Effects of counselor sex,student sex,and student attractiveness on counselors' judgments

Thirty-two male and thirty-two female high school counselors in a large metropolitan school district were provided with routine student profile data and asked to make predictions about the student's potential for post-high school education and to suggest occupations for the student to explore. All data reviewed by the counselors were identical except for a photograph of the student attached to the profile. Within counselor sex groups, counselors were randomly assigned to one of the following four photograph conditions: (a) attractive female; (b) unattractive female; (c) attractive male; and (d) unattractive male. Male subjects were found to discriminate on the basis of student sex when they suggested occupations for the student to explore. Predictions of post-high school education and the social status of suggested occupations were not found to be related to counselor sex, student sex, or student attractiveness.     

Long-term outcome of sex therapy

In a prospective investigation of the long-term outcome of 140 couples who had entered sex therapy 1–6 yrs earlier for a variety of sexual dysfunctions, successful follow-up, mostly by interview, was possible with at least one partner in 75% of cases. While recurrence of sexual difficulties was common, coping strategies were identified which often helped overcome relapses. Improvements in couples' general relationships resulting from treatment were usually sustained. Long-term outcome was excellent for vaginismus, good for erectile dysfunction, but often poor for premature ejaculation, and especially, for female impaired sexual interest. While the results of this study support the continued use of sex therapy for sexual dysfunction, they also emphasize the need for new therapeutic approaches for problems with poor outcome, especially female loss of sexual interest.     

Semantic activation during object naming

Summary The study deals with the processes of semantic activation which accompany the response of naming an object. A general model of semantic activation is presented, characterized by the proposal of the existence of different components of the semantic representations that constitute the conceptual nodes corresponding to objects. Within these, a distinction is made between elements corresponding to physical properties of the stimulus objects, and more abstract, functional elements. Two distinct routes are proposed for the activation of the concept node, a direct and an indirect one. A further distinction made in the present study is between categories characterized predominantly in terms of perceptual properties, and primarily conceptual categories.The study reports two sets of experiments, the first one offering support to the distinction of two activation routes, the second to the notion of the existence of two types of categories. This latter distinction also allows a convincing explanation for various facts reported in the literature, in particular for the difference in categorization and in naming latencies for objects and for words.     

Maintenance of fluency: A review

Three purposes for writing this paper are: to review specific work done on the maintenance of fluency in the post-treatment environment, to abstract and discuss pertinent issues in maintenance, and to present several speculative positions which might account for the relapse phenomenon and stimulate further research.     

Naming and categorization in young children: III. Vocal tact training and transfer of function

Following pretraining with everyday objects, 10 children aged from 1 to 4 years were given common vocal tact training with a set of three pairs of arbitrary stimuli of differing shapes; Set 1. Nine children learned to tact one stimulus as "zog" and the other as "vek" in each pair, and all passed subsequent pairwise tests for the corresponding listener behavior to each listener stimulus (i.e., /zog/ and /vek/, respectively). The children were next trained to clap to one stimulus of Pair 1 and wave to the other, and all then showed name-consistent transfer of these behaviors to the stimuli of Pair 2 and Pair 3. Seven children also were given a test of listener responding to experimenter-modeled clap and wave gestures, respectively, which they all passed. Four of the children next participated in a category match-to-sample test for the Set 1 stimuli; all 4 passed. For each pair of two additional six-stimuli sets, Set 2 and Set 3, 3 children were trained to wave to one stimulus and to clap to the other. For each set, all 3 children showed perfect transfer of the vocal tacts trained to Set 1, and of listener behavior both to the auditory stimuli /zog/ and /vek/ and to experimenter-modeled clap and wave gestures. They also sorted the stimuli perfectly in category match-to-sample tests for Set 2, Sets 1 and 2 combined, Set 3, and Sets 1, 2, and 3 combined. The results show that even in very young children, naming is a powerful means of generating new category relations among as many as 18 arbitrary stimuli.     

The relationship between masculine gender role stress and psychological adjustment: A question of construct validity?

Masculine gender role stress is a theoretical construct that describes the stress created in men when they feel they are not meeting society's expectations for masculinity, or when the situation forces men to act in feminine-typed ways. The stress produced by these feelings or actions are thought to be related to negative psychological outcomes for men, but should be unrelated to well-being for women. The present study investigated the validity of the masculine gender role stress construct, especially with regard to the assumption that masculine gender role stress is related to negative psychological outcomes for men more than for women. Participants were a group of mostly Caucasian undergraduates. Results indicated that masculine gender role stress was related to depression, hostility, and anxiety, but to the same degree for both men and women. These findings suggest that, if MGRS is a valid construct, then researchers need to explore other ways in which this type of stress can negatively affect men, but not women.     

Hierarchical structure in printed word recognition

Summary Naming-latency experiments are reported which compare theories of printed word recognition that assume direct vs. indirect mapping of a word's letter pattern onto a lexical representation. Inflected Dutch verbs were presented to subjects with all letters shown at once, and with some letters withheld for 30 or 60 ms. When letters were initially withheld, the part of a wordform first displayed included its stem, its root, its grammatical affix(es), and, if prefixed, its prefix and the part following the prefix. Nonmorphological control conditions were also defined. The priming effects found on naming latencies tend to support some morphologically mediated mapping of letter strings onto lexical items. Most facilitation was found when the stimulus information first presented included a word's root morpheme and was word initial. For lexically prefixed verbs a further division was supported between the morphs composing a word's stem.     

New directions for family therapy: rubbish removal as a task of choice

Family therapy may be accompanied by laughter and wit as well as serious labour. Family life has a great deal to laugh about, and family therapists, if they take families seriously, need to be able to laugh and joke with them.