Social support and immune function among spouses of cancer patients

This study investigated whether social support was related to immune function among spouses of cancer patients. Effects of depression and negative life events were examined as potential mediators. Results showed evidence of greater immunocompetence on 2 of 3 dynamic measures: natural killer cytotoxicity and proliferation response to phytohemagglutinin among spouses who reported high levels of social support. All six components of social support assessed by the Social Provisions Scale (Cutrona & Russell, 1987) were strongly related to these indices of immune function. No evidence was found for mediation by either life events or depression.     

Body image or body images?: Comparative, multidimensional assessment among college students

A major criticism of research on body image concerns the dubious assumptions of the unidimensionality of the construct and the equivalence of body-image measures. Our study of 125 male and female college students compared multiple measurement methods within each of two modalities of body image: (a) perceptual (body-size estimation) and (b) attitudinal (body-image affect and cognition). Clinically relevant indices of psychological adjustment and eating disturbance were included. Results clearly supported the distinction between attitudinal and perceptual modalities of body image and indicated more convergent and discriminant validity for the former than for the latter. Whereas one method of assessing size-estimation accuracy and most body-image attitudes produced relationships with maladjustment, only attitudinal body image and perceptual, self-ideal discrepancy measures were significantly linked to eating disturbance. Relationships were generally more consistent for women than for men. Implications are discussed in the context of extant and future research on body image with clinical and nonclinical populations.     

Assessing object representations as a continuous variable: a modification of the concept of the object on the Rorschach scale

Current methods for assessing the quality of internalized object representations have not provided a continuous variable that simultaneously includes both an accuracy and a maturity component. A modification of Blatt, Brooks, Brenneis, and Schimek's (1976) Concept of the Object on the Rorschach scale that would combine the two components by weighting the quality of each response according to its form level was proposed. Initial discriminant and convergent validity of this modification was checked through correlations and multiple regression analyses using behavioral, diagnostic, and demographic data from 84 adolescent inpatients as dependent variables. Results indicate the modified score was directly related to measures of peer relatedness, intelligence, psychological health, and reality testing, and indirectly related to measures of psychosis and hostile, unmanageable behavior. The results support the utility of the modification for providing a continuous score that assesses both developmental maturity and accuracy, the two dimensions on which the concept of object representation is based.     

Learned resourcefulness, drinking, and smoking in young adults

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between learned resourcefulness and two common addictive behaviors, namely, drinking and smoking. Male and female college students (N = 175) completed the Self-Control Schedule (SCS), the Quantity-Frequency-Variability questionnaire, and a smoking history form. Learned resourcefulness was related to self-reported patterns of alcohol consumption; specifically, heavy drinking subjects were lower in learned resourcefulness than were light and moderate drinkers who, in turn, were lower in learned resourcefulness than were infrequent drinkers and abstainers. Learned resourcefulness was only modestly related to smoking, with students who had never smoked evidencing somewhat higher learned resourcefulness than ex-smokers and current smokers. Overall, these data provide correlational support for the notion that learned resourcefulness may protect young adults against substance abuse.     

Religious self and secular self: Clinical transitions

Clerical people, returning to secular life, may undergo shifts in self-experience, including alterations in internal object relations. Self-psychology, positing the importance to health of cohesion of all aspects of self, provides a theoretical model for exploring such shifts and their facilitation through psychoanalytic psychotherapy. A case of a released Roman Catholic priest is discussed to illustrate dynamic processes. Emphasis is on a clinical approach that does not require conversion of religious and spiritual self-experience into drive derivative formulations     

Negative priming in same-different matching: further evidence for a central locus of inhibition

Responses to recently ignored information may be slower or less accurate than responses to information not recently encountered. Such negative priming effects imply that the mechanism of selective attention operates on unattended, as well as attended, information. In the present experiment, subjects judged the second and fourth letters of five-letter strings (e.g., BABAB) as "same" or "different." Responses were slower when a target letter was identical to the distractors presented in the immediately preceding trial. This effect did not depend on which response was required on the current or preceding trial. The results suggest that ignored information is functionally disconnected from the response system as a whole, rather than from a specific response.     

A theory of phenomenal geometry and its applications

The geometry of perceived space (phenomenal geometry) is specified in terms of three basic factors: the perception of direction, the perception of distance or depth, and the perception of the observer's own position or motion. The apparent spatial locations of stimulus points resulting from these three factors thereupon determine the derived perceptions of size, orientation, shape, and motion. Phenomenal geometry is expected to apply to both veridical and illusory perceptions. It is applied here to explain a number of representative illusions, including the illusory rotation of an inverted mask (Gregory, 1970), a trapezoidal window (Ames, 1952), and any single or multiple point stimuli in which errors in one or more of the three basic factors are present. It is concluded from phenomenal geometry that the size-distance and motion-distance invariance hypotheses are special cases of the head motion paradigm, and that proposed explanations in terms of compensation, expectation, or logical processes often are unnecessary for predicting responses to single or multiple stimuli involving head or stimulus motion. Two hypotheses are identified in applying phenomenal geometry. It is assumed that the perceptual localization of stimulus points determines the same derived perceptions, regardless of the source of perceptual information supporting the localizations. This assumption of cue equivalence or cue substitution provides considerable parsimony to the geometry. Also, it is assumed that the perceptions specified by the geometry are internally consistent. Departures from this internal consistency, such as those which occur in the size-distance paradox, are considered to often reflect the intrusion of nonperceptual (cognitive) processes into the responses. Some theoretical implications of this analysis of phenomenal geometry are discussed.     

An asymmetry in transmodal perceptual learning

Transmodal perceptual learning was examined in a canonical same/different paradigm. Subjects naive to vibrotactile stimulation and unfamiliar with the task were asked to discriminate sequentially presented shapes moving laterally across an aperture. On all trials, the shapes were presented either visually and then vibrotactually or in the opposite modality order, and on all trials the shapes moved in opposite directions. Analyses of the data revealed that although perceptual learning was evident in both groups, the rate of the learning was more rapid in the visual-vibrotactile group. This interaction of modality order and practice was significant and was considered in terms of E.J. Gibson's theory of perceptual learning and in terms of the constructs, suggested by J.J. Gibson, of available and accessible information-in-stimulation and the education of attention.     

Cross-gender perceptions of facial attributes and their relation to attractiveness: do we see them differently than they see us?

Examination of perceptions of human facial attributes revealed that individual attributes are similarly perceived by males and females. However, patterns of attribute interrelationships differ as a function of gender of the face. Undergraduate students (N = 280) rated pictures of 40 male or female Caucasians on 12 physical attributes (e.g., nose size, face width) and overall attractiveness. The four sets of attribute ratings (defined by rater gender and picture gender) were submitted to principal components analyses, and five-factor solutions were found for each condition (accounting for about 76% of the variance). Comparisons of the four component solutions using confirmatory factor procedures revealed that male and female raters share one factor structure when rating photographs of female faces and another factor structure when rating photographs of male faces. Multiple regression analyses revealed that the patterns of attribute interrelationships were not "perceptual units" in the perception of attractiveness, and that different "rules" are used to assess the attractiveness of male and female stimuli faces. The importance of these results for models of facial attractiveness and interfacial similarity judgements are discussed.