Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire? Reality Dating Television Programs, Attitudes Toward Sex, and Sexual Behaviors

Past research has revealed associations between television viewing and sexual attitudes and behaviors. We examined a burgeoning new television genre, reality dating programs (RDPs). Undergraduate students (ages 18–24) reported their overall television viewing, their RDP viewing, and their involvement with RDPs (watching in order to learn and watching in order to be entertained). They also completed measures of attitudes toward sex, dating, and relationships, and answered questions about sexual behavior. Most participants were occasional or frequent viewers of at least one RDP. Men reported using RDPs for learning more than did women; there was no gender difference in use of RDPs for entertainment. Total amount of RDP viewing was positively correlated, for both men and women, with adversarial sexual beliefs, endorsement of a sexual double standard, and the beliefs that men are sex-driven, that appearance is important in dating, and that dating is a game. In all cases, however, these relationships were partially or totally mediated through viewer involvement. Men and women who watched RDPs tended to be less sexually experienced; there were few other correlations with sexual behaviors.     

Perseverance in solving Sudoku: role of grit and cognitive flexibility in problem solving

Problem solving is a higher order cognitive capacity with implications for everyday functioning. Although Grit predicts academic outcomes, the relation between facets of Grit, Consistency and Perseverance, and problem solving remain unknown. We report the results of two studies conducted to examine the impact of facets of grit on problem solving within the context of solving Sudoku puzzles. In Study 1, Grit-Perseverance predicted performance on the hard versus easy puzzle. In Study 2, we increased the difficulty level of the puzzles and assessed cognitive flexibility using the Wisconsin Card Sort Test. Grit-Perseverance was associated with effort on both the hard and very hard puzzles. Further, mediation analyses revealed that Grit-Perseverance indirectly predicted increased effort on the very hard puzzle through decreased cognitive flexibility. Overall our results demonstrate that Grit-Perseverance, not Consistency, impacts problem solving and highly gritty individuals may be most successful in solving challenging problems that are moderately constrained.     

Spiritual resilience: Understanding the protection and promotion of well-being in the later life

Spirituality is important to a large percentage of the older adult population and serves as a key factor of resilience. Using qualitative research, we conducted and analyzed interviews with 64 participants willing to discuss their experiences with adversity. Participants ranged in age from 52 to 93 with a mean age of 74. For the purposes of this study, we analyzed 46 of the 64 interviews, selecting participants who indicated that spirituality was an important resource for managing hardship. The researchers examined the connections between spirituality and resilience. Using in-depth interviews, we explored the interplay between spirituality and resilience and the importance spirituality plays in dealing with adversity and hardship. A grounded theory analysis of the 46 interviews was performed. Major findings include participants’ use of spirituality as a tool to promote and maintain resilience in late life in five key domains: reliance on relationships, spiritual transformation, spiritual coping, power of belief, and commitment to spiritual values and practices. Results are presented as an interpretation of the participants’ perceptions of their spirituality, and indicate their reliance on spirituality to overcome hardship. In addition, we discuss the connections between spirituality and resilience and how these connections play out in the lives of older adults when considering their generational and cohort status. The roles these two constructs play in the lives of older adults are considered.     

Extrafoveal processing of objects in a naming task: Evidence from word probe experiments

In two experiments, we investigated the processing of extrafoveal objects in a double-object naming task. On most trials, participants named two objects; but on some trials, the objects were replaced shortly after trial onset by a written word probe, which participants had to name instead of the objects. In Experiment 1, the word was presented in the same location as the left object either 150 or 350 msec after trial onset and was either phonologically related or unrelated to that object name. Phonological facilitation was observed at the later but not at the earlier SOA. In Experiment 2, the word was either phonologically related or unrelated to the right object and was presented 150 msec after the speaker had begun to inspect that object. In contrast with Experiment 1, phonological facilitation was found at this early SOA, demonstrating that the speakers had begun to process the right object prior to fixation.     

