Effects of gender roles and self perceptions on affective reactions to horror films

Responses to graphic horror films have been shown to be modified by a number of personality variables, and in particular, by gender-specific rules for social conduct. In earlier horror research it has been assumed that gender-specific responses are largely determined by biological gender. More recent research has focused on psychological patterns of gender identity that often transcend biological gender lines. This investigation sought clarification by examining the impact of individuals' self-perceived gender role and other personality characteristics on affective responses to horror. Subjects' perceptions of how same- and opposite-gender peers would respond to such materials were also assessed. Consistent with theoretical expectations, the findings revealed strong effects on the estimation of opposite-gender target's reactions as a function of both the rater's gender role characteristics and biological gender. Other personality factors were found to influence responses to horror only marginally, however. The results are discussed in terms of the gender role socialization model of affect.     

A further empirical evaluation of neurolinguistic primary representational systems (PRS)

Neurolinguistic programmers claim that individuals have preferred (primary) representational systems. These may be auditory, visual or kinesthetic and determine how a person views/deals with the world. Systems can be identified by observation of eye movements. In workshops programmers demonstrated strong associations between eye movements following questioning and types of questions and eye movement categories (assumed to identify systems) and other assessments of systems. Studies have evaluated these ‘workshop’ associations and found little support for their general occurrence. In these studies, it is possible that eye movements following questioning were influenced by artifacts which influence predicted association between these and other variables. An attempt was made to exclude these artifacts in this study. Except for subjects who had attended neurolinguistic workshops, results supported those obtained elsewhere. Possibly, associations in workshops occur as a result of expectational-contextual variables.     

A program for constructing SVT tests: An alternative way of assessing text comprehension

The sentence verification technique (SVT), developed by Royer, Hastings, and Hook (1979), provides developmental and educational researchers with an alternative way of assessing text comprehension based on all of the information contained in a passage. Students must decide if test sentences have the same meaning as sentences that appeared in an original passage. The program described here automates the more laborious aspects of constructing SVT tests. The user must create a passage using a word processor. The program will prompt the user for information as needed. Finally, printable text files (SVT test and answer key) are generated. The program is written in BASIC for IBM and IBM-compatible computers.     

A controlled comparative investigation of psychological treatments for chronic sleep-onset insomnia

A sample of physician-referred chronic insomniacs was randomly allocated to either progressive relaxation, stimulus control, paradoxical intention, placebo or no treatment conditions. Treatment process and outcome were investigated in terms of mean and standard deviation (night to night variability) measures of sleep pattern and sleep quality. Only active treatments were associated with significant improvement, but the nature of treatment gains varied. In particular, stimulus control improved sleep pattern, whereas relaxation affected perception of sleep quality. All improvements were maintained at 17 month follow-up. Results are discussed with reference to previous research and guidelines are given for clinical practice.     

Fears in hearing-impaired and normally hearing children and adolescents

In this study the Revised Fear Survey Schedule for Children was administered to 138 hearing-impaired and 134 normally hearing youths. Although both groups expressed fear of potentially dangerous stimuli, significant differences in responding were evident towards other kinds of stimuli. Whereas hearing children were more fearful of failure and criticism, the hearing-impaired children were more afraid of the unknown, injury and small animals. Girls reported significantly greater levels of fear than boys thus confirming a well established research finding. Further, significant interactions were found between hearing status and gender. In contrast to previous findings, age was not related to self-reports of fear.     

Research-structured vs clinically flexible versions of social learning-based marital therapy

The purpose of this study was to compare our structured research-based version of marital therapy from a social learning perspective with a clinically flexible version of the same treatment where treatment plans were individually-based and there was no specific number of treatment sessions. Thirty distressed married couples were randomly assigned to one of these two treatments. Assessment of outcome was based on global marital satisfaction, spouse reports of functioning in specific areas, and direct observational measures of communication. At posttest there were no differences in efficacy between structured and flexible treatments, although both treatments led to significant improvements. At a 6-month follow-up couples treated with the structured format were more likely to have deteriorated and flexibly treated couples were more likely to have maintained their treatment gains.     

Believability and syllogistic reasoning

In this paper we investigate the locus of believability effects in syllogistic reasoning. We identify three points in the reasoning process at which such effects could occur: the initial interpretation of premises, the examination of alternative representations of them (in all of which any valid conclusion must be true), and the "filtering" of putative conclusions. The effect of beliefs at the first of these loci is well established. In this paper we report three experiments that examine whether beliefs have an effect at the other two loci. In experiments 1 and 2 subjects drew their own conclusions from syllogisms that suggested believable or unbelievable ones. In the third experiment they evaluated conclusions that were presented to them. The data show that beliefs both affect the examination of alternative models and act as a filter on putative conclusions. We conclude by showing how some types of problem and some problem contents make the existence of alternative models more obvious than others.