Qualitative Exploration of the Experiences and Challenges of Adolescents during Pregnancy

This study explores and describes the experiences and challenges of pregnant adolescents (N = 9, mean age = 16.33 years, SD = 1.58 years) by focusing on their thoughts and feelings about their pregnancies and future prospects. The expectant mothers were in their in their second and third trimester of pregnancy. All participants were poor working-class Black South Africans from different ethnic groups. Two were Tsonga, three Zulu and four Tswana speakers. Data were collected using semistructured interviews and analysed using thematic content analysis. Findings suggest that family relationships after disclosure of the pregnancy were strained, particularly the father-daughter relationship. The teens expressed unpreparedness for the challenges of motherhood, uncertainty about the future and feelings of anger, regret and anxiety.     

Four Myths about Subjective Well‐being

Subjective well‐being is a broad construct that reflects an individual's subjective evaluation of the quality of his or her life. Psychologists know a great deal about the causes and correlates of well‐being, but some important misconceptions have developed and are often repeated. The purpose of this article is to address the evidence for four such misconceptions that we believe reflect ‘myths’ about subjective well‐being. These myths include the idea that well‐being measures are strongly influenced by irrelevant contextual factors, the idea that money is not an important correlate of well‐being, the idea that social relationship variables are a particularly strong correlate of well‐being, and the idea that well‐being cannot change.     

Extrinsic Religious Orientation and Well-Being: Is Their Negative Association Real or Spurious?

Turning to religion to seek its social benefits has been associated with poor psychological well-being. Researchers have concluded that endorsing this extrinsic and social orientation toward religion is inauthentic and unhealthy. However, few studies have focused on extrinsic-social religious orientation’s negative relationship with well-being, leaving open the possibility that their relationship is spurious. The present study argues that people endorsing an extrinsic-social religious orientation also perceive lower levels of social support in their lives, thus their turning to religion to fill this social void. As social support is important for healthy psychological functioning, perceived social support may be the critical third variable explaining why extrinsic-social religious orientation appears to have psychological costs. This study supported our expectations among undergraduates in two countries: the United States (N = 156) and the Republic of Ireland (N = 255). There were negative bivariate associations between extrinsic-social religious orientation and both perceived social support and emotional well-being. Accounting for the effects of perceived social support, however, reduced the association between the extrinsic-social religious orientation and well-being to non-significance. Thus, people endorsing an extrinsic and social orientation toward religion tend to have poor well-being because they perceive less supportive relationships in their lives.     

Changes in orienting and habituation in the rat following administration of chlorpromazine

Chlorpromazine (0.5-3.0 mg/kg) significantly reduced orienting to a novel auditory stimulus, but subsequent habituation after repeated presentations of the stimulus was not prevented nor significantly impaired. These results support the suggestion that the mechanisms underlying orienting and habituation are independent.     

Specificity and savings of behavioural habituation over a series of intra- and inter-modal stimuli

A series of four tone stimuli, differing either in tonal frequency or in melody, was presented at the rate of one presentation per day to a group of rats. Habituation was specific to the frequency of simple auditory stimuli and to the melody of patterned stimuli, as shown both by the distraction to stimulus change, and by the trials to habituate to the new stimulus. Savings in habituation occurred when a series of tone stimuli was presented, but was not found for a series of inter-modal stimuli.     

Automatic change detection in vision: Adaptation,memory mismatch,or both? II: Oddball and adaptation effects on event-related potentials

In this study we compared the event-related potentials (ERPs) obtained in two different paradigms: a passive visual oddball paradigm and an adaptation paradigm. The aim of the study was to investigate the relation between the effects of activity decrease following an adaptor (stimulus-specific adaptation) and the effects of an infrequent stimulus within sequences of frequent ones. In Experiment 1, participants were presented with different line textures. The frequent (standard) and rare (deviant) texture elements differed in their orientation. In Experiment 2, windmill pattern stimuli were presented in which the number of vanes differentiated the deviant and standard stimuli. In Experiment 1 the ERP differences elicited between the oddball deviant and the standard were similar to the differences between the ERPs to the nonadapted and adapted stimuli in the adaptation paradigm. In both paradigms the differences appeared as a posterior negativity with the latency of 120–140 ms. This finding demonstrates that the representation of a sequential rule (successive presentation of the standard) and the violation of this rule are not necessary for deviancy effects to emerge. In Experiment 2 (windmill pattern), in the oddball paradigm the difference potentials appeared as a long-lasting negativity. In the adaptation condition, the later part of this negativity (after 200 ms) was absent. We identified the later part of the oddball difference potential as the genuine visual mismatch negativity—that is, an ERP correlate of sequence violations. The latencies of the difference potentials (deviant minus standard) and the endogenous components (P1 and N1) diverged; therefore, the adaptation of these particular ERP components cannot explain the deviancy effect. Accordingly, the sources contributing to the standard-versus-deviant modulations differed from those related to visual adaptation; that is, they generated distinct ERP components.     

Knowledge of spatial relations: A preliminary investigation

The mechanism underlying our knowledge of spatial relationships was investigated. In the first experiment subjects were asked to examine an array of circles, located in different positions on a background; after removal of the array, they answered questions about the spatial relations between the circles. The array was constructed so that the number of circles and the number of relations between circles could be independently varied. The results showed that the number of correct answers decreased as the number of circles increased, but was unaffected by the number of relations between circles. This suggests that subjects learn the positions of the circles, from which relations between circles can be computed, rather than learning the relations directly. Evidence from the second experiment, using a similar experimental paradigm, suggests that the positions of the circles are learned by organizing them into higher-order units or groups.     

Inter-stimulus interval and the rate of behavioural habituation

A series of 10 tone stimuli was presented to rats at intervals of 1/4, 1/2, 1, 1 1/2, 2, 2 1/2, or 3 min or 24 h. The next day a test tone was presented and the distraction to this measured. There was less habituation (i.e. greater distraction) at shorter inter-stimulus intervals, but this effect asymptoted at 2 min and thereafter there was no further increase in habituation, even with inter-stimulus intervals of 24 h. A second independent variable was the stimulus duration which did not affect the rate of habituation, nor did it interact in any way with the inter-stimulus interval.     

Explaining the extraversion/positive affect relation: sociability cannot account for extraverts' greater happiness

The association between Extraversion and positive affect is one of the most robust findings in the study of personality and emotion. Temperament models posit that the association is direct; instrumental models posit that the association is mediated by additional processes. Two experience sampling studies were conducted to test instrumental mechanisms that might underlie the effect. According to a mediation model, extraverts' greater social activity can account for their increased positive affect when compared to introverts. According to a person-by-situation interaction model, extraverts react more positively to social situations than do introverts, and this interaction can account for the association. Only weak support for the instrumental models was found; consistent with temperament models, a moderate direct association remained even after controlling for these effects.