The relationship between trauma and financial and physical well-being among Cambodians in the United States.

This study focused on the relationship between trauma and financial and physical well-being of Cambodian refugees in the United States. Trauma was defined by three variables: whether or not trauma had been experienced in Cambodia, the number of traumas experienced, and the number of years spent in refugee camps. It was hypothesized that these trauma variables would predict financial and physical health among Cambodians in the United States. A discriminant analysis showed significant relationships between the trauma variables and current employment status, and multiple regression analyses showed that trauma predicted income and physical health.     

Is object texture a constraint on human prehension?: kinematic evidence

The present experiment determined whether object texture influenced the transport and grasp components of human prehension. Infrared markers placed on the index finger, thumb, and wrist were recorded using a WATSMART system. The test objects were cylindrical dowels (103 mm high, 25 mm diameter, and 150 g in weight) of various surface materials (plain metal, coated with Vaseline, and covered with coarse sandpaper). Only temporal kinematic measures were affected by texture: Movement time (ms), time after peak deceleration (ms), percentages of movement time following maximum aperture, velocity, and deceleration were all significantly greater for the slippery dowel than the normal and rough dowels. Results indicated that the increased time associated with the slippery dowel could be explained entirely by increased time between contact with the dowel and dowel lift. Thus, these results are like those of Weir, MacKenzie, Marteniuk, Cargoe, and Frazer (1991), in which object weight was shown not to affect the free-motion phase, which includes the transport and grasp components of prehension. It appears that intrinsic object properties like weight and texture affect only the finger-object interaction phase of prehension; subsequent research is needed to dissociate inertial and surface friction effects while in contact with objects     

The use of guided imagery in psychotherapy: Modules for use with passive relaxation training

Passive relaxation training can be an important technique when conducting psychotherapy with anxiety disorder clients. A central element of the passive relaxation process is the use of guided imagery. The clinical use of imagery is verbally guided by the therapist and includes multiple sense modalities. The exact procedures used in guided imagery are not often described in adequate detail. An appendix is included to describe five guided imagery modules to be used in combination with the passive relaxation procedures.     

Accuracy in the judgment of in-group and out-group variability

The accuracy of in-group and out-group variability judgments was examined by comparing those judgments with the variability of self-ratings provided by random samples of group members. Following Park and Judd (1990), perceptions of both group dispersion and group stereotypicality were examined. Accuracy was examined both by within-subject sensitivity correlations and by simple discrepancies between perceived and actual variability estimates. In-group-out-group differences in sensitivity were shown, particularly for judgments of stereotypicality. These differences were related to differences in the degree to which out-group variability is underestimated relative to in-group variability (i.e., the out-group homogeneity effect). Out-group stereotypicality judgments were overestimated, supporting the view that out-group stereotypes are overgeneralizations. Whether dispersion judgments were over- or underestimated depended on their measurement.     

Three methods of developing MMPI taxonomies of sexual offenders

In a sample of 261 state hospital sexual offenders, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) profiles did not differ for offenders with adult victims versus offenders with child victims when offender age was controlled. MMPI 2-point analyses for the whole sample revealed five common codes that were independent of victim maturity. The sample was randomly divided in half and subjected to a cluster-analytic procedure which revealed two MMPI clusters. The first cluster was unelevated, with Scale 4 as its high point. The second cluster had multiple elevations, with Scales 8, 4, 2, and 7 as the highest scales. These clusters were replicated in a cluster analysis of the second half of the sample. However, when the sample was recombined, the two clusters were not externally validated basis on demographic and criminological variables. The results suggest that common psychological variables among sexual offenders may have more discriminative value than victim maturity in developing sexual offender taxonomies.     

Courtesy stigma: the social implications of associating with a gay person

We investigated the operation of courtesy stigma with American male college students who reacted to a fictitious male student described as gay, rooming by choice with a gay male student, involuntarily assigned to room with a gay, or rooming with a male heterosexual. Among respondents who expressed strong intolerance of gays, the voluntary associate of a gay was perceived as having homosexual tendencies and as possessing the same stereotyped personality traits attributed to a gay. No such courtesy stigma was attached to the involuntary associate of a gay by these respondents. Relatively tolerant respondents engaged in no courtesy stigmatization at all. Thus, courtesy stigmatization occurred only under circumscribed conditions and appeared to depend more on the tendency of highly intolerant individuals to infer that a male student who apparently liked a gay individual was himself gay than on a motivation to maintain cognitive consistency.