Sex differences in communication with close friends: testing Tannen's claims

In 1990 Tannen reported that men have fewer close friends than women, men discuss less intimate topics with their friends than women, and men and women respond differently to close friends' problems. 168 students completed a three-page survey designed to examine Tannen's claims. Consistent with Tannen's observations, men discussed less intimate topics (politics and school or work) with their five closest friends and reportedly were less likely to comfort or listen to their friends' problems than women were. Inconsistent with Tannen's statements, these women and men did not differ in the number of close friends they reported having or in the likelihood of offering advice when presented with a friend's problem. Present self-reports corroborate other researchers who questioned Tannen's findings and concluded that sex differences in interpersonal communication are small.     

Perceptions of another person's heavy drinking as a function of one's relationship to the drinker a pilot study

Of 301 participants in a telephone survey, 201 could identify a problem drinker within their social networks. In 67 cases the drinker was a partner, in 45 another family member, in 61 a friend, and in 28 a work colleague. Another person's heavy drinking was reported as most disrupting to one's life when that person was a partner or other family member or if one was living in the same residence as the drinker. The exception to this was that reported disruption to respondents' work life was greatest when the drinker was a work colleague. While there appear to be problems for friends and work colleagues, partners and other family members appear to report the most disruption so providing services to family members seems appropriate.     

Money Doesn't Talk, It Swears: How Economic Stress and Resistance Resources Impact Inner-City Women's Depressive Mood

We examined the differential impact of chronic versus acute economic stress on depressive mood among a sample of 1241 low-income, single, European and African American women. Based on Hobfoll's (1988, 1989) conservation of resources (COR) theory, we predicted that acute resource loss would be more distressing than chronic economic lack. That is, although chronically impoverished conditions are stressful, the attendant resource losses created will be more distressing. We further predicted that mastery and social support would be more beneficial in offsetting the negative consequences of acute resource loss than the negative consequences of chronic economic lack, because acute loss creates identifiable demands that resources may address. Hence, we hypothesized that mastery and social support would show stress buffering effects only for material loss, not chronic lack. The findings generally supported the hypotheses, but mastery buffered only European American women's resource loss and social support buffered only African American women's resource loss. The findings are discussed in light of implications for prevention within theoretical and cultural contexts.     

Intuition and autism: a possible role for Von Economo neurons

Von Economo neurons (VENs) are a recently evolved cell type which may be involved in the fast intuitive assessment of complex situations. As such, they could be part of the circuitry supporting human social networks. We propose that the VENs relay an output of fronto-insular and anterior cingulate cortex to the parts of frontal and temporal cortex associated with theory-of-mind, where fast intuitions are melded with slower, deliberative judgments. The VENs emerge mainly after birth and increase in number until age 4 yrs. We propose that in autism spectrum disorders the VENs fail to develop normally, and that this failure might be partially responsible for the associated social disabilities that result from faulty intuition.     

Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) intentional communication is not contingent upon food

Studies of great apes have revealed that they use manual gestures and other signals to communicate about distal objects. There is also evidence that chimpanzees modify the types of communicative signals they use depending on the attentional state of a human communicative partner. The majority of previous studies have involved chimpanzees requesting food items from a human experimenter. Here, these same communicative behaviors are reported in chimpanzees requesting a tool from a human observer. In this study, captive chimpanzees were found to gesture, vocalize, and display more often when the experimenter had a tool than when she did not. It was also found that chimpanzees responded differentially based on the attentional state of a human experimenter, and when given the wrong tool persisted in their communicative efforts. Implications for the referential and intentional nature of chimpanzee communicative signaling are discussed.     

Interference with spatial working memory: An eye movement is more than a shift of attention

In the present experiments, we examined whether shifts of attention selectively interfere with the maintenance of both verbal and spatial information in working memory and whether the interference produced by eye movements is due to the attention shifts that accompany them. In Experiment 1, subjects performed either a spatial or a verbal working memory task, along with a secondary task requiring fixation or a secondary task requiring shifts of attention. The results indicated that attention shifts interfered with spatial, butnot with verbal, working memory, suggesting that the interference is specific to processes within the visuospatial sketchpad. In Experiment 2, subjects performed a primary spatial working memory task, along with a secondary task requiring fixation, an eye movement, or an attention shift executed in the absence of an eye movement. The results indicated that both eye movements and attention shifts interfered with spatial working memory. Eye movements interfered to a much greater extent than shifts of attention, however, suggesting that eye movements may contribute a unique source of interference, over and above the interference produced by the attention shifts that accompany them.     

Avoidance and depression: the construction of the cognitive-behavioral avoidance scale

Previous research has demonstrated a relationship between avoidance and depression, although the nature of this relationship has been confused by inconsistent definitions of avoidance. Following a review of the construct of avoidance and an examination of past research, a new multidimensional measure of avoidance was developed and validated using an undergraduate student sample (245 females and 146 males). Four reliable factors reflecting combinations of cognitive/behavioral and social/nonsocial dimensions of avoidance were obtained from the factor analysis of the new scale, entitled the "Cognitive-Behavioral Avoidance Scale" (CBAS). The scale showed the predicted relationships with convergent and divergent measures used for construct validation. As predicted, subscales of the CBAS, as well as the overall scale score, were significantly related to the depression and anxiety criterion measures. The findings from this study suggest that avoidance may be an important construct in the psychosocial conceptualization of depression. In addition, this integrated measure of avoidance has potential utility for depression researchers. Suggestions for further scale development and research are provided.