A BLACK FEMINIST MODEL OF RAPE MYTH ACCEPTANCE

A Black feminist model was used to investigate rape myth acceptance between African American antirape activists and a comparison group of nonactivists using Cross's (1991) racial identity model and Downing and Roush's (1985) feminist identity model. As predicted, activists rejected rape myths more than nonactivists; the earlier stages of both models were associated with rape myth acceptance; the later stages were associated with rape myth rejection; and activists evidenced more sociopolitical maturity (race and gender consciousness) than nonactivists. The findings suggest that researchers may need to investigate to what degree rape myth acceptance serves an overarching system of social domination where racism and sexism overlap.     

Influence of Connectives on Language Comprehension: Eye tracking Evidence for Incremental Interpretation

An eye-tracking experiment investigated whether incremental interpretation applies to interclausal relationships. According to Millis and Just's (1994) delayed-integration hypothesis, interclausal relationships are not computed until the end of the second clause, because the processor needs to have two full propositions before integration can occur. We investigated the processing of causal and diagnostic sentences (Sweetser, 1990; Tversky & Kahneman, 1982) that contained the connective because . Previous research (Traxler, Sanford, Aked, & Moxey, 1997) has demonstrated that readers have greater difficulty processing diagnostic sentences than causal sentences. Our results indicated that difficulty processing diagnostic sentences occurred well before the end of the second clause. Thus comprehenders appear to compute interclausal relationships incrementally.     

Genetic and environmental factors in orientation anisotropy: a field study in the British Isles

Visual acuity for the detection of gratings at four orientations was measured for groups of ten boys and ten girls aged five to seven years, from the following four populations: Scots in Glasgow, Pakistanis in Glasgow, Gaels in Stornoway (Outer Hebrides) and East Anglians in Littleport (Cambridgeshire fenlands). The Glaswegians, both Scottish and Pakistani, showed the normal pattern of anisotropy, with poorest acuity for oblique orientations; the East Anglians showed no significant anisotropy; while the Gaels were unusual in showing poorest horizontal acuity. A group of fourteen Pakistani children in Stornoway differed slightly from a matched group of Gaels. The group differences bore little relation to the visual environments, and were probably due to genetic or cultural factors. The relatively poor horizontal acuity of the Gaels was not correlated with astigmatism. Sex differences were also found, with the boys showing higher mean acuity and a higher ratio between vertical and oblique acuity.     

Cardiovascular reactivity to psychological stress in aerobically trained versus untrained mild hypertensives and normotensives

Cardiovascular reactivity to video game and mental arithmetic stressors was compared among three groups of men: aerobically trained mild hypertensives, untrained mild hypertensives, and a comparison group of untrained normotensives. Relative to the untrained hypertensives, the trained hypertensives reacted to the video game with marginally smaller systolic blood pressure and diastolic blood pressure, but there were no significant differences between these groups in reactivity during the mental arithmetic task. Comparisons between each hypertensive group and the normotensive group showed that blood pressure (BP) reactivity of normotensives during the video game was generally similar to that of trained hypertensives but smaller than that of untrained hypertensives. These results indicate that aerobic training, which has been found to reduce resting BP in mild hypertensives, may also exert a favorable impact in reducing cardiovascular reactivity of hypertensives during some stressful situations.