How time flies: a study of novice skydivers

Although time distortion is commonly reported during a traumatic experience, there is little research addressing the phenomenon. This study investigated the role of affect in time perception in a very stressful experience by indexing novice tandem skydivers' (N=76) levels of fear and excitement before the skydive and soon after landing. Estimations of how long skydivers thought their experience lasted were obtained after landing. Whereas increased fear was associated with the perception of time passing slowly, increased excitement was associated with the perception of time passing quickly. These data support models of time perception based on avoidance and approach motivations influencing time distortion.     

Symptom-system fit in couples: emotion regulation when one or both partners smoke

In a laboratory smoking experiment, 25 couples in which 1 or both partners continued to smoke despite 1 of them having heart or lung disease discussed a health-related disagreement before and during a period of smoking. Immediately afterward, the partners used independent joysticks to recall their continuous emotional experience during the interaction while watching themselves on video. Participants in dual-smoker couples reported increased positive emotion contingent upon lighting up, whereas those in single-smoker couples reported the opposite. The results highlight the role of smoking in close relationships, particularly in regulating emotional closeness when both partners smoke. Attention to this fit between symptom and system may be useful in helping couples achieve stable cessation.     

Sporting Achievement: What Is the Contribution of Digit Ratio?

Second-to-fourth digit ratio, a marker for prenatal testosterone levels, has been shown to be associated with sporting achievement in men. It is unclear, however, whether digit ratio makes a contribution over and above salient personality variables. The present study, which included female participants, measured four personality traits and one cognitive ability (mental rotation) that have been linked to both sports achievement and sex. The significant relationship between digit ratio and sporting achievement was nearly identical in women and men. A multiple regression showed that when significant correlates of sporting ability (weight, height, years playing, hours per week training, social potency, and mental rotation) were entered first, the contribution of digit ratio remained highly significant. We suggest that physiological as well as psychological factors may be an important avenue for future study.     

Choice as an act of meaning: the case of social class

Social class is one important source of models of agency--normative guidelines for how to be a "good" person. Using choice as a prototypically agentic action, 5 studies test the hypotheses that models of agency prevalent in working-class (WK) contexts reflect a normative preference for similarity to others, whereas models prevalent in middle-class (MD) contexts reflect a preference for difference from others. Focusing on participants' choices, Studies 1 and 2 showed that participants from WK relative to MD contexts more often chose pens that appeared similar to, rather than different from, other pens in the choice set, and more often chose the same images as another participant. Examining participants' responses to others' choices, Studies 3 and 4 demonstrated that participants from WK relative to MD contexts liked their chosen pens more when a confederate chose similarly and responded more positively when a friend chose the same car in a hypothetical scenario. Finally, Study 5 found that car advertisements targeting WK rather than MD consumers more often emphasized connection to, rather than differentiation from, others, suggesting that models of agency are reflected in pervasive cultural products.     

Change blindness and eyewitness testimony

The authors explored the relevance of research on change blindness to eyewitness identification and testimony under intentional and incidental memory conditions. Participants (N = 80, 40 men and 40 women) viewed a video enactment of a burglary in which the identity of the burglar changed at the halfway point of the film. Half of participants were briefed to remember the content, and the other half were not. All were tested for the recall of the content, awareness of the change, and ability to identify either or both of the burglars. Some 61% of participants did not notice the identity change. Rates of detection were significantly higher in participants in the intentional condition, who also recalled significantly more detail from the film. Awareness of change was also significantly related to content recall scores and accuracy of identification of both burglars. The results illustrate the interrelation between the eyewitness and change blindness literatures.     

