A developmental study of destereotyping and androgynous activity preferences of tomboys,nontomboys, and males

A study of 210 fourth, sixth, eighth, and tenth graders and adults was conducted to determine developmental trends in both destereotyping of traditionally gender-typed activities and preferences for those activities, and to compare activity preferences of tomboys with other females and with males at different ages. Tenth graders destereotyped less than the other age levels. Additionally, female subjects destereotyped traditionally boys' activities more than girls' activities and more than male subjects. Although nontomboys and boys showed a preference for gender-traditional activities, tomboys preferred traditional girls' and boys' activities equally. Self-defined tomboys do not reject traditionally female activities; instead, they expand their repertoire of activities to include both gender-traditional and nontraditional activities. It is suggested that girls who are able to transcend gender-role behavior in childhood may be the ones who will grow into androgynous adult women.     

Improved standards for laboratory animals?

In February 1993, Judge Charles R. Richey of the United States District Court issued a summary judgment in the case of Animal Legal Defense Fund, et al. v. The Secretary of Agriculture, et al. The decision, which was in favor of the Animal Legal Defense Fund, requires the U.S. Department of Agriculture to withdraw its current regulations governing exercise for dogs and the psychological well-being of nonhuman primates used for biomedical research and to issue new regulations containing only minimum, measurable standards. Both plaintiffs and defendants contended that they were seeking the best interests of the laboratory animals. The issue at stake is whether animals are better protected if the government establishes limited minimal standards or is allowed to require institutions to provide additional standards, which will be judged on the basis of their effectiveness in maintaining healthy animals. The Court avoided this dispute, however, by placing primary emphasis on applying the Administrative Procedures Act and stating that it was merely interpreting the "plain meaning" of the Animal Welfare Act, as amended. In this article, arguments are presented for interpreting the law in a far more flexible way than Judge Richey did. The conclusion is also reached that there were no winners in the Animal Legal Defense Fund case and that the real losers are the laboratory animals.     

The thin ideal, depression and eating disorders in women

It is proposed that a cultural ideal of thinness for women causes depression at a higher rate among women than among men. This model accounts for five currently unintegrated trends in the epidemiology of depression. It explains why: (1) twice as many women as men are likely to be depressed; (2) this sex difference emerges at puberty; (3) this sex difference is only found in western countries; (4) there is more depression today; (5) the average age of onset for depression is younger now than in the past. Four parallel trends in eating disorders can also be accounted for by the same factor.     

Social psychology, ‘marital rape exemptions’, and privacy

A 50-state statutory search revealed that variations exist in marital rape exemptions throughout the United States. States handle the question of marital rape in one of three ways: (1) by abolishing the exemption for husbands; (2) by qualifying the exemption; or (3) by allowing the exemption. Although marital rape is a topic that has been largely ignored by social psychology, it is an area ripe for psycho-legal analysis. Possible relationships between social psychology, marital rape exemptions, and privacy are discussed against a background of a psychological jurisprudence.     

Memory impairment and source misattribution in postevent misinformation experiments with short retention intervals

The four experiments reported here provide evidence that (1) misleading postevent suggestions can impair memory for details in a witnessed event and (2) subjects sometimes remember sug-gested details as things seen in the event itself. All four experiments used recall tests in which subjects were warned of the possibility that the postevent information included misleading sug-gestions and were instructed to report both what they witnessed in the event and what was men-tioned in the postevent narrative. Recall of event details was poorer on misled items than on control items, and subjects sometimes misidentified the sources of their recollections. Our re-sults suggest that these findings are not due to guessing or response biases, but rather reflect genuine memory impairment and source monitoring confusions.     

Group aggregates and individual reliability: The case of verbal short-term memory

Two experiments examined the generalizability of the effects of word length and phonological similarity with visual and auditory presentation in immediate verbal serial ordered recall. In Experiment 1, data were collected from 251 adult volunteers drawn from a broad cross-section of the normal population. Word length and phonological similarity in both presentation modes significantly influenced the group means. However, 43% of the subjects failed to show at least one of the effects, and the likelihood that effects appeared was highly correlated with verbal memory span. In Experiment 2, 40 subjects of the original sample were retested, 20 of whom had failed to show one or more effects in Experiment 1. Whether or not an effect had appeared for individual subjects on the first test session was a poor predictor of whether the effect would appear on retest. Finally, an analysis of subject reports demonstrated that the patterns of experimental data could be accounted for in part by the strategies that subjects reported using, and the effect of strategy was independent of the effect of span. The implications of these findings for theories of verbal short-term memory are discussed.     

Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Client Spiritual Development: Counseling Implications

The spiritual development of sexually traumatized clients is an important area of concern for counselors. In this paper, spirituality is defined, and its relevance for counselors who work with childhood sexual abuse survivors is discussed. Impact of abuse on client spirituality is described, and several suggestions are given for assessment and intervention approaches that address spiritual issues as part of the counseling process.     

On the discriminability of stimulus duration.

The performance of pigeons trained to detect differences in the duration of stimuli was analysed using a matching model of signal detection. Two white stimuli, S1 and S2, differing in duration, were arranged with equal probability on the center key of a three-key chamber. S1 was systematically varied from 5 seconds to 25 seconds while S2 remained constant at 30 seconds. On completion of the center-key stimulus, a peck on the center key turned on the two red side keys. A left-key response was "correct" when S1 had been in effect on the center key and a right-key response was "correct" on S2 trials. A correct response produced a 3-second magazine light accompanied intermittently by food. Incorrect responses produced 3-second blackouts. Detection performance was measured under two procedures. In the first, the obtained reinforcement ratio was uncontrolled by allowing the number of food reinforcements obtained for correct left- and right-key responses to vary as the stimuli were changed. In the second procedure, the presentation of food reinforcement was controlled by holding the obtained reinforcement ratio constant. Discriminability changed as a function of stimulus differences under both procedures. No such trend was found in response bias.     

Interactive presentation in multitrial free recall

This paper explores whether free recall performance and organization can be facilitated using computer-controlled interactive presentation, where stimulus presentation on Trial N+1 depends on the individual subject’s prior recall history. A series of experiments investigated the effects of two types of response-contingent presentation order manipulations and of selective tagging manipulation designed to highlight the presentation of previously nonrecalled items. An initial experiment using 20-word lists showed no differences among groups, due to a ceiling effect. Two subsequent experiments, using longer lists (30 and 40 words), found that recall and subjective organization were increased by selective tagging and by presentation orders that preserved the subject’s prior order of recall. The results demonstrate that subjects’ previous recall histories contain information that can be used to facilitate recall. The potential of other interactive manipulations is discussed.