Beliefs About the Outcomes of Extramarital Sexual Relationships as a Function of the Gender of the “Cheating Spouse”

A person perception experiment was conducted toexamine people's beliefs about the outcome of anextramarital sexual relationship involving ahypothetical single friend and a married person. Twohundred and eleven undergraduate students (80 males and129 females; most of whom were Caucasian) were theparticipants in the experiment. The married person inthe vignette was presented as either a man or a woman (and always the opposite gender of the singlefriend) and as having low or high investments in themarriage (as indicated by number of children and yearsmarried). Results indicated that the participants' perceptions of the outcome of this type ofextramarital relationship depended on the gender of themarried person/single friend. Participants were morelikely to believe that the married person loved the extramarital partner, was committed to theextramarital relationship, and would marry theextramarital partner, if the married person was a womanrather than a man. The investment manipulations had noeffect on participants' perceptions of therelationship. The results were discussed as they relateto other beliefs about male vs. femalesexuality.     

Sex Differences on Affective Dimensions: Continuing Examination

This study was designed to explore sex differences along several affective dimensions. A sample of 455 undergraduate students was administered several affective scales. A discriminant analysis was performed using the affective scales as discriminating variables and sex as the group variable. Significant sex differences were found on only two of nine affective scales, and the substantive significance of these differences seems to he minimal. The authors concluded that the promotion of faulty stereotypical beliefs should be abandoned in favor of increasingly complex inquiry in this area.     

The role of stimulus familiarity in context-dependent recognition

Memory & Cognition - Investigations of context-dependent recognition, a phenomenon in which recognition is better for items studied and tested with the same rather than different context, have...     

Mediational use of internal representations of food and no-food events by pigeons

Two experiments were conducted with pigeons to determine whether internal representations of food and no-food events can act as mediators in the formation of new associations. Specifically we asked if the representation of an anticipated event can replace the event itself in an established conditional discrimination. In Phase 1 of both experiments pigeons were differentially autoshaped to peck hue stimuli, only one of which was followed by access to food. In Phase 2 they were trained on a symbolic 0-delay matching-to-sample (DMTS) task with food and no-food samples and line-orientation comparisons. In Phase 3 the birds were tested on a symbolic DMTS task in which the hue stimuli from Phase 1 were substituted for the Phase 2 food-event samples. For the Pos group, the hue followed by food in Phase 1 was substituted for the food sample and the hue associated with no-food was substituted for the no-food sample so that the resulting sample/comparison pairings were consistent with the food-event mediator. For the Neg group the pairings were reversed so that the sample/comparison pairings were inconsistent with the food-event mediators. In Experiment 1, when the no-food event was the absence of an event, acquisition of the transfer task was significantly more rapid in the Pos than in the Neg condition. In Experiment 2, when the no-food event was the presentation of an empty food hopper, the Pos group transferred at a significantly higher level than the Neg group. The two experiments provide evidence that in pigeons, representations involving event anticipations can be substituted for, and are thus similar to, the events themselves.     

Effort toward comprehension: Elaboration or “aha”?

Auble and Franks (1978) found that a process termed “effort toward comprehension” was important in facilitating recall of sentences. Four experiments were conducted to further elucidate the nature of this process. Two hypotheses were considered: (1)Effort toward comprehension involves greater elaboration or deeper processing of the sentence; (2)effort toward comprehension can be viewed as an “aha” experience (i.e., a state of noncomprehension followed by comprehension of the sentence). Results indicated that recall was significantly greater for subjects in conditions producing “aha” reactions. No support was found for the elaboration interpretation of effort toward comprehension.     

Vision and oral health needs of individuals with intellectual disability

Over the past 20 years, there has been an increased emphasis on health promotion, including prevention activities related to vision and oral health, for the general population, but not for individuals with intellectual disability (ID). This review explores what is known about the prevalence of vision problems and oral health conditions among individuals with ID, presents a rationale for the increased prevalence of these conditions in the context of service utilization, and examines the limitations of the available research. Available data reveal a wide range of prevalence estimates for vision problems and oral health conditions, but all suggest that these conditions are more prevalent among individuals with ID compared with the general population, and disparities exist in the receipt of preventive and early treatment for these conditions for individuals with ID. Recommendations for health improvement in these areas include better health planning and monitoring through standardized population-based data collection and reporting and increased emphasis on health promotion activities and early treatment in the healthcare system.     

Peer influence on bulimic symptoms in college students

This longitudinal study examined the influence of peer selection and socialization on bulimic symptoms in college students. Ninety-eight participants completed measures of bulimic symptoms, self-esteem, perfectionism, and impulsivity in the spring and fall of 2003. Peer influence was assessed by examining similarity among selected peers, unselected peers, and nonpeers over time. Among selected peers, bulimic symptoms demonstrated patterns of socialization, self-esteem and perfectionism demonstrated patterns of selection, and these personality traits longitudinally predicted changes in bulimic symptoms. Unselected peers demonstrated no similarity for bulimia, self-esteem, or perfectionism, but they did evidence socialization for impulsivity. The findings support an etiological model that integrates social and individual risk factors in creating environments that influence disordered eating among college students.     

The Getting To Outcomes Demonstration and Evaluation: An Illustration of the Prevention Support System

Communities are increasingly being required by state and federal funders to achieve outcomes and be accountable, yet are often not provided the guidance or the tools needed to successfully meet this challenge. To improve the likelihood of achieving positive outcomes, the Getting To Outcomes (GTO) intervention (manual, training, technical assistance) is designed to provide the necessary guidance and tools, tailored to community needs, in order to build individual capacity and program performance. GTO is an example of a Prevention Support System intervention, which as conceptualized by the Interactive Systems Framework, plays a key role in bridging the gap between prevention science (Prevention Synthesis and Translation System) and prevention practice (Prevention Delivery System). We evaluated the impact of GTO on individual capacity and program performance using survey- and interview-based methods. We tracked the implementation of GTO and gathered user feedback about its utility and acceptability. The evaluation of GTO suggests that it can build individual capacity and program performance and as such demonstrates that the Prevention Support System can successfully fulfill its intended role. Lessons learned from the implementation of GTO relevant to illuminating the framework are discussed.