Gender roles and role conflict in feminist lesbian and heterosexual women

Thirty-nine lesbian and 39 heterosexual feminist women were compared on (1) gender role orientation; (2) intra- and interrole conflict in daughter, intimate partner, and work roles; and (3) satisfaction with interpersonal relationships with parents, intimate partners, and co-workers/employers. The majority were Caucasian and either graduate students or professionals. Contrary to theoretical assumptions, lesbians and heterosexual women did not differ in gender role orientation. Heterosexual women reported more interrole conflict between daughter and work roles; whereas lesbians reported more interrole conflict between daughter and intimate partner roles, primarily as a result of perceived disapproval of their intimate relationships by others. Lesbians additionally reported less satisfaction with their relationships with co-workers and employers. Role conflict/satisfaction was not a function of disclosure vs. nondisclosure of sexual orientation for the lesbian women.This article is based on the first author's master's thesis. Portions of this article were presented at the meeting of Southeastern Psychological Association, Atlanta, Georgia, April 1990.The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the regional women's organization, the Students for Choice organization of the participating university, and the Tennessee chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union for their assistance in data collection. We would also like to thank Ramsey McGowen, Judith Hammond, and Lillian Range for their editorial comments on an earlier draft of this article.     

Reading About AIDS and Cognitive Coping Style: Their Effects on Fear of AIDS and Homophobia

An experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of reading about AIDS on fear of AIDS, knowledge of AIDS, and homophobia. Introductory psychology students read one of three magazine articles: one stressing the low likelihood of contracting AIDS through casual contact (reassuring article), one stressing the high likelihood of contracting AIDS through casual contact (alarming article), or a control article that did not mention AIDS. Compared to the control group, subjects who read the reassuring article were lower in fear of AIDS, whereas subjects who read the alarming article were higher; the articles had no effect on knowledge of AIDS or homophobia. In addition, subjects were classified on the basis of their cognitive coping style (high vs. low monitors) and sex. High monitors tended to be more fearful of AIDS but were neither better informed about AIDS nor more homophobic than low monitors. Men were more fearful of AIDS and more homophobic than women.     

Changes in Fear of AIDS and Homophobia in a University Population

A survey measuring attitudes toward fear of AIDS and homophobia, taken in the fall of 1985, was repeated in the fall of 1989 on the same university population. The results indicated that whereas fear of AIDS decreased, the degree of homophobia remained essentially unchanged. In addition, although respondents were much more knowledgeable about AIDS in 1989 than in 1985, there was no evidence of any change in the relatively high correlation between the fear of AIDS and homophobia.     

A psychosocial study of hyperactive and learning-disabled boys

Adequately reading hyperactive boys, normally behaved learning-disabled (LD) boys, and normal controls were contrasted on tests measuring personality traits, cognitive role taking, and moral reasoning. Additionally, parents and teachers rated all children on a number of behaviors, and parents were interviewed in a process-oriented fashion to assess home stimulation potential. Hyperactive boys were rated more aggressive and anxious than LD boys and controls and had not been encouraged as much by parents to achieve. Hyperactives had been born to younger parents, on the average, and 25% lived with their mothers and stepfathers. None of the LD or control boys had stepfathers. The groups did not differ significantly in moral reasoning ability, cognitive role taking, or locus of control; on the Junior Personality Inventory hyperactives tended to have elevated scores on the neuroticism scale while LD boys had higher scores on the lie scale.This research was supported by Grant HDNS-09119 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.     

