Cognitive responses to failure and success relate uniquely to bipolar depression versus mania

This project examined cognitive responses to failure and success and their association with depression and mania within bipolar disorder. Many cognitive variables that are associated with unipolar depression have been found to be involved in bipolar disorder, more specifically bipolar depression. This research was the first to examine tendencies to hold high standards, engage in self-criticism, and generalize from failure to an overall sense of self-worth. In Study 1, undergraduates were screened for risk of mood disorders and completed structured diagnostic interviews. History of bipolar spectrum disorders and history of depression had separate associations with negative generalization. The association of generalization with bipolar spectrum disorders was accounted for by current depressive symptoms. For Study 2, the authors developed a measure of the tendency to engage in positive generalization following success experiences. In a sample of 276 undergraduates, this measure related uniquely to risk for mania. Results of these 2 studies suggest that responses to failure are associated with a history of depression, whereas responses to success are associated with a risk for mania. Implications for future research and clinical work are discussed.     

Effects of Attention on the Strength of Lexical Influences on Speech Perception: Behavioral Experiments and Computational Mechanisms

The effects of lexical context on phonological processing are pervasive and there have been indications that such effects may be modulated by attention. However, attentional modulation in speech processing is neither well documented nor well understood. Experiment 1 demonstrated attentional modulation of lexical facilitation of speech sound recognition when task and critical stimuli were identical across attention conditions. We propose modulation of lexical activation as a neurophysiologically plausible computational mechanism that can account for this type of modulation. Contrary to the claims of critics, this mechanism can account for attentional modulation without violating the principle of interactive processing. Simulations of the interactive TRACE model extended to include two different ways of modulating lexical activation showed that each can account for attentional modulation of lexical feedback effects. Experiment 2 tested conflicting predictions from the two implementations and provided evidence that is consistent with bias input as the mechanism of attentional control of lexical activation.     

Workload Variability and Social Support: Effects on Stress and Performance

The current study investigated the effect of workload variability on performance and stress, as well as the role of social support as a potential intervention. Based on previous research it was predicted that a shift in workload from either high to low or low to high would lower performance and increase stress, while the provision of social support would result in higher performance and lower stress. Results revealed significant decrements in performance following workload shifts, though no increase in stress was perceived. Performance in both workload conditions significantly, but inconsistently, increased following the provision of social support and stress significantly decreased following the shift from high to low workload. Implications and future research steps are discussed further.     

The short-term, medium-term, and long-term economic performance of immigrant women in Canada and the United States

This paper identifies and compares the factors that influence the short-term, medium-term, and long-term employment income of immigrant women in Canada and the United States. It is widely documented that immigrant women in both countries face barriers to employment, high status occupational attainment, and reasonable economic returns to their education, but studies typically fail to consider the various stages of integration. By examining the short-term (less than three years), medium-term (3 to 10 years), and long-term (more than ten years) stages of economic integration, we can identify factors that influence their employment income at varying stages of settlement. Results from the analysis of the Censuses of the United States and Canada reveal that the short-term stages of integration markedly affect the employment income of immigrant women in the medium- and long-term in both countries.     

The Production of Meaning through Peer Interaction: Children and Walt Disney’s Cinderella

For many years researchers have understood that gender roles in children’s literature have the capacity to create and reinforce “meanings” of femininity and masculinity (Currie, Gend. Soc., 11: 453–477, 1997; Gledhill, Genre and gender: The case of soap opera. In S. Hall (Ed.), Representation (pp. 339–383). London: Sage, 1985; Tatar, Off with their heads!: Fairy tales and the culture of childhood. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993; Zipes, Happily ever after. New York: Routledge, 1997). The purpose of this study was to investigate children’s interpretation of a popular gendered fairy tale at the level of peer interaction. Walt Disney’s Cinderella was used in elementary school reading groups to investigate the ways that children understand messages regarding gender and the influence of peer culture on the production of meaning. The findings indicate that gender and gendered expectations were essential to the process of interpretation and the construction of meaning for the children. Gender unified the boys and girls into two distinct groups, particularly around the “girls’ book,” Cinderella. Gender was reinforced along traditional lines in the peer group, serving as a deterrent to the production of alternate interpretations to traditional messages in the text.     

