Persistence of attitude change and attitude–behavior correspondence based on extensive processing of source information

A three‐phase longitudinal study (spread over a month's time) was carried out to investigate attitude's persistence and linkage to behavior as it may be affected by the processing of information about the communication source. The following three independent variables were manipulated: (i) contents of the source of information (implying the communicator to be expert or inexpert on the topic of the communication); (ii) length of the source information (brief versus lengthy); and (iii) message recipients' involvement in the issue at hand (high versus low). Replicating prior research when the source information was brief, it exerted greater persuasive impact under low versus high involvement, and when it was lengthy, it exerted greater persuasive impact under high versus low involvement. Of greater importance, the newly acquired attitudes were more persistent and were linked more strongly to actual behavior when the source information was lengthy (versus brief) provided the recipients had high (versus low) involvement in the issue. These findings were interpreted to mean that just like with the message/issue information in prior research, when processed extensively, source information, too, may contribute to the formation of persistent and behavior‐driving attitudes. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Introducing a novel method to assess cumulative steroid concentrations: increased hair cortisol concentrations over 6 months in medicated patients with depression

Depression has been linked to increased cortisol concentrations using point measures taken from urine, blood, or saliva samples. However, with regard to hypercortisolism-induced consequences, long-term cumulative cortisol burden is of relevance. Our objective was to use hair analysis as a new method to assess cortisol exposure over 6 months in depressed patients and healthy controls. We examined 23 depressed patients (8 men and 15 women, mean age: 41.6 years (?±?standard deviation (SD), 13.1 years); mean duration of current depressive episode 9 months (?±?SD, 13 months)) and 64 healthy controls, matched for age and gender. Cortisol concentrations in two 3-cm hair segments from near to the scalp were analyzed, representing cortisol secretion during the 6 months prior to sampling. Compared with healthy individuals, depressed patients had higher hair cortisol concentrations in the first (mean?±?SD: 26.7?±?20.8 vs. 18.7?±?11.5?pg/mg, p?相似文献   

Working Lesbians: Role Conflicts and Coping Strategies

This study investigated areas of interrole and intrarole conflict reported by 79 lesbian working women and factors influencing the types of coping strategies these women used. The three coping strategies identified by Hall (1972) were used to code responses to a questionnaire sent to women on the mailing list of a local lesbian newsletter. The most frequently reported interrole conflicts were between the work and lover roles, and the most frequently reported intrarole conflicts involved the work and daughter roles. Subjects viewed being lesbian as contributing little to their interrole conflicts and as hypothesized, used predominantly role restructuring strategies (Types I and II) to deal with the conflicts. Also, as hypothesized, higher self-esteem was reported by individuals using restructuring strategies than by those using reactant strategies (Type III). In contrast, subjects viewed being lesbian as highly related to their intrarole conflicts, and contrary to predictions, used reactive strategies almost as frequently as role restructuring strategies. Moreover, self-esteem did not differ among subjects using the three strategy types. The unexpected findings for intrarole conflict are discussed in terms of the potential benefits of reactant-avoidant strategies in work situations.     

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SEXUAL SELF-CONCEPT INVENTORY FOR EARLY ADOLESCENT GIRLS

The Sexual Self-Concept Inventory (SSCI) was developed to assess sexual self-concept in an ethnically diverse sample of urban early adolescent girls. Three scales (Sexual Arousability, Sexual Agency, and Negative Sexual Affect) were shown to be distinct and reliable dimensions of girls' sexual self-concepts. Validity was established through comparisons with established instruments. Sexual Arousability and Sexual Agency were associated with positive sexual self- esteem, positive future orientation toward sex, intentions to engage in intercourse, and lower levels of sexual experience. Negative Sexual Affect was associated with stronger abstinence attitudes and lack of intentions or orientation toward sex in the near future. The results indicate that the SSCI constitutes a valid means of assessing early adolescent girls' views of their sexuality and sexual behavior and may be of use in studies of health and risk-related decision making.     

Functional and anatomical profile of visual motion impairments in stroke patients correlate with fMRI in normal subjects

We used six psychophysical tasks to measure sensitivity to different types of global motion in 45 healthy adults and in 57 stroke patients who had recovered from the initial results of the stroke, but a large subset of them had enduring deficits on selective visual motion perception tasks. The patients were divided into four groups on the basis of the location of their cortical lesion: occipito-temporal, occipito-parietal, rostro-dorsal parietal, or frontal-prefrontal. The six tasks were: direction discrimination, speed discrimination, motion coherence, motion discontinuity, two-dimensional form-from-motion, and motion coherence – radial. We found both qualitative and quantitative differences among the motion impairments in the four groups: patients with frontal lesions or occipito-temporal lesions were not impaired on any task. The other two groups had substantial impairments, most severe in the group with occipito-parietal damage. We also tested eight healthy control subjects on the same tasks while they were scanned by functional magnetic resonance imaging. The BOLD signal provoked by the different tasks correlated well with the locus of the lesions that led to impairments among the different tasks. The results highlight the advantage of using psychophysical techniques and a variety of visual tasks with neurological patients to tease apart the contribution of different cortical areas to motion processing.     

The Role of Vulnerable and Grandiose Narcissism in Psychological Perpetrated Abuse Within Couple Relationships: The Mediating Role of Romantic Jealousy

Abstract

The aim of this study was to analyze the direct and indirect relationships between the two phenotypes of narcissism, vulnerable and grandiose, and the tendency to perpetrate psychological abuse, exploring the mediating role of romantic jealousy. Our sample included 473 participants (213 males), aged 18–30 years (M?=?22.74; SD = 2.81), involved in a stable romantic relationship. A structural equation modeling was conducted to test our model and a multigroup analysis was performed to test gender differences. Results show that the two forms of narcissism are both linked to psychological perpetrated abuse, but in different ways. Vulnerable narcissism was linked to psychological abuse only indirectly, through the role of romantic jealousy. On the contrary, grandiose narcissism was positively and directly associated with psychological abuse within the romantic relationship. Moreover, the model was invariant across genders. Limitations, strengths, and theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.     

Tracking transitional probabilities and segmenting auditory sequences are dissociable processes in adults and neonates

Since speech is a continuous stream with no systematic boundaries between words, how do pre-verbal infants manage to discover words? A proposed solution is that they might use the transitional probability between adjacent syllables, which drops at word boundaries. Here, we tested the limits of this mechanism by increasing the size of the word-unit to four syllables, and its automaticity by testing asleep neonates. Using markers of statistical learning in neonates’ EEG, compared to adult behavioral performances in the same task, we confirmed that statistical learning is automatic enough to be efficient even in sleeping neonates. We also revealed that: (1) Successfully tracking transition probabilities (TP) in a sequence is not sufficient to segment it. (2) Prosodic cues, as subtle as subliminal pauses, enable to recover words segmenting capacities. (3) Adults’ and neonates’ capacities to segment streams seem remarkably similar despite the difference of maturation and expertise. Finally, we observed that learning increased the overall similarity of neural responses across infants during exposure to the stream, providing a novel neural marker to monitor learning. Thus, from birth, infants are equipped with adult-like tools, allowing them to extract small coherent word-like units from auditory streams, based on the combination of statistical analyses and auditory parsing cues.

Research Highlights

• Successfully tracking transitional probabilities in a sequence is not always sufficient to segment it.
• Word segmentation solely based on transitional probability is limited to bi- or tri-syllabic elements.
• Prosodic cues, as subtle as subliminal pauses, enable to recover chunking capacities in sleeping neonates and awake adults for quadriplets.