The role of social desirability, negative affectivity, and female reproductive system symptoms in differences in reporting symptoms by men and women

52 women and 38 men completed the Inventory of Health Status, Version 2, a measure of somatic health, and the Cornell Medical Index which provided separate scores for somatic and emotional health. The Personal Style Inventory was given, from which measures of Social Desirability and Negative Affectivity were utilized. Multiple regressions were done separately with scores on the Inventory of Health Status and the Cornell Emotional component, and scores on Social Desirability, Negative Affectivity, and sex as predictors. Scores on Social Desirability and Negative Affectivity were forced into the equation first. For the Inventory of Health Status, sex alone contributed significantly to the final equation. For scores on the Cornell Index's emotional component both sex and scores on negative affectivity had significant beta weights. Analysis of items from the Inventory of Health Status was done to examine the role of symptoms pertaining to women's reproductive system, and almost all the items that differed by sex were either clearly or possibly specific female reproductive items, e.g., "Abnormal menstruation." Similar analyses were not possible for the organic component of the Cornell Index, which has different items for reproductive systems of men and women. The complexity of the female reproductive system may play a central role in sex differences in symptom reporting and perhaps of emotional distress, but other interpretations are discussed.     

Response programming and reaction time

A feature common in the literature is that, prior to responding, subjects have been able to preview the parameters of the movement they are required to make. This introduces the possibility of programming the movement before entering the reaction time period. It is argued that this has contributed to confusion in the literature, making it difficult to detect a consistent relationship between reaction time and motor task demands. Two experiments were conducted to clarify the position. Experiment I concealed the movement parameters prior to subjects responding ("no-preview" model), and this was contrasted with a study in the typical "preview" mode (Experiment II). It was concluded that the no-preview design is more appropriate to detecting changes in reaction time dependent on task parameters, and that the observed effects on reaction time reflect programming difficulty. A third experiment supported this conclusion     

Effects of the temporal relationship of feedback and stimulus information upon discrimination-learning strategies

Second grade Ss and college students were tested under three conditions of the temporal relationship of feedback and stimulus information. In one condition (/+3) feedback was delivered immediately upon S's response while the stimuli were still in view. In another (/0) feedback was also immediate but stimuli were extinguished immediately upon S's response. In the third condition (/?3), stimuli were extinguished immediately upon response and feedback was delayed 3 sec. Major findings among the children were (a) Ss of all conditions coded information at the same (high) average efficiency, (b) Ss of conditions /0 and /?3 recoded with significantly less efficiency than those of /+3, and (c) Ss in condition /+3 manifested primarily efficient information-processing strategies, those in condition /0 showed intermediate performance, and those of condition /?3 showed relatively primitive stereotyped behavior. Among adult Ss performance was uniformly high with little effect on any response measure investigated.     

Evaluation of A Single Presentation Format For Education About Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) Disease1

This study explored the efficiency and effectiveness of a single presentation format for education about human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) disease. Pretraining and posttraining questionnaires assessing knowledge and risk assessment were given to police officers attending a two-hour seminar on HIV disease. A one-way ANOVA was used to compare posttraining scores of 42 officers who attended the seminar one year ago with the pretraining scores of 63 officers currently attending the seminar, some of whom had attended the seminar one year earlier. Significant differences were found on knowledge items (p < .05). Post hoc analysis revealed no significant decline in knowledge scores after one year, while pretraining knowledge scores for those who had attended the seminar before were significantly greater than for those who had not. No significant differences were found on risk assessment items, suggesting that beliefs about on the job risk have become part of the officers' common culture.     

Response programming,response production,and fractionated reaction time

Summary A feature common to many studies investigating the relationship between reaction time (RT) and motor task demands is that, prior to responding, subjects have been able to preview the parameters of the movement they are required to make. This introduces the possibility of preprogramming the movement before entering the RT period, thus making it more difficult to detect a consistent relationship between RT and motor task demands. A no-preview condition (movement parameters concealed prior to the subject responding) was used in the present study to avoid this confusion. Reaction time was fractionated using surface EMG recording, and premotor RT (central component) was found to vary with motor task demands in a fashion supporting a study by Sheridan (1981). Movement velocity was implicated as a factor influencing programming difficulty, with low velocity movements appearing to present the greatest problem. A strong negative correlation was observed between premotor RT and average movement velocity. A delay condition was incorporated into the present study to