The antecedents and implications of interracial anxiety

Drawing on previous theorizing from both the prejudice and social anxiety literatures, a model of the antecedents and implications of intergroup anxiety is offered. It is argued that a lack of positive previous experiences with outgroup members creates negative expectancies about interracial interactions, which result in intergroup anxiety. This anxiety is posited to result in heightened hostility toward outgroup members and a desire to avoid interacting with outgroup members. Study 1 examined White participants' responses to interacting with Black people using a range of self-report measures; the associations between these responses supported the relationships outlined in the model. Study 2 explored White participants' responses to an anticipated interaction with a Black person or a White person. The findings revealed that high levels of anxiety about an interaction with a Black person, but not a White person, were associated with a lower likelihood of returning for the interaction.     

The ethical ideologies of psychologists and physicians: a preliminary comparison

The ethical ideologies of psychologists (who provide health services) and physicians were compared using the Ethics Position Questionnaire. The findings reveal that psychologists tend to be less relativistic than physicians. Further, we explored the degree to which physicians and psychologists report being influenced by a variety of factors (e.g., family views) in their ethical decision making. Psychologists were more influenced by their code of ethics and less influenced by family views, religious background, and peer attitudes than were physicians. We argue that these differences reflect the varied professional cultures in which practitioners are trained and socialized.     

Vowel processing during silent reading: evidence from eye movements

Two eye movement experiments examined whether skilled readers include vowels in the early phonological representations used in word recognition during silent reading. Target words were presented in sentences preceded by parafoveal previews in which the vowel phoneme was concordant or discordant with the vowel phoneme in the target word. In Experiment 1, the orthographic vowel differed from the target in both the concordant and discordant preview conditions. In Experiment 2, the vowel letters in the preview were identical to those in the target word. The phonological vowel was ambiguous, however, and the final consonants of the previews biased the vowel phoneme either toward or away from the target's vowel phoneme. In both experiments, shorter reading times were observed for targets preceded by concordant previews than by discordant previews. Implications for models of word recognition are discussed.     

The effect of hormone replacement therapy on mood and everyday memory in younger mid-life women

Research on the effect of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) on both mood and memory indicates that oestrogen may enhance verbal memory in younger mid-aged women. This study examined the effect of HRT on everyday memory, while accounting for mood changes, in women between ages 40 and 60. A within-subjects comparison of 17 women, showed that mood, everyday memory, working memory, and delayed verbal memory improved after 3 months of HRT use. The improvement in memory was not mediated by mood, but changes in mood were moderated by exercise habits. The results suggest that verbal memory in particular may be enhanced by HRT in this age group, and everyday memory is an important construct to consider in future research.     

Development of preferences for the human body shape in infancy

Two studies investigated the development of infants' visual preferences for the human body shape. In Study 1, infants of 12, 15 and 18 months were tested in a standard preferential looking experiment, in which they were shown paired line drawings of typical and scrambled bodies. Results indicated that the 18-month-olds had a reliable preference for the scrambled body shapes over typical body shapes, while the younger infants did not show differential responding. In Study 2, 12- and 18-month-olds were tested with the same procedure, except that the typical and scrambled body stimuli were photographic images. The results of Study 2 again indicated that only the 18-month-olds had a reliable preference for the scrambled body shapes. This finding contrasts sharply with infants' precocious preferences for human faces, suggesting that infants' learning about human faces and human bodies follow different developmental trajectories.     

Personality change over 40 years of adulthood: hierarchical linear modeling analyses of two longitudinal samples

Normative personality change over 40 years was shown in 2 longitudinal cohorts with hierarchical linear modeling of California Psychological Inventory data obtained at multiple times between ages 21-75. Although themes of change and the paucity of differences attributable to gender and cohort largely supported findings of multiethnic cross-sectional samples, the authors also found much quadratic change and much individual variability. The form of quadratic change supported predictions about the influence of period of life and social climate as factors in change over the adult years: Scores on Dominance and Independence peaked in the middle age of both cohorts, and scores on Responsibility were lowest during peak years of the culture of individualism. The idea that personality change is most pronounced before age 30 and then reaches a plateau received no support.     

The contributions of color to recognition memory for natural scenes

The authors used a recognition memory paradigm to assess the influence of color information on visual memory for images of natural scenes. Subjects performed 5%-10% better for colored than for black-and-white images independent of exposure duration. Experiment 2 indicated little influence of contrast once the images were suprathreshold, and Experiment 3 revealed that performance worsened when images were presented in color and tested in black and white, or vice versa, leading to the conclusion that the surface property color is part of the memory representation. Experiments 4 and 5 exclude the possibility that the superior recognition memory for colored images results solely from attentional factors or saliency. Finally, the recognition memory advantage disappears for falsely colored images of natural scenes: The improvement in recognition memory depends on the color congruence of presented images with learned knowledge about the color gamut found within natural scenes. The results can be accounted for within a multiple memory systems framework.     

Factor structure of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-III in schizophrenia

This report examines and compares the factor structure of the new edition of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS-III) in a sample of chronic schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder outpatients (n = 120) and an age-matched sample of individuals drawn from the WAIS-III standardization sample (n = 200). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses similar to those reported by the developers of the scale suggested that a model of WAIS-III performance with correlated factors for verbal comprehension, perceptual organization, working memory, and processing speed fit the data from the schizophrenia sample as well as it fit the nonclinical comparison sample and fit the data from both samples better than alternative models.     

The effects of concurrent task interference on category learning: evidence for multiple category learning systems

Participants learned simple and complex category structures under typical single-task conditions and when performing a simultaneous numerical Stroop task. In the simple categorization tasks, each set of contrasting categories was separated by a unidimensional explicit rule, whereas the complex tasks required integrating information from three stimulus dimensions and resulted in implicit rules that were difficult to verbalize. The concurrent Stroop task dramatically impaired learning of the simple explicit rules, but did not significantly delay learning of the complex implicit rules. These results support the hypothesis that category learning is mediated by multiple learning systems.