Boyhood Femininity,Gender Identity Disorder,Masculine Presuppositions,and the Anxiety of Regulation

This paper details the diagnostic discourse that has accumulated around feminine boys, including the traditional presuppositions of Gender Identity Disorder (GID). The GID discourse is examined for the ways in which it is built upon unquestioned beliefs about masculinity. Distinct from most modern considerations of gender, no effort has been made to critically theorize gender when thinking about feminine boys; masculinity is as masculinity was. Consequently, we are left with modes of diagnosis and treatment that are out of synch with modern social life, and a set of ideas that do not proceed from an adequate understanding of the range that is masculinity. New sustaining ideals are in play, and in accord with these ideals an argument is made for a new mode of psychotherapeutic address. The traditional individual trauma explanation for GID is questioned. Particular emphasis is given to the ways in which this traditional GID discourse fails to reckon with how masculinity is held in place by the strong arm of regulatory anxiety. A new position that incorporates a greater appreciation for the role of social trauma and melancholia is offered. It is argued that a theory that offers insight into the workings of melancholia as it builds the feminine boy affords a more robust set of ideas through which to contemplate the boy. In turn, we come upon a better avenue of psychotherapeutic action—one that does not employ behavioral strategies that reinforce social exclusion.     

On the Functional Role of Implicit Visual Memory for the Adaptive Deployment of Attention Across Scenes

Although very little visual information is explicitly retained across views, some continuity of processing is afforded by implicit visual memory traces of previous views. These memory traces interact with attentional mechanisms to guide eye movements, cognition, and action. Two different memory mechanisms are described here. First, the deployments of focal attention and eye movements are facilitated towards recently attended features and locations (priming of popout). Second, attention is guided by implicit memory traces of specific visual contexts experienced in the past (contextual cueing). Compared to the visual memory tapped by change blindness tasks, the implicit memory mechanisms of priming of popout and contextual cueing do not require conscious intervention and may exhibit greater memory capacity, longer durability, and higher discriminability. Thus, these implicit traces of past views guide attention and eye movements to allow for effective access (indexing) to a scene's details, hence providing context and continuity to ongoing interactions with the perceptual world.     

No commonality between attentional capture and attentional blink

Visual search for a unique target is impaired when a salient distractor is presented (attentional capture). This phenomenon is said to occur because attention is diverted to a distractor before it reaches the target. Similarly, perception of the second of two targets embedded in a rapid stream of nontargets is impaired, suggesting attentional deprivation due to the processing of the first target (attentional blink). We examined whether these phenomena emerge from a common underlying attentional mechanism by using correlation studies. If these phenomena share a common foundation, the magnitude of these deficits should show within-subject correlations. Participants (N = 135) revealed significant attentional deficits during spatial and temporal capture and the attentional blink tasks. However, no significant correlation was found among these tasks. Experiment 2 (N = 95) replicated this finding using the same procedure as that used in Experiment 1 but included another attentional blink task that required spatial switching between the two targets. Strong correlations emerged only between the two attentional blink tasks (with/without spatial switching). The present results suggest that attentional deficits during spatial and temporal capture and the attentional blink tasks reflect different aspects of attention.     

Preconceptional family health evaluation: A regional education program for family planning clients and health professionals

The Preconceptional Family Health Evaluation Program was a regional project developed and funded for 2 years by the New England Regional Genetics Group (NERGG) to educate family planning health professionals about genetics, and to offer family planning clients preconceptional identification of genetic and environmental exposure risks. To meet these goals, genetic education was provided on a regional basis to 45 family planning professionals. A self-administered family health risk questionnaire adaptable to individual family planning settings was developed. Five hundred and twenty-nine family planning clients voluntarily completed the questionnaire. Cigarette smoking (35%) and alcohol use (57%) were two major categories of risks identified. The Preconceptional Family Health Evaluation Program was well received by all participants and provided an effective means for regional education of family planning health professionals. As a result of the program, state program planners, clinical genetics services, and family planning health professionals developed a strong relationship that will serve future educational and genetic risk screening efforts.     