Screening for eating disorders in primary care: EDE-Q versus SCOFF

OBJECTIVE AND METHODS: The comparative validity of the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire (EDE-Q) (22 items) and SCOFF (five items) in screening for cases of the more commonly occurring eating disorders was examined in a primary care sample of young adult women (n=257). Diagnoses were confirmed in a sub-group of interviewed participants (n=147). RESULTS: Twenty-five cases, primarily variants of bulimia nervosa (BN) not meeting formal diagnostic criteria, were identified in the interviewed sample. An EDE-Q global score of >or= 2.80 yielded the optimal trade-off between sensitivity (Se) (0.80) and specificity (Sp) (0.80) (positive predictive value (PPV)=0.44), whereas a score of two or more positive responses on the SCOFF was optimal (Se=0.72, Sp=0.73, PPV=0.35). Validity coefficients for both measures varied as a function of participants' age and body weight, although these effects were more pronounced for the SCOFF. CONCLUSIONS: Both measures performed well in terms of their ability to detect cases and to exclude non-cases of the more commonly occurring eating disorders in a primary care setting. The EDE-Q performed somewhat better than the SCOFF and was more robust to effects on validity of age and weight. These findings need to be weighed against the advantage of the SCOFF in terms of its brevity.     

Rapid acquisition of phonological alternations by infants

We explore whether infants can learn novel phonological alternations on the basis of distributional information. In Experiment 1, two groups of 12-month-old infants were familiarized with artificial languages whose distributional properties exhibited either stop or fricative voicing alternations. At test, infants in the two exposure groups had different preferences for novel sequences involving voiced and voiceless stops and fricatives, suggesting that each group had internalized a different familiarization alternation. In Experiment 2, 8.5-month-olds exhibited the same patterns of preference. In Experiments 3 and 4, we investigated whether infants' preferences were driven solely by preferences for sequences of high transitional probability. Although 8.5-month-olds in Experiment 3 were sensitive to the relative probabilities of sequences in the familiarization stimuli, only 12-month-olds in Experiment 4 showed evidence of having grouped alternating segments into a single functional category. Taken together, these results suggest a developmental trajectory for the acquisition of phonological alternations using distributional cues in the input.     

Fostering Client Creativity in Family Therapy: A Process Research Study

Creativity has been shown to enhance problem solving, and to increase flexibility and adaptability—qualities associated with positive therapeutic outcomes. Literature related to therapist and/or client creativity is primarily anecdotal. Empirical literature addressing how therapists can facilitate the creativity of their clients in family therapy is scarce. In this study, the researchers used process methodology to code the behavior of therapists and clients in 31 videotaped family therapy sessions. Results show a significant positive correlation between interventions that induce positive affect and the creative client behaviors of optimism and playfulness.     

Women in a Man's World: Gender Differences in Leadership at the Military Academy

This study responds to a deficiency of research on military leadership gender differences in spite of widespread interest in women in the military in policymaking and academic circles of various fields. Although scholarship in the field of women's leadership in recent years has asserted that there are stylistic differences between male and female leaders, there were few major differences in this study of 12 specific areas of leadership rated by 3 types of raters. Of the 36 possible occurrences of a statistically significant gender difference, only 6 manifested themselves in the cadet leader ratings. As a whole, evidence supports minimal gender differences in leadership performance or style in the West Point Class of 1998.     

Feedlot veterinarians' moral and instrumental beliefs regarding antimicrobial use in feedlot cattle

This cross‐sectional survey research study examined the role moral beliefs play in predicting behavioural beliefs and attitudes and the role that subjective norms play in predicting moral beliefs. Using a self‐administered questionnaire, one hundred and three feedlot veterinarians completed measures of behavioural beliefs, referent others, perceived constraints and moral beliefs regarding recommendations to use antimicrobials in four situations (i.e. acutely sick cattle, chronically sick cattle, at‐risk cattle and high‐risk cattle). Regression analysis and F‐tests indicate moral beliefs as contributing significant increases in R² to models predicting behavioural beliefs regarding antimicrobial use in each situation. In addition, subjective norms contribute a significant increase in R² in models predicting moral beliefs in each of the four situations. The results indicate the effects of moral beliefs on behavioural beliefs are somewhat contingent on the condition; that is the level of risk associated with treating cattle with antimicrobials, the level of risk of not doing so, and the effectiveness of the antimicrobial in situations such as acute illness or being at‐risk of illness. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.