Sex differences in the personality and cognitive correlates of spatial ability

Ozer (1987) found that spatial visualization correlated with personality and verbal ability for girls but not for boys. To account for this finding, he hypothesized that "the causes of individual differences in spatial visualization [may be] different for the two sexes" (Ozer, 1987, p. 134). Although Ozer's conclusion is an intriguing one, it should be viewed with at least some skepticism until the discrepancies between his data and those of other researchers have been reconciled.     

A Dyadic Perspective on Speech Accommodation and Social Connection: Both Partners' Rejection Sensitivity Matters

Findings from confederate paradigms predict that mimicry is an adaptive route to social connection for rejection‐sensitive individuals (Lakin, Chartrand, & Arkin, 2008). However, dyadic perspectives predict that whether mimicry leads to perceived connection depends on the rejection sensitivity (RS) of both partners in an interaction. We investigated these predictions in 50 college women who completed a dyadic cooperative task in which members were matched or mismatched in being dispositionally high or low in RS. We used a psycholinguistics paradigm to assess, through independent listeners' judgments (N = 162), how much interacting individuals accommodate phonetic aspects of their speech toward each other. Results confirmed predictions from confederate paradigms in matched RS dyads. However, mismatched dyads showed an asymmetry in levels of accommodation and perceived connection: Those high in RS accommodated more than their low‐RS partner but emerged feeling less connected. Mediational analyses indicated that low‐RS individuals' nonaccommodation in mismatched dyads helped explain their high‐RS partners' relatively low perceived connection to them. Establishing whether mimicry is an adaptive route to social connection requires analyzing mimicry as a dyadic process influenced by the needs of each dyad member.     

The Economic Benefits of Increased Treatment Duration and Intensity in Residential and Outpatient Substance Abuse Treatment Settings

This study presents estimates of the economic benefits to society from community-based substance abuse treatment. The analysis focused on the impact of length of stay and frequency of counseling on clients' crime-related and health care costs, welfare receipts, and income taxes. The results indicate that the benefits from an additional day of treatment were on average $21 for short-term residential treatment (or 29% the cost of a day of care), $13 for outpatient drug-free treatment (or 94% the cost of a day of care), and $5 for long-term residential treatment (or 9% the cost of a day of care). No benefits were found from additional counseling provided by a client's primary therapist. Withthe exception of short-term residential care, estimated increases in client earnings from longer lengths of stayexceeded the benefits to society. Our estimates do not include benefits realized during treatment or beyond the year after treatment.     

Anorexia,masochism, self-mutilation,and autoerotism: the spider mother

In summary, both self-mutilators and eating-disordered individuals come from dysfunctional homes with a very controlling mother and usually absent father. They often have a history of trauma. They are depressed and obsessive, attached to their mothers, who discourage attempts at emancipation. The symptoms serve the purpose of keeping them as little girls with negative feelings toward menstruation, sexual maturity, development, and femininity in general. These symptoms comprise self-destructive behavior in the service of removing sexual thoughts, temptation, and activities. Favazza (1987) included both eating disorders and self mutilation in his "deliberate self-harm syndrome." The symptoms, whether they be anorexic, bulimic, or a form of self-mutilation are seen as "autoerotic in nature and a substitute for normal masturbation" (Hull & Lane, 1988). Eating disorders and delicate self-mutilation are said to have "a cathartic, self-purifying, function in that they modulate states of anxiety, sexual tension, anger or dissociated emptiness, and they bring about a tremendous quasi-physical sense of relief" (Cross, 1993, p. 50). These patients' use of substitutes prevents maturation and growth as women, causing regression to pregenital phases with the use of pregenital defenses, and the demise of the demands of puberty and mature sexuality.     

Socialization of Emotion and Offspring Internalizing Symptoms in Mothers with Childhood-Onset Depression

This study examines how mothers with and without a history of childhood-onset depression respond to their 3-9 year-old children's emotions. Mother-child dyads included 55 offspring of mothers with a history of childhood-onset depressive disorders and 57 offspring of never-depressed mothers. Mothers with a history of childhood depression were less likely than control mothers to respond in supportive ways to their children's negative emotions and were more likely to magnify, punish, or neglect their children's negative emotions. Magnification, neglect, and punishment of children's negative emotions were concurrently associated with children's internalizing symptoms, and neglect and punishment were associated with internalizing over a one year follow-up. Maternal neglect of children's negative emotion was positively associated with later internalizing symptoms for children who already had higher internalizing symptoms at the initial assessment. Findings suggest that atypical socialization of emotion may be one mechanism in the development of internalizing disorders.     

Perseverative Thinking and Health: Neurovisceral Concomitants

In the present paper we present the outlines of a model that may help to guide us in our understanding of the relationship between perseverative thinking and health. We will emphasize the relationship between perseverative thinking and vagal cardiac control and propose a group of underlying neural structures that serve to integrate these functions in the service of self-regulation and adaptability of the organism. We will attempt to place this network in the context of systems models which involve feedback and feedforward circuits with special attention to negative feedback mechanisms and inhibitory processes. From a systems perspective, inhibitory processes can be viewed as negative feedback circuits that allow for the interruption of ongoing behavior and the re-deployment of resources to other tasks. When these negative feedback mechanisms are compromised, positive feedback loops may develop as a result of dis-inhibition. From this perspective, the relative sympathetic activation seen in perseverative thinking may represent dis-inhibition due to faulty inhibitory mechanisms.     

How you lie affects what you remember

We investigated how telling different types of lies may impact memory. Participants studied pictures of objects, and later lied and told the truth about these and new objects once or multiple times by describing them or by denying they had seen them. Forty-eight hours later, participants were tested on their source memory. Results revealed that participants had good memory for having falsely described a never-seen object, but relatively poor memory for having falsely denied seeing a studied object. These results suggest that telling certain types of lies may make a person more likely to forget having lied. In addition, repeated truthful denials of having seen a picture paradoxically increased false memories for having seen it. Thus, telling the truth does not always prevent the possibility of memory distortion.