Engagement and arousal: optimism's effects during a brief stressor

Optimism is usually associated with better psychological and physiological adjustment to stressors, but some contradictory findings exist. The purpose of this study was to investigate how optimism could result in negative immunological changes following difficult stressors. Because optimists are likely to see positive outcomes as attainable, they may invest greater effort to achieve their goals. It is proposed that such engagement would be more physiologically demanding when pursuing difficult goals. Participants (N = 54) worked on 11 difficult or insoluble anagrams. Optimism when combined with high self-awareness increased time spent working on the anagrams and skin conductance and salivary cortisol during the recovery period. The results support the notion that the increased engagement that arises from optimism may lead to short-term physiological costs.     

Lexical representation of fact and opinion

This research investigated the lexical properties underlying comprehension that a word represents fact or opinion. In Experiment 1 subjects reliably identified words as either fact or opinion. Bivariate correlations and multiple regression showed that fact/opinion judgments were predicted primarily by ratings of the ease of verifiability of a word's referent and secondarily by the word's literalness, but not by several other lexical attributes: abstractness-concreteness, vagueness-preciseness, and evaluation. Experiment 2 extended the results of the first experiment to an implicit fact/opinion judgment, i.e., the identification of headlines as originating from a newspaper's front page (presumably based primarily upon fact) or from the editorial page (presumably based upon opinion). The headline judgments, also made reliably by subjects, were predicted by the same variables found significant in the first experiment, i.e., by verifiability and literalness, but not by the other lexical properties. Thus, the results of both experiments indicate that the identification of a word as representing fact or opinion is rooted in a word's verifiability and literalness.     

Age-related influences on lexical selection and orthographic encoding during homophone spelling

Two experiments investigated age differences in how semantic, syntactic, and orthographic factors influence the production of homophone spelling errors in sentence contexts. Younger and older adults typed auditorily presented sentences containing homophone targets (e.g., blew) that were categorized as having a regular spelling (EW) or an irregular spelling (UE). In Experiment 1, homophones were preceded by an unrelated word, a semantic prime that was congruent with the target's meaning in the sentence (e.g., wind), or a semantic prime incongruent with the target's meaning (e.g., sky) and instead related to the competitor homophone. Experiment 2 manipulated the target's part of speech, where target and competitor homophones shared or differed in part of speech. For both age groups, significant semantic priming occurred, where homophone errors decreased following congruent semantic primes and increased following incongruent primes. However, priming only occurred when homophones shared part of speech. Further, both age groups made more errors on homophones with an irregular than a regular spelling, and this regularity effect was smaller for older adults when homophones shared part of speech. Contrary to many spoken production tasks, older adults made fewer errors overall than younger adults. These findings demonstrate age preservation in lexical selection but age differences in orthographic encoding, resulting in older adults producing fewer errors because of reduced activation to competitor homophones. These findings also illustrate that syntactic factors, such as part of speech, can influence the spellings of individual words.     

Are precues effective in proactively controlling taboo interference during speech production?

ABSTRACT

This research investigated whether precues engage proactive control to reduce emotional interference during speech production. A picture-word interference task required participants to name target pictures accompanied by taboo, negative, or neutral distractors. Proactive control was manipulated by presenting precues that signalled the type of distractor that would appear on the next trial. Experiment 1 included one block of trials with precues and one without, whereas Experiment 2 mixed precued and uncued trials. Consistent with previous research, picture naming was slowed in both experiments when distractors were taboo or negative compared to neutral, with the greatest slowing effect when distractors were taboo. Evidence that precues engaged proactive control to reduce interference from taboo (but not negative) distractors was found in Experiment 1. In contrast, mixing precued trials in Experiment 2 resulted in no taboo cueing benefit. These results suggest that item-level proactive control can be engaged under certain conditions to reduce taboo interference during speech production, findings that help to refine a role for cognitive control of distraction during speech production.     