Utility of the Millon Behavioral Medicine Diagnostic (MBMD) to predict adherence to highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) medication regimens among HIV-positive men and women

Psychosocial and behavioral factors may be strong predictors of adherence to medications in a wide variety of diseases. Newly emerging antiretroviral medications for HIV have been shown to be effective but require near perfect adherence to offer clinically significant benefits. There is currently great interest in deriving patient factors that may predict optimal medication adherence in HIV-positive persons. In this study, we examined the association of psychosocial and behavioral characteristics using the Millon Behavioral Medicine Diagnostic (MBMD; Millon, Antoni, Millon, Meagher, & Grossman, 2001) and adherence to highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) among 117 HIV-positive individuals on HAART regimens. Specific indexes of the MBMD were associated with HAART adherence as assessed through patient interview, at baseline assessment, and at 3-month follow-up at a point after which participants had received medication adherence training. As hypothesized, the Medication Abuse scale of the MBMD was uniquely associated with overall adherence at baseline assessment and also predictive of adherence at 3-month follow-up. Additional MBMD scales were also related to overall adherence as well as specific adherence behaviors such as missed doses, following specific instructions, and overmedicating, although the Medication Abuse scale emerged as the most consistent predictor of adherence in the study. These results suggest that the MBMD can be used to predict adherence to HAART medication in a sample of HIV-positive men and women and may subsequently be used to identify those in need of adherence counseling at the point when medications are initiated.     

Comparing mathematics interventions: Does initial level of fluency predict intervention effectiveness?

A paucity of research has directly compared empirically supported interventions to examine their effectiveness among students with different mathematics fluency skills. The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of two empirically supported interventions and a control condition on the mathematics fluency of 98 second and third grade students. Specifically, effects of explicit timing and cover-copy-compare on subtraction fluency were examined each session, which occurred twice weekly for a total of six weeks. HLM was used to examine progress during the intervention sessions and determine the effect of initial fluency level on intervention effectiveness. Results suggested students' initial level of fluency impacted intervention effectiveness. That is, for students whose fluency levels fell within the frustrational range CCC and control conditions resulted in the best performance over time but for children whose fluency was in the instructional range explicit timing was the most effective treatment.     

Familiar other-race faces show normal holistic processing and are robust to perceptual stress

Other-race individuals are remembered more poorly and receive less holistic/configural processing than same-race individuals, at least when faces are novel. Here, we examine the amelioration of these effects with familiarity, using distinctiveness-matched Caucasian and Asian stimulus sets. We confirmed a cross-race deficit for upright faces following a single encoding trial, which disappeared rapidly with practice on a small set of other-race 'friends' and did not re-emerge when perceptual processing was put under stress (presentation in the periphery). We also examined holistic/configural processing for familiarised faces using the peripheral inversion effect (McKone, 2004 Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 30 181 - 197). A test for faces and nonface objects (dogs) confirmed the validity of this technique as providing a direct measure of holistic processing; we then showed that, after 1 h of training, holistic processing was as strong for other-race as same-race faces. We conclude that practice with other-race individuals can rapidly engage normal face-processing mechanisms.     

Interethnic Differences (or Similarities?) in the Relative Individuation of Women and Men

What roles do ethnicity, gender, and attitudes play in determining whether a person will be perceived as a unique individual versus a homogenized group member? Attitudes toward women’s roles have been found to predict Whites’ relative individuation of women and men; however, African Americans were found to individuate women and men equally, regardless of attitude (Stewart et al. 2000). Using a name–trait matching paradigm, the present research found that when targets were identified as African American, African American participants’ (18 male and 35 female college students) attitudes toward women’s roles predicted their individuation of men and women. These results suggest that an ethnic out-group homogeneity effect, rather than gender-egalitarian attitudes, contributed to the previous finding of equivalent individuation.     

Athletic Participation, Fraternity Membership, and Sexual Aggression Among College Men: A Meta-analytic Review

A meta-analysis of the data relating either college athletic participation or fraternity membership to attitudes and behaviors associated with sexual aggression was conducted with 29 studies which yielded 57 effect sizes. Membership in each male group was associated to a moderate extent with rape-supportive attitudes, and to a smaller extent with self-report of sexually aggressive behavior. There was much variability in the data that could be partially predicted by variables such as the size of the college, the validity of the study, and the age of the research participants. The involvement of these all-male groups in the perpetuation of hypermasculine attitudes (Mosher and Sirkin 1984) in a patriarchal culture was discussed.