Cross-sectional and longitudinal relations among peer-reported trustworthiness, social relationships, and psychological adjustment in children and early adolescents from the United Kingdom and Canada

Trustworthiness was examined in children and early adolescents from two countries. In Study 1,505 children in the fifth and sixth school years in the United Kingdom (mean age = 9 years 7 months) were tested across an 8-month period. In Study 2,350 sixth- through eighth-grade Canadian children and early adolescents (mean age = 12 years 11 months) were tested across a 1-year period. Participants completed measures assessing trustworthiness (ratings of promise and secret keeping by peer group and also by best friend in Study 1), assertiveness (Study 1), prosocial behavior (Study 2), social relationships (friendships and peer preference), and psychological adjustment (self-esteem, depressive symptoms, and loneliness). Peer-reported trustworthiness was positively associated with, and predicted changes across time in, the number of friendships. The observed relations were found to be statistically independent of peer preference and peer-reported assertiveness or prosocial behavior. Trustworthiness was found to be positively associated with peer preference (Study 1 and Study 2) and psychological adjustment (Study 1).     

Encoder: a connectionist model of how learning to visually encode fixated text images improves reading fluency

This article proposes that visual encoding learning improves reading fluency by widening the span over which letters are recognized from a fixated text image so that fewer fixations are needed to cover a text line. Encoder is a connectionist model that learns to convert images like the fixated text images human readers encode into the corresponding letter sequences. The computational theory of classification learning predicts that fixated text-image size makes this learning difficult but that reducing image variability and biasing learning should help. Encoder confirms these predictions. It fails to learn as image size increases but achieves humanlike visual encoding accuracy when image variability is reduced by regularities in fixation positions and letter sequences and when learning is biased to discover mapping functions based on the sequential, componential structure of text. After training, Encoder exhibits many humanlike text familiarity effects.     

老年人重要社会支持的特点及其与老化态度的关系

采用重要他人和老化态度问卷测查了441名老年人的社会支持和老化态度情况,并且从支持的数量和质量角度以及实际支持和期望支持的角度细致考察了社会支持与老化态度的关系。结果表明：（1）老年人的支持来源符合社会支持层级模式;（2）性别、年龄及受教育水平对老年人社会支持有显著影响;（3）老年人从重要他人那里获得的实际社会支持的质量越高,老化态度越积极。     

Survey Response Styles, Acculturation, and Culture Among a Sample of Mexican American Adults

A number of studies have investigated use of extreme (ERS) and acquiescent (ARS) response styles across cultural groups. However, due to within-group heterogeneity, it is important to also examine use of response styles, acculturation, and endorsement of cultural variables at the individual level. This study explores relationships between acculturation, six Mexican cultural factors, ERS, and ARS among a sample of 288 Mexican American telephone survey respondents. Three aspects of acculturation were assessed: Spanish use, the importance of preserving Mexican culture, and interaction with Mexican Americans versus Anglos. These variables were hypothesized to positively associate with ERS and ARS. Participants with higher Spanish use did utilize more ERS and ARS; however, value for preserving Mexican culture and interaction with Mexican Americans were not associated with response style use. In analyses of cultural factors, endorsement of familismo and simpatia were related to more frequent ERS and ARS, machismo was associated with lower ERS among men, and la mujer was related to higher ERS among women. Caballerismo was marginally associated with utilization of ERS among men. No association was found between la mujer abnegada and ERS among women. Relationships between male gender roles and ARS were nonsignificant. Relationships between female gender roles and ARS were mixed but trended in the positive direction. Overall, these findings suggest that Mexican American respondents vary in their use of response styles by acculturation and cultural factors. This usage may be specifically influenced by participants' valuing of and engagement with constructs directly associated with social behavior.     

Strategic factors in a lexical-decision task: Evidence for automatic and attention-driven processes

The present study examined strategic factors in a semantic-priming, lexical-decision task. The first experiment demonstrated that the greater the proportion of related word-word pairs to unrelated word-word pairs, the greater the amount of facilitation, a result which is consistent with others reported in the literature. The second experiment demonstrated that this strategic factor apparently requires that sufficient time (at least several hundred milliseconds) be available for the processing of the priming word, and thus is probably caused by attention-driven processes. The third experiment replicated and extended the results of the first two studies by demonstrating that prime-target stimulus onset asynchrony is an important limiting factor in determining whether such proportion-induced strategic factors are involved in word-recognition processes, even when no other aspect or variable of the procedure changes. The results are discussed in the context of Posner and Snyder’s (1975a) two-process model of word recognition.