Adult perceptions of the infant as a function of gender labeling and observer gender

Four hundred sixty four adults rated a videotape of the activities of a 22-month-old infant whose gender was labeled differently with different subject groups. One group was told that the infant was male, a second group was told that the infant was female, and a third group was told that the infant was hermaphrodite, i.e., appeared to have the genitals of both sexes. Some subjects rated each activity as being either masculine or feminine (forced-choice method) while other subjects rated each activity with a neutral choice also available (free-choice method). The data indicate that, for both methodological groups, labeling the infant “male” resulted in significantly more activities being rated masculine than feminine, whereas the converse was true when the infant was labeled “female.” A label of “hermaphrodite” resulted in an approximately equal ratio of activities being rated as masculine and as feminine. There were no significant interaction (Gender Label × Observer Gender) for the forced-choice group, but for the free-choice group, significant interaction between child's gender label and observer's gender was found.     

Perceptual representation as a mechanism of lexical ambiguity resolution: An investigation of span and processing time

In 2 experiments, the authors investigated the ability of high- and low-span comprehenders to construe subtle shades of meaning through perceptual representation. High- and low-span comprehenders responded to pictures that either matched or mismatched a target object's shape as implied by the preceding sentence context. At 750 ms after hearing the sentence describing the target object, both high- and low-span comprehenders had activated a contextually appropriate perceptual representation of the target object. However, only high-span comprehenders had perceptually represented the contextually appropriate meaning immediately upon hearing the sentence, whereas low-span comprehenders required more processing time before the perceptual representation was activated. The results are interpreted in a framework of co-occurring lexical representations and perceptual-motor representations.     

Opiate antagonists and long-term analgesic reaction induced by inescapable shock in rats

Five experiments examined the influence of opiate antagonists on both the short-term analgesic reaction resulting 30 min after exposure to inescapable shock and the long-term analgesic reaction resulting after reexposure to shock 24 hr after inescapable shock exposure. Experiment 1 showed that the long-term analgesic reaction could be reduced by administration of naltrexone prior to exposure to inescapable tail shock. Experiment 2 showed that the reduction in the long-term analgesic reaction produced by naltrexone was dose-dependent. Experiment 3 showed that the long-term analgesic reaction could also be reduced by administration of naltrexone prior to reexposure to shock. Experiment 4 showed that the long-term analgesic reaction could be reduced by administration of large dose of naloxone prior to reexposure to shock. Experiment 5 showed that the short-term analgesic reaction was reduced by naltrexone administered prior to inescapable shock. Some implications of these results for the biochemical substrates of both learned helplessness and stress-induced analgesia are discussed.