Generation,intentionality of processing at encoding and retrieval,and age-related associative deficits

This research tested age-related differences in the retrieval of self-generated new associations under conditions that required intentional or incidental processing. Under intentional or incidental encoding conditions, young and older adults generated new associations by producing a response to a two-letter stem paired with a cue/prime word (e.g., throne–mo_____). Memory for these new associations was tested under intentional or incidental retrieval conditions by pairing the word stem with the previous cue/prime word, its homophone partner, or a prime/cue not previously presented. Results indicated equivalent priming and cueing effects for both age groups in all conditions. These results suggest that generation of new associations can eliminate age-related associative deficits, even under intentional encoding and retrieval conditions that typically disadvantage older adults.     

Spontaneous and Reflexive Cognitions Related to Spousal Abuse: The Role of Experiences of Violence

The aim of this study was to investigate the recognition of violent behaviors, assessment of their severity, and reaction time in recognizing violent behaviors among individuals (91 men, 122 women) who have been exposed to spousal abuse, either as victim or aggressor, and those who have not reported such experiences. Results indicate a relation between the rapidity with which participants recognized a behavior, number of behaviors recognized, and assessment of the severity of such behaviors. Moreover, participants recognized physical violence more readily than psychological violence, and rated physical violence more severely. Finally, the experience of violence in a couple, as perpetrator or as victim, was linked to reaction time for each type of violence.     

Free associations and dominance ratings of homophones for young and older adults.

Homophones are words that share phonology but differ in meaning and spelling (e.g., beach, beech). This article presents the results of normative surveys that asked young and older adults to free associate to and rate the dominance of 197 homophones. Although norms exist for young adults on word familiarity and frequency for homophones, these results supplement the literature by (1) reporting the four most frequent responses to visually presented homophones for both young and older adults, and (2) reporting young and older adults' ratings of homophone dominance. Results indicated that young and older adults gave the same first response to 67% of the homophones and rated homophone dominance similarly on 60% of the homophone sets. These results identify a subset of homophones that are preferable for research with young and older adults because of age-related equivalence in free association and dominance ratings. These norms can be downloaded from the Psychonomic Society's Web archive, www.psychonomic.org/archive/.     

Women, money, and psychodynamic group psychotherapy.

Developmental concerns and sociocultural expectations may keep female patients and therapists from addressing financial issues openly in group psychotherapy. Interpersonal theory provides a different view of nurturing that may help women leaders deal better with financial discussions in group. This paper includes a review of the literature on group psychotherapy and fees; feminist literature relevant to leadership; money management in group therapy; countertransference; and case examples.     

Validation of the shortened cope for use with breast cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy

To study the relationship between cancer and emotional adjustment, investigation of situation-specific coping behaviors with respect to narrowly defined Stressors has recently been promoted. The development and validation of shorter instruments, designed to facilitate completion by clinical populations, has also been recommended. The current study examined the coping skills used by French-Canadian women undergoing radiation therapy for breast cancer. A factor analysis of the 28-item shortened COPE (Carver, Scheier, & Weintraub, 1989) yielded the following eight factors: disengagement, self-distraction, active coping, using emotional support from husband/ partner, using emotional support from friends, turning to religion, humor, and substance use. The test-retest and Cronbach alpha internal consistency reliability coefficients of the French-Canadian shortened COPE were actually higher than those observed in the full-length version of the instrument. In addition, the eight factor-based scores correlated in a theoretically meaningful manner with existing measures of coping skills with illness (Coping with Health Injuries and Problems; CHIP) and mood disturbance (Profile of Mood States; POMS), thus suggesting good construct convergent and concurrent criterion validity. In particular, the disengagement COPE scale was correlated highly with anxiety, depression, and anger. While further validation is recommended, the results show promise for the shortened COPE in assessing coping in women with breast cancer, and also provide continued evidence for the notion that specific coping skills are associated with particular mood states.