The effect of stimulus delivery technique on perceived intensity functions for taste stimuli: Implications for fMRI studies

Classic psychophysical studies have provided significant information on the psychophysical functions for taste stimuli. With the advent of fMRI, studies are being conducted that provide insight into central processing of gustation in humans. However, fMRI experiments impose physical limitations on stimulus delivery. In the present study, we compared psychophysical functions relating perceived intensity to concentration, derived from previous studies that used the traditional sip-and-spit and dorsal flow delivery techniques, to psychophysical functions generated in this study using a simulated stimulus delivery technique (SSDT). The SSDT delivered minute quantities of taste stimuli to the dorsal surface of the tongue, just as in an fMRI scanner. As was hypothesized, the results indicated that slopes of intensity functions were dependent on the type of stimulus delivery technique. The SSDT resulted in slopes that were more similar to those generated by dorsal flow than by sip-andspit stimulus delivery techniques, suggesting the importance of considering the influence of stimulus delivery on psychophysical response in designing and interpreting experiments.     

Racial/Ethnic Differences in Internalizing and Externalizing Symptoms in Adolescents

The prevalence of most adult psychiatric disorders varies across racial/ethnic groups and has important implications for prevention and intervention efforts. Research on racial/ethnic differences in the prevalence of internalizing and externalizing symptoms and disorders in adolescents has been less consistent or generally lacking. The current study examined the prevalence of these symptom groups in a large sample of sixth, seventh, and eighth graders in which the three major racial/ethnic groups in the U.S. (White, Black, and Hispanic/Latino) were well-represented. Hispanic females reported experiencing higher levels of depression, anxiety, and reputational aggression than other groups. Black males reported the highest levels of overtly aggressive behavior and also reported higher levels of physiologic anxiety and disordered eating than males from other racial/ethnic groups. Hispanic females also exhibited higher levels of comorbidity than other racial/ethnic groups.     

Comparison of Media-Literacy Programs to Strengthen College Women's Resistance to Media Images

This study examined whether, in comparison to no-intervention and video-only intervention control conditions, two distinct media literacy interventions could promote media skepticism and reduce negative body image in a sample of college women ( N = 110). It was expected that an externally oriented ( i.e., feminist sociocultural) media literacy intervention would have its greatest impact on measures related to media skepticism, while an internally oriented ( i.e., cognitive) intervention would have its greatest impact on measures related to negative body image. Contrary to expectations, in comparison to the no-intervention condition, both media literacy interventions were similar in effectiveness to a video-only ("Slim Hopes," Kilbourne, 1995) condition in increasing participants' skepticism about the realism, similarity, and desirability of media that depict a thin ideal of beauty. There were no between-group differences on negative body image at posttest, suggesting that negative attitudes about one's body may require more extensive, longer-term interventions.     

Reduced right hemisphere activation in severely abused violent offenders during a working memory task: An fMRI study

This study uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to address two important gaps in our knowledge of brain functioning and violence: (1) What are the brain correlates of adults in the community who have suffered severe physical abuse early in life and who go on to perpetrate serious violence in adulthood? (2) What characterizes those who experience severe physical abuse but who refrain from serious violence? Four groups of participants recruited from the community (controls, severe physical child abuse only, serious violence only, and severely abused, seriously violent offenders) underwent fMRI while performing a visual/verbal working memory task. Violent offenders who had suffered severe child abuse show reduced right hemisphere functioning, particularly in the right temporal cortex. Abused individuals who refrain from serious violence showed relatively lower left, but higher right, activation of the superior temporal gyrus. Abused individuals, irrespective of violence status, showed reduced cortical activation during the working memory task, especially in the left hemisphere. Brain deficits were independent of IQ, history of head injury, task performance, cognitive strategy, and mental activity during the control task. Findings constitute the first fMRI study of brain dysfunction in violent offenders, and indicate that initial right hemisphere dysfunction, when combined with the effects of severe early physical abuse, predisposes to serious violence but that relatively good right hemisphere functioning protects against violence in physically abused children. Aggr. Behav. 27:111–129, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.