Body size dissatisfaction and avoidance behavior: How gender,age, ethnicity,and relative clothing size predict what some won’t try

Sixty-eight percent of U.S. adults are overweight/obese, and this epidemic has physical, psychosocial, and behavioral consequences. An internet sample of adults (N = 2997) perceiving themselves as larger than ideal in clothing size reported their body mass index (BMI), relative clothing size (RS; discrepancy between current and ideal size), and avoidance behaviors. Exploratory factor analysis of 10 avoidance items produced social avoidance and body display avoidance factors. A relative importance analysis revealed RS as a better predictor than BMI for avoidance. A hierarchical multivariate analysis of covariance found RS to predict both avoidance constructs. The relationship between RS and both avoidance constructs was stronger for women than men, and for younger as compared to older participants. Caucasians reported more body display avoidance than African Americans. This suggests that personal dissatisfaction with body size may deter involvement in varied life events and that women are especially avoidant of activities that entail displaying their bodies.     

Frequency judgements: the problem of defining a perceptual event

In four experiments the conditions under which frequency judgments reflect the relative frequency of complex perceptual events were explored. Subjects viewed a series of 4 x 4 grids each containing seven items, which were letters and numbers in one of four typefaces. Later judgments of the relative frequency with which particular letters appeared in particular typefaces were unaffected by a warning about an upcoming frequency judgment task, but were affected by both the time available for processing the stimuli and the nature of the cover task subjects engaged in while viewing the grids. Frequency judgments were poor when exposure durations were less than 2 s and when the cover task directed subjects' attention merely to the locations of the items within the grids. Frequency judgments improved when the cover task directed subjects' attention to the identity of the stimuli, especially to the conjunction of letter and typeface. The results suggest that frequency estimation of complex stimuli may be possible only for stimuli that have been processed as phenomenal objects.     

Anger at unfairness: is it moral outrage?

Anger at unfair treatment has been called moral outrage. However, moral outrage—anger at the violation of a moral standard—should be distinguished from personal anger at being harmed and empathic anger at seeing another for whom one cares harmed. Across a preliminary experiment and a main experiment, both designed to manipulate the appraisal conditions for these three forms of anger, we found evidence of personal anger and empathic anger, but little evidence of moral outrage. Participants perceived unfair treatment of another, even another for whom they had not been induced to feel empathy, to be as unfair as participants perceived unfair treatment of themselves. But the appraisal conditions that evoked anger were unfair treatment of self and unfair treatment of a cared-for other, not unfairness per se. In the absence of empathic concern, unfair treatment of another evoked little anger. Possible implications for understanding moral emotion and moral motivation are suggested. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Context effects in visual word recognition: Lexical relatedness and syntactic context

In three experiments, we investigated how associative word-word priming effects in German depend on different types of syntactic context in which the related words are embedded. The associative relation always concerned a verb as prime and a noun as target. Prime word and target word were embedded in visually presented strings of words that formed either a correct sentence, a scrambled list of words, or a sentence in which the target noun and the preceding definite article disagreed in syntactic gender. In contrast to previous studies (O’Seaghdha, 1989; Simpson, Peterson, Casteel, & Burgess, 1989), associative priming effects were not only obtained in correct sentences but also in scrambled word lists. Associative priming, however, was not obtained when the definite article and the target noun disagreed in syntactic gender. The latter finding suggests that a rather local violation of syntactic coherence reduces or eliminates word-word priming effects. The results are discussed in the context of related work on the effect of gender dis-/agreement between a syntactic context and a target noun.     

Learning to Teach: The Acquisition and Maintenance of Teaching Skills

We reviewed 49 studies which used direct observation procedures to provide data on the effects of pre-service and inservice training in practical classroom teaching behaviors and skills. We found stronger effects for training packages which included classroom practice with performance feedback. The research provided conflicting evidence regarding the value of modeling, role-play, cueing systems, and contingency management components in practical skills training. The weakest training effects were those produced by microteaching, Minicourse, and protocol training packages. Twenty of the evaluations also provided follow-up data but the design of these studies did not permit any conclusions to be drawn regarding the training conditions which are necessary for the maintenance of newly acquired classroom teaching skills. We concluded that identification of the training conditions which are necessary for the maintenance of new teaching skills will require more thoughtful conceptualizations of maintenance and its measurement, and more carefully designed component analyses of those factors suggested by basic research as being necessary for maintenance.