the better results; (2) maternal intervention differs among the samples depending on the sociocultural background; these differences (limitation and physical contact) do not correspond to differences in types of manipulation; (3) type of manipulation is an interactive construction; it characterizes the functioning of the mother–child dyad and its prevailing dynamics between permanence and change. ©1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Development of letter-specific processing: the effect of reading ability

During development, perceptual processing is tuned to inputs in the environment such that certain frequently encountered classes of stimuli are processed more effectively than similar comparison stimuli. Letters represent a class of stimuli that are encountered frequently in the environment, at least in literate cultures. Thus, the present study examined the development of letter-specific processing in children 6-19 years old by comparing the difference between performance on a letter-matching task and an unfamiliar non-letter-matching task in different subject groups. Results revealed an increase in letter-specific processing with development. Moreover, comparisons of letter-specific processing in groups of subjects matched either in age or reading ability indicate that the emergence of letter-specific processing is linked to increased reading skill, rather than increased age per se. Findings support theories of perceptual expertise, which suggest that skilled processing drives the specialization of perceptual mechanisms for certain classes of stimuli.     

Making sense of diversity in the workplace: organizational justice and language abstraction in employees' accounts of diversity-related incidents

To discern patterns of employee sense-making about workplace diversity, the authors analyzed 751 natural language accounts of diversity incidents from 712 workers in one department of a large organization. Six generic incident types emerged: discrimination, representation, treatment by management, work relationships, respect between groups, and diversity climates. Consistent with hypotheses, incidents that respondents viewed as negative, accounts from women, and those involving members of respondents' in-groups were more likely to cite justice issues. Partially consistent with research on the linguistic intergroup bias, both negative and positive accounts involving out-group members and accounts from men were more likely to be expressed using abstract verb forms. The authors discuss future opportunities to integrate research on diversity, justice, and the linguistic category model.     

On the locus of priming and inverse priming effects

Visual stimuli that are made invisible by a following mask can affect overt motor responses and nonmotor processing. Previous studies have compared the effects of primes that were perceptually similar to the subsequent stimulus with those of primes that were perceptually similar to an alternative stimulus. The present study examined the effect of congruent primes that are perceptually dissimilar to the target (or the cue) but are nonetheless associated with the same response (or the same task) as the later stimulus. Positive and inverse priming effects (negative compatibility effects) were studied in a target priming paradigm (Experiments 1 and 2) and in a cue priming paradigm (Experiments 3 and 4). The results showed stronger priming effects with similar primes than with dissimilar congruent primes. However, the effects of perceptually dissimilar congruent primes differed from those of dissimilar incongruent primes. These findings suggest that a substantial part of both positive target and cue priming effects is produced at levels of processing that are not affected by perceptual similarity. The version of inverse priming effects examined in this study, however, seems to arise from perceptual processing that is affected by the similarity between a prime and the stimulus that follows the mask.     

Self and other obedience estimates: biases and moderators

The authors conducted 2 studies regarding behavior perceptions of "self" and "typical other" in hypothetical replications of S. Milgram's (1963) obedience experiment. In Study 1, participants' knowledge about Milgram's actual results was manipulated. Regardless of knowledge, results demonstrated several specific social and perceptual biases (e.g., the self-other bias; J. D. Brown, 1986), in addition to several general, fundamental lessons of social psychology (e.g., the perseverance of lay dispositionism). Study 2 was designed to explore the possibility that participants' own academic interests and worldview could influence the biases explicated in Study 1. The authors assessed perceptions of both criminal-justice majors and non-criminal-justice majors regarding their perceptions of behaviors of self and typical other. The criminal-justice students' self-other obedience estimates were significantly higher than those of the non-criminal-justice students. Further, the self-other discrepancy for criminal-justice students was significantly smaller than the difference reported by non-criminal-justice majors, suggesting that the criminal-justice students demonstrated the self-other bias significantly less than non-criminal-justice students in this context. The findings indicate that specific social-perceptual biases may have been moderated by career interest and worldview.     

Reduction of caregiver burden in Alzheimer's disease by treatment with galantamine

Alzheimer's disease is a progressive condition characterized by a loss of cognition, altered behavior, and a loss of functional ability, such as bathing, dressing, toileting, and organizing finances. Family and friends provide nearly three quarters of all care for patients with Alzheimer's disease. This informal care results in significant burden to caregivers. Caregiver burden is the set of physical, psychological or emotional, social, and financial problems that family members may experience when caring for impaired older adults. Caregivers of Alzheimer's disease patients report higher rates of physical symptoms, mortality, depression, and fatigue, as well as adverse effects on employment compared with those who are not caregivers for Alzheimer's disease patients. In many cases, the same family members are responsible for both out-of-pocket expenditures and caregiving duties. For this article, a MEDLINE search using the key words "caregiver and Alzheimer's disease" and "cost and Alzheimer's disease" was performed. The purpose of this article is to review the literature on caregiver burden, the components of caregiver burden, effects of caregiving on the health of caregivers, the cost of Alzheimer's disease on the caregiver and society, and the benefits attainable with treatment.     

Inverse target- and cue-priming effects of masked stimuli

The processing of a visual target that follows a briefly presented prime stimulus can be facilitated if prime and target stimuli are similar. In contrast to these positive priming effects, inverse priming effects (or negative compatibility effects) have been found when a mask follows prime stimuli before the target stimulus is presented: Responses are facilitated after dissimilar primes. Previous studies on inverse priming effects examined target-priming effects, which arise when the prime and the target stimuli share features that are critical for the response decision. In contrast, 3 experiments of the present study demonstrate inverse priming effects in a nonmotor cue-priming paradigm. Inverse cue-priming effects exhibited time courses comparable to inverse target-priming effects. Results suggest that inverse priming effects do not arise from specific processes of the response system but follow from operations that are more general.