Draw a Star and Make it Perfect: Incremental Processing of Telicity

Predicates like “coloring-the-star” denote events that have a temporal duration and a culmination point (telos). When combined with perfective aspect (e.g., “Valeria has colored the star”), a culmination inference arises implying that the action has stopped, and the star is fully colored. While the perfective aspect is known to constrain the conceptualization of the event as telic, many reading studies have demonstrated that readers do not make early commitments as to whether the event is bounded or unbounded. A few visual-world studies tested the processing of telic predicates during online sentence processing, demonstrating an early integration of aspectual and temporal cues. By employing the visual-world paradigm, we tested the incremental processing of the perfective aspect in Italian in two eye-tracking studies in which listeners heard durative predicates in the perfective form in a scenario showing a completed and a non-completed event. Differently from previous studies, we compared telic durative predicates such as “coloring-the-star” to punctual predicates such as “lighting-the-candle.” While for punctual predicates, the inferences of telicity (the event has a telos) and of culmination (the telos is reached) are lexically encoded in the perfective verb, for durative predicates, the degree of event completion (visually encoded) needs to be integrated with perfective aspect (linguistically encoded) for the culmination inference derivation. By modulating the interaction of visual and linguistic stimuli across the two experiments, we show that the verb's perfective aspect triggers the culmination inference incrementally during sentence processing, offering novel evidence for the continuous integration of linguistic processing with real-world visual information.     

Touching the Spirit: Re-enchanting the Person in the Body

In this essay, we argue that touch constitutes a sacred connection between the patient and practitioner. When touch is avoided or overlooked, the enigmatic inner workings of the body are ignored as those aspects of the body that can be quantified and ultimately controlled are emphasized. In utilizing touch as a fundamental way of opening up space for the sacred, the practitioner affirms the humanity for both the patient and herself. Only by returning to the senses can practitioners resist the dehumanizing effects of machinery and re-enchant the health-care profession in caring for persons they have sworn to serve.     

Psychological inflexibility in childhood and adolescence: development and evaluation of the Avoidance and Fusion Questionnaire for Youth

The authors describe the development and validation of the Avoidance and Fusion Questionnaire for Youth (AFQ-Y), a child-report measure of psychological inflexibility engendered by high levels of cognitive fusion and experiential avoidance. Consistent with the theory underlying acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), items converged into a 17-item scale (AFQ-Y) and an 8-item short form (AFQ-Y8). A multimethod psychometric approach provides preliminary support for the reliability and validity of the AFQ-Y and AFQ-Y8. In 5 substudies, 3 samples (total N = 1369) were used to establish (a) item comprehension (n = 181), (b) initial item selection (n = 513), (c) final item reduction and development of a short form for research (n = 346), (d) comprehensive psychometric evaluation of the AFQ-Y and AFQ-Y8 (n = 329), and (e) convergent and construct validity for both versions of the AFQ-Y. Overall, results suggest that the AFQ-Y and AFQ-Y8 may be useful child-report measures of core ACT processes.     

Self-regulation, motivation, and math achievement in middle school: Variations across grade level and math context

The current study examined grade level, achievement group, and math-course-type differences in student self-regulation and motivation in a sample of 880 suburban middle-school students. Analysis of variance was utilized to assess group differences in student self-regulation and motivation, and linear regression analysis was used to identify variables that best predicted students' use of regulatory strategies. A key finding was that although seventh graders exhibited a more maladaptive self-regulation and motivation profile than sixth graders, achievement groups in seventh grade (high, moderate, low) were more clearly differentiated across both self-regulation and motivation than achievement groups in sixth grade. The pattern of achievement group differences also varied across math course type, as self-regulation and motivation processes more consistently differentiated achievement groups in advanced classes than regular math courses. Finally, task interest was shown to be the primary motivational predictor of students' use of regulatory strategies during math learning. The study highlights the importance of identifying shifting student motivation and self-regulation during the early middle school years and the potential role that context may have on these processes.     

Knowledge and success from ability

This paper argues that knowledge is an instance of a more general and familiar normative kind—that of success through ability (or success through excellence, or success through virtue). This thesis is developed in the context of three themes prominent in the recent literature: that knowledge attributions are somehow context sensitive; that knowledge is intimately related to practical reasoning; and that one purpose of the concept of knowledge is to flag good sources of information. Wedding these themes to the proposed account helps to explain a wide range of standard Gettier problems. It also helps to explain barn façade cases, which require a different kind of treatment.