PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS, BODY IMAGE, AND WOMEN'S SEXUAL SELF-SCHEMA

Recently, Andersen and Cyranowski (1994) presented a self-report measure of women's sexual self-schema, or cognitive view of the self regarding sexuality. In the current study, we investigated potential relationships between women's sexual self-schema and physical attractiveness, body size and shape, and body image. Young adult women ( N = 199) completed questionnaires and were weighed, measured, and rated for facial attractiveness. Results revealed that sexual self-schema was unrelated to body size or shape, general body dissatisfaction, history of teasing about weight, and degree of investment in personal appearance. Sexual self-schema scores significantly correlated with experimenter-rated facial attractiveness, self-rated facial and bodily attractiveness, and degree of social avoidance due to concerns over personal appearance, however. In a multiple regression analysis, only self-rated facial attractiveness and social avoidance were unique predictors. Results are discussed with regard to implications for the development of women's sexual self-schema and directions for future research.     

Levels of processing: Qualitative differences or task-demand differences?

In nearly all reported orienting task studies, the question is asked before the item or items are presented. This paper reports two experiments wherein the question was asked after the item was presented. These experiments found that an orthographic orienting task did not produce poorer retention than a semantic orienting task when (1) the orthographic task was presented in such a way to ensure that the list items would be encoded as units and (2) the test was designed to eliminate the effect of encoding elaboration to positive-response orienting questions. It was concluded that the depth-of-processing effect was composed of two components. One of these is a task-demand component that affects the probability of encoding target items as identifiable units. The second component of processing depth is trace elaboration to positive-response questions. In most experiments, the two components combine to produce better memory performance for targets presented with semantic orienting questions. However, the two components can be examined independently of each other to determine the degree to which each contributes to a particular experimental effect.     

Long-delay taste aversion learning in an unpoisoned rat: Exposure to a poisoned rat as the unconditioned stimulus

M. J. Lavin, B. Freise, and S. Coombes (Behavioral and Neural Biology, 1980, 28, 15–33) have shown that if two rats consume a flavored solution and one is poisoned, the unpoisoned partner will also exhibit a flavor aversion during a later preference test. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that a sufficient condition for obtaining this aversion is that the poisoned partner be present with the unpoisoned rat after it has consumed the flavored solution. It is not necessary that the poisoned partner be present when the flavored solution is consumed or indeed have had any exposure to the flavored solution. Experiment 3 showed that the unpoisoned partner can exhibit a flavor aversion when there is a temporal gap of as long as 6 hr between consumption of the flavored solution and exposure to the poisoned rat.     

Simultaneous behavioral and neural (cochlear nucleus) measurement during signal detection in the rabbit

Classical conditioning of the rabbit nictitating membrane (NM) response was adapted as a model system for simultaneous measurement of behavioral and neural responses in auditory signal detection. Animals were trained to a 36-dB spectral-level white-noise CS paired with a corneal airpuff US. The CS intensity was then reduced to threshold, using a modified staircase procedure, and responses on detect and nondetect trials were compared for the same stimulus intensities. At threshold, the behavioral NM response was dichotomous, being present on detect trials and completely absent on nondetect trials. In marked contrast, evoked neural unit activity to the CS recorded from the anteroventral cochlear nucleus was clearly present and identical on both detect and nondetect trials, suggesting that the detection “decision” is made more centrally than the cochlear nucleus.     

On Whether we Can See Intentions

Direct Perception is the view that we can see others' mental states, i.e. that we perceive others' mental states with the same immediacy and directness that we perceive ordinary objects in the world. I evaluate Direct Perception by considering whether we can see intentions, a particularly promising candidate for Direct Perception. I argue that the view equivocates on the notion of intention. Disambiguating the Direct Perception claim reveals a troubling dilemma for the view: either it is banal or highly implausible.     

A Couple-Based Psychological Treatment for Chronic Pain and Relationship Distress

Chronic pain impacts individuals with pain as well as their loved ones. Yet, there has been little attention to the social context in individual psychological treatment approaches to chronic pain management. With this need in mind, we developed a couple-based treatment, “Mindful Living and Relating,” aimed at alleviating pain and suffering by promoting couples’ psychological and relational flexibility skills. Currently, there is no integrative treatment that fully harnesses the power of the couple, treating both the individual with chronic pain and the spouse as two individuals who are each in need of developing greater psychological and relational flexibility to improve their own and their partners’ health. Mindfulness, acceptance, and values-based action exercises were used to promote psychological flexibility. The intervention also targets relational flexibility, which we define as the ability to interact with one’s partner, fully attending to the present moment, and responding empathically in a way that serves one’s own and one’s partner’s values. To this end, the intervention also included exercises aimed at applying psychological flexibility skills to social interactions as well as emotional disclosure and empathic responding exercises to enhance relational flexibility. The case presented demonstrates that healthy coping with pain and stress may be most successful and sustainable when one is involved in a supportive relationship with someone who also practices psychological flexibility skills and when both partners use relational flexibility skills during their interactions.     

Instrumental learning and cognitive flexibility processes are impaired in children exposed to early life stress

Children who experience severe early life stress show persistent deficits in many aspects of cognitive and social adaptation. Early stress might be associated with these broad changes in functioning because it impairs general learning mechanisms. To explore this possibility, we examined whether individuals who experienced abusive caregiving in childhood had difficulties with instrumental learning and/or cognitive flexibility as adolescents. Fifty‐three 14–17‐year‐old adolescents (31 exposed to high levels of childhood stress, 22 control) completed an fMRI task that required them to first learn associations in the environment and then update those pairings. Adolescents with histories of early life stress eventually learned to pair stimuli with both positive and negative outcomes, but did so more slowly than their peers. Furthermore, these stress‐exposed adolescents showed markedly impaired cognitive flexibility; they were less able than their peers to update those pairings when the contingencies changed. These learning problems were reflected in abnormal activity in learning‐ and attention‐related brain circuitry. Both altered patterns of learning and neural activation were associated with the severity of lifetime stress that the adolescents had experienced. Taken together, the results of this experiment suggest that basic learning processes are impaired in adolescents exposed to early life stress. These general learning mechanisms may help explain the emergence of social problems observed in these individuals.     

A simultaneous test of the relationship between identified psychosocial risk factors and recurrent events in coronary artery disease patients

Psychosocial factors are increasingly recognized as risk indicators for coronary artery disease (CAD) prognosis and they are likely interrelated. The objective of this study is to simultaneously test the relationship between key psychosocial constructs as independent factor scores and recurrent events in CAD patients. There were 1268 CAD outpatients of 97 cardiologists surveyed at two points. Recurrent events or hospitalization in the intervening nine months were reported. Factor analysis of items from the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, Perceived Stress Scale, the ENRICHD Social Support Inventory, and Hostile Attitudes Scale was performed to generate orthogonal factor scores. With adjustment for prognostic variables, logistic regression analysis was performed to examine the relationship between these factor scores and recurrent events. Factor analysis resulted in a six-factor solution: hostility, stress, anxiety, depressive symptoms, support, and resilience. Logistic regression revealed that functional status and anxiety, with a trend for depressive symptoms, were related to experiencing a recurrent event. In this simultaneous test of psychosocial constructs hypothesized to relate to cardiac prognosis, anxiety may be a particularly hazardous psychosocial factor. While replication is warranted, efforts to investigate the potential benefits of screening and to investigate treatments are needed.