Review of "The Parental Alienation Syndrome," by Richard A. Gardner

This article describes a self-help model for adolescents with ADHD that draws on the 12-Steps. The model uses a modified form of the 12-Steps that incorporates parents into the process with the goal of inculcating some of the executive functioning that is absent in their adolescent by consistently using some of the 12-Steps as part of their daily routine. The model proposes that parents assume a coaching role with their adolescent to teach increased self-awareness, organization, accountability, and behavioral inhibition that, hopefully, will have a reparative effect on their child's immature neurological functioning.     

Unique and Joint Effects of Sexual and Racial Harassment on College Students' Well-Being

An analysis is presented of issues involved in the differences noted between female and male leaders of mixed-sex groups. After surveying some of the different types of reactions of followers of both sexes to female or male leaders, this paper calls attention to such contributing factors as the nature of the group task, attitudes of leader and followers toward appropriate sex roles, and the criterion measures used. Implications for future research are derived and discussed.     

Distancing Through Objectification? Depictions of Women’s Bodies in Menstrual Product Advertisements

Terror Management Theory has led to suggestions that humans may distance themselves from menstruation in order to avoid reminders of their own corporeality and mortality, and the objectification of women has received empirical support as one means to do so. A content analysis of 240 menstrual product advertisements published in Seventeen and Cosmopolitan over 12 years was undertaken to look for evidence of objectification. Idealized images of women were common, lending support to the idea that these tactics can be used to provide distance from reminders of our own mortality, but overtly sexualized images were less common. The fact that nearly half of the advertisements did not include images of women may provide even stronger support for this idea. This indicated that a sanitized female body is not just being paired with reminders of menstruation, we are, literally, removing the female body entirely in many instances.     

Extending the Negative Consequences of Media Internalization and Self-Objectification to Dissociation and Self-Harm

Self-objectification is often understood as a consequence of internalizing unrealistic media ideals. The consequences of self-objectification have been well studied and include depression and self-harm. We argue that body surveillance, a component of self-objectification that involves taking an observer’s perspective on oneself, is conceptually related to dissociation, a variable related to depression and self-harm. We hypothesized that the normative experience of self-objectification may increase the risk that young women dissociate in other contexts, providing an additional indirect path between self-objectification, depression, and self-harm. Snowball sampling begun with postings on Facebook was used to recruit 160 women, believed to be primarily from the U.S., to complete an online survey about the effects of media on young women. All participants ranged in age from 18–35 (M?=?23.12, Median?=?22, Mode?=?21). Using this sample, we tested a path model in which internalization of media ideals led to body surveillance and body shame, body surveillance led to dissociation and body shame, body shame and dissociation led to depression, and dissociation and depression led to self-harm. This model, in which we controlled for the effects of age, had good fit to the data. Our findings suggest that self-harm and dissociation, both outcomes associated with the literature on trauma, are related to self-objectification. These relationships are discussed in terms of conceptualizing objectification and self-objectification as a form of insidious trauma or microaggression. Clinical implications are also discussed.     

The Function of the Human Motor System in Processes of Storing and Retrieving Preverbal,Primal Experience

Because the development of selfobject relationships is intimately involved with the development of the motor apparatus from the day of birth, it is assumed that movement improvisation can bring about the freeing of archaic memory traces. The author has painstakingly pulled together examples from her practice to demonstrate the existence of emotive memory clusters, which encompass many of life's vicissitudes and store them. She builds a theoretical framework for her hypotheses by linking her clinical observations with modern child research. Clinical vignettes illustrate this highly original, useful work. Transference and resistance are viewed with the same vigilance as in psychoanalysis while movement improvisations are given importance as type of free association.     

Influence of African American elders’ age stereotypes on their cardiovascular response to stress

Abstract

Although it has been shown that White elders are vulnerable to the influence of age stereotypes, it was not known whether this effect applied to African American elders. In the present study, African American elders were randomly assigned to negative or positive implicit-age-stereotype groups. Compared to participants in the positive age-stereotype group, those in the negative age-stereotype group demonstrated significantly more elevated cardiovascular response to stress, as measured by blood pressure and heart rate following mental challenges. These results suggest that negative age stereotypes generate a susceptibility to stress among African American elders, whereas positive age may provide them with a defense against this stress.     

Sexual Prejudice among Christian College Students, Denominational Teachings, and Personal Religious Beliefs

Although numerous studies have examined the role of religious tradition and religiosity on attitudes toward lesbian, gay, and bisexual people, the role of endorsement of denominational teachings has largely been overlooked, even though such teachings are often cited to explain study findings. To better understand the complex relationship between religion and sexual prejudice, this study explores the unique contributions of religious tradition, religiosity, and individual endorsement of denominational doctrine about same-sex sexuality in shaping these attitudes. Findings indicate that endorsement of denominational doctrine concerning same-sex sexuality is more influential than religiosity, and that endorsement of denominational doctrine is not simply a proxy for believing that same-sex sexuality is a sin. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Preschoolers' Recall of Own-Sex and Other-Sex Gender Scripts

A sample of 486 children in Beijing, China, were tested on the water-level task (WLT; J. Piaget &; B. Inhelder, 1948/1956). The participants were 256 boys and 230 girls from 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, and 11th grades. Three levels of mastery of the WLT were found. Level 1 consisted of 4th and 5th graders, who averaged about 71% correct. Level 2 consisted of 6th and 8th graders, who averaged about 83% correct. Level 3 consisted of 11th graders, who averaged 97% correct. The results provide partial support for the Piagetian theory of age-related developmental differences in performance on the WLT. The findings depict an interactive relationship of maturation with culture and education in the development of the ability to solve the WLT.     

A whole face is more than the sum of its halves: Interactive processing in face perception

Facial information is processed interactively. Yet, such interactive processing has been examined for discrimination of face parts rather than complete faces. Here we assess interactive processing using a novel paradigm in which subjects discriminate complete faces. Face stimuli, which comprise unilateral facial information (hemifaces) or bilateral facial information from one face (consistent) or two different faces (inconsistent), are shown centrally in a face‐matching task. If each half of a complete face is processed independently, accuracy for complete faces can be predicted by the union of accuracies for right and left hemifaces. However, accuracy exceeded this independence prediction for consistent faces (facilitation) and fell below the prediction for inconsistent faces (interference). These effects were reduced or absent for inverted faces. Our findings are consistent with reports of stronger interactive processing for upright than for inverted faces and they quantify effects of interactive processing on the discrimination of complete faces.