Psychological correlates of negative self-assessed health

The recent growth in the area now subsumed under the title health psychology can be seen to reflect real changes in the societal pre-occupation with health promotion. Established models within health psychology have tended to focus on the interface between the individual and the health care system. Moreover, as a consequence of employing the tripartite model of health, illness and sick-role behaviour as separate entities, research has tended to construct barriers between these behaviours. In is necessary to develop psychological models within health psychology rather than use the education model of the medical orthodoxy. This study explored the distinguishing features of a sub-group of women within the sample who were identified as having relatively negative self-assessed health. Data was obtained on their experience of health and illness, their involvement in health-related behaviours (HRB) and their health beliefs. It was shown that this group was more likely to be involved in damaging HRB, but involvement in positive HRB did not differ from the main sample. They tended to anticipate an improvement over time from their present health status which they felt had been influenced by their own behaviour and by their experience of motherhood.     

Sex differences in performance and hemispheric organization for a nonverbal auditory task.

Musically experienced and inexperienced men and women discriminated among fundamental-frequency contours presented either binaurally (i.e., same contour to both ears) or dichotically (i.e., different contours to each ear). On two separate occasions, males made significantly fewer errors than did females in the binaural condition, but not in the dichotic condition. Subjects with prior musical experience were superior to musically naive subjects in both conditions. The dichotic pitch task produced a left-ear advantage, which was unrelated to gender or musical experience. The results suggest that the male advantage on the binaural task reflects a sex difference in the coordination of the two hemispheres during conjoint processing of the same stimuli rather than a difference in the direction or degree of hemispheric specialization for these stimuli.     

The foreperiod effect revisited

This paper explores four factors which could be important in accounting for the discrepant results which have previously been obtained with respect to the effect of foreperiod duration on reaction time (RT). In some studies a clear effect of foreperiod duration on auditory RT has been found, in contrast to a recent finding that foreperiod duration affected visual RT but not auditory RT. By means of two experiments, the effects of practice, time-on-task, reaction task (a-reaction versus selective reaction) and signal intensity were studied. The latter variable appears to be the principal determinant of the discrepant results in that there is an interaction between signal intensity, foreperiod duration and modality. The results fit the hypothesis that signals beyond a given intensity exert an immediate arousing effect which counteracts the foreperiod effect.     

Inferences about the femininity of competent women and their implications for likability

Male (N=59) and female (N=60) college students were given a written protocol describing a competent, achievement-oriented female stimulus person (SP) with either a masculine or feminine pattern of vocational and avocational interests. Three groups were given a masculine-pattern protocol and one group was given a feminine-pattern one. They were then asked to rate the SP on likability in work and social settings, femininity, and a number of other personal attributes. Two groups given the masculine-pattern protocol were also supplied with the SP's responses to items from a “personality” test answered in a predominantly feminine (Masculine—Feminine SP) or masculine (Masculine-Masculine SP) direction. The remaining groups (Masculine-Neutral and Feminine-Neutral SPs) were given no additional information. In agreement with previous findings, the Masculine-Neutral SP was liked more in social settings than was the Feminine-Neutral one. It was hypothesized and confirmed that the Masculine-Neutral SP would be perceived as similar to the Masculine-Feminine SP in femininity and likability and that both these SPs would be judged to be higher on these characteristics than the Masculine-Masculine. Complex results were obtained from the ratings of other attributes. Overall, they indicated that the Masculine-Feminine SP, in whom femininity was explicitly suggested, received the weakest ratings on a series of achievement-related attributes and the Masculine-Neutral SP the strongest.     

Sensitivity to low doses of ethanol and pentobarbital in mice selected for sensitivity to hypnotic doses of ethanol.

These experiments assessed sensitivity to low doses of ethanol and pentobarbital in mice that had been selectively bred with respect to ethanol sleep time (the length of time an animal remains on its back following a hypnotic dose of ethanol). The hypothesis under investigation was that short-sleep (SS) mice might be more sensitive than long-sleep (LS) mice to excitatory effects produced by low doses of depressants. In support of this hypothesis SS mice were more active in an open-field test after ethanol than were LS mice. The lines did not differ in performance on a rotating-rod apparatus after these same doses of ethanol, suggesting that the difference in open-field activity was not attributable to a greater impairment of locomotor activity in LS mice. A similar difference in the open-field activity of the selected lines was observed with pentobarbital.     

Differentiation of adolescent activity participation

The sex typing or lack of it among 133 adolescent activities was investigated. Twenty-seven percent (32) of the activities on an Adolescent Activity Questionnaire showed very clear participation differences for male and female adolescents (11 to 18 years old). The initial two factors extracted in a principal components factor analysis were easily interpreted as feminine and masculine activities. Discriminant function analysis of 15 items from the first three factors yielded an 8-item function on the basis of which every sample member was correctly classified as male or female. Masculine activities included more sports-related activities and activities dealing with mechanics and building, whereas feminine activities were domestic in nature and included more sedentary activities (e.g., reading, writing in diaries).     

Sentence comprehension following agenesis of the corpus callosum

The sentence comprehension skills of a 6-year-old girl with callosal agenesis were compared to skills of three other children matched for age and verbal IQ. Sentence-picture matching and acting out tasks were used with reversible active, passive, and center-embedded relative clause sentences. The acallosal subject showed a deficit in syntactic comprehension. The difficulty was due to a failure to assign correct semantic roles to some sentence forms, not to a lack of ability to discriminate among the sentence forms. The data are consistent with a previous report by M. Dennis (1977, In Topics in child neurology, pp. 189-212) that in acallosal subjects syntactic comprehension can be adversely affected. Because this acallosal subject is only 6 years old, follow-up studies will be needed to determine whether she eventually acquires normal syntactic skills.