Solo pioneers: Single-minded rationality

There is an increasing number of single women in the United States. These women are having to confront new emotional problems as well as previously unknown opportunities for personal growth and development. The current article identifies two polarities of female singlehood, i.e., the desperate, dependent woman and the solo pioneer woman. The cognitive and behavioral characteristics of the two polar types are delineated.Desperate, dependent women endorse irrational beliefs which involve their self-worth being contingent upon the love and approval of men. Solo pioneers are autonomous in their personal identity and are able to construct meaningful lives for themselves outside of the context of marriage. Single mothers by choice are presented as being a prototype of solo pioneers.Laura Primakoff, Ph.D. has developed a cognitive-behavioral treatment program for individuals living alone (Primakoff, 1983).     

Discrimination, dispositions, and cardiovascular responses to stress.

OBJECTIVE: Recent research suggests that past exposure to discrimination may influence perceptions of, and physiological responses to, new challenges. The authors examined how race and trait levels of hostility and optimism interact with past exposure to discrimination to predict physiological reactivity and recovery during an anger recall task. DESIGN: A community sample of 165 normotensive Black and White adults participated in an anger recall task while having their cardiovascular function monitored. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Blood pressure and heart rate indicators of physiological reactivity and recovery. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Participants had higher reactivity and slower recovery to the anger recall task when they had high past discrimination, low cynicism, or high optimism. The pattern of effects was similar for both racial groups, but Blacks had more acute reactivity and slower recovery than Whites. These results are consistent with the perspective of discrimination as a chronic stressor that is related to acute stress responses, particularly for Blacks.     

Recognition without face identification

Recognition without identification is the finding that participants can recognize recognition test items as having been previously studied when the test items themselves are presented in such a way that their identification is hindered. The present study demonstrates this phenomenon in face recognition. Participants studied names of celebrities before receiving a recognition test containing pictures of celebrity faces. Half of the pictures were of celebrities whose names were studied; half were of celebrities whose names were not studied. Participants attempted to identify each face on the test and also rated the likelihood that each person's name was studied. Among the faces that went unidentified, ratings discriminated between celebrities whose names were studied and celebrities whose names were not studied. This recognition without face identification effect is dependent upon the sense of being in a tip-of-the-tongue state for a particular name. Theoretical implications of the results are discussed.     

Normative and idiosyncratic measures of positive and negative affect in sport

Objectives: The purposes of the study were to: (a) ascertain the degree of similarity amongst normative and idiosyncratic measures of affect; (b) test the notion of reversal effects on the functional impact and the hedonic tone of emotions; (c) analyse the differences on the intensity of facilitating-positive, facilitating-negative, inhibiting-positive, and inhibiting-negative performance emotion content categories, and (d) test whether competitive trait anxiety intensity could predict pre-performance normative or idiosyncratic negative affect intensity.Design: A cross-sectional study design was employed using normative and idiosyncratic measures of affect.Methods: Experienced male soccer and volleyball players (N =124) were individually assessed. Normative scales were the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) used as a sport-specific trait measure of competitive affect, and the Sport Anxiety Scale (SAS) administered for the assessment of competitive trait anxiety. Idiosyncratic affect occurring prior to or during optimal and poor competitions was identified in the conceptual framework of the Hanin's Individual Zones of Optimal Functioning (IZOF) model (Hanin, Y.L. (1997). Emotions and athletic performance: Individual zones of optimal functioning model. European Yearbook of Sport Psychology, 1, 29–72).Results: Findings revealed low overlap amongst the PANAS items and the idiosyncratic items, reversal effects on the functional impact and the hedonic tone of emotions, higher level of positive affect associated with optimal performance when compared with all other affect categories, and lower levels of facilitating-negative category when compared with the facilitating-positive. Moreover, sport trait anxiety intensity was found to predict negative affect intensity as assessed by the PANAS normative scales and by the idiosyncratic items. For idiosyncratic affect, however, significant differences emerged only when comparing individuals with very high or very low anxiety symptoms.Conclusions: Idiosyncratic affect scales together with normative scales are recommended for research and applied purposes. The functional impact as well as the hedonic tone of emotion items need to be examined according to individual perception.     

Implicit motor sequence learning is represented in response locations

Previous work (Willingham, 1999) has indicated that implicit motor sequence learning is not primarily perceptual; that is, what is learned is not a sequence of stimuli. Still other work has indicated that implicit motor sequence learning is not specific to particular muscle groups or effectors. In the present work, we tested whether implicit motor sequence learning would be represented as a sequence of response locations. In Experiment 1, learning showed very poor transfer when the response locations were changed, even though the stimulus positions were unchanged. In Experiment 2, participants switched their hand positions at transfer, so that one group of participants pushed the same sequence of keys but used a different sequence of finger movements to do so, whereas another group pushed a different sequence of keys but used the same sequence of finger movements used at training. Knowledge of the sequence was shown at transfer only if the sequence of response locations was maintained, not the sequence of finger movements.     

Social Desirability in Patients Seeking Surgical Treatment for Dentofacial Disharmony: Associations with Psychological Distress and Motivation for Treatment

The role of socially desirable responding in the report of treatment motivation and psychological distress by patients seeking surgical treatment for dentofacial disharmony was explored. Participants completed the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR; Paulhus, 1988), which measures two components of socially desirable responding (SDR): impression management (IM), which is the purposeful tailoring of answers in order to create the most positive social image, and self-deceptive positivity (SDE), which is an honest, but overly positive self-presentation. When simple bivariate relationships were examined, statistically significant inverse associations were observed between socially desirable responding and specific motives for treatment and between SDR and psychological distress. However, the relationship between socially desirable responding and motives for treatment disappeared when the effect of psychological distress was controlled. The positive relationship between psychological distress and the report of social well-being, and self-image motives for treatment remained statistically significant even after the variance attributable to socially desirable responding was removed. Implications of the findings for the evaluation of psychological distress and treatment motivation in this population are discussed.     

Effects of Self-Monitoring on the On-Task Behavior and Written Language Performance of Elementary Students with Learning Disabilities

The present study was conducted to determine the effects of self-monitoring and a changing criterion with public posting phase on student on-task behavior and written language performance. Four elementary school boys participated and were enrolled in an urban-based, elementary-level resource room for students with learning disabilities. Self-monitoring procedures for on-task behavior included the students listening to a tone recorded at 60-s intervals and responding to the question, “Am I on-task?” Written language performance involved the students writing for a 10-min. session and counting and graphing the number of words written. During baseline conditions, student on-task behavior and written language performance were collected. During the self-monitoring conditions, the students monitored their on-task behavior and written language performance simultaneously. In the changing criterion with public posting condition, the students received their goal for the day's session prior to writing, wrote, and recorded whether they met their goal. While the results show a functional relationship between self-monitoring and on-task behavior, the data for the relationship between self-monitoring and written language performance were less compelling. A greater increase occurred when the changing criterion with public posting condition was introduced. Results suggest that self-monitoring changed on-task behavior; however, further research needs to be conducted to determine the conditions that would produce comparable effects for written language performance. Several implications for students and teachers and parent training were discussed.     

Inside bilingualism: Language background modulates selective attention to a talker's mouth

Previous findings indicate that bilingual Catalan/Spanish‐learning infants attend more to the highly salient audiovisual redundancy cues normally available in a talker's mouth than do monolingual infants. Presumably, greater attention to such cues renders the challenge of learning two languages easier. Spanish and Catalan are, however, rhythmically and phonologically close languages. This raises the possibility that bilinguals only rely on redundant audiovisual cues when their languages are close. To test this possibility, we exposed 15‐month‐old and 4‐ to 6‐year‐old close‐language bilinguals (Spanish/Catalan) and distant‐language bilinguals (Spanish/”other”) to videos of a talker uttering Spanish or Catalan (native) and English (non‐native) monologues and recorded eye‐gaze to the talker's eyes and mouth. At both ages, the close‐language bilinguals attended more to the talker's mouth than the distant‐language bilinguals. This indicates that language proximity modulates selective attention to a talker's mouth during early childhood and suggests that reliance on the greater salience of audiovisual speech cues depends on the difficulty of the speech‐processing task.     

Distinct Activity Patterns of the Human Bed Nucleus of the Stria Terminalis and Amygdala during Fear Learning

Neuropsychology Review - The amygdala and, more recently, also the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, have been widely implicated in fear and anxiety. Much of our current knowledge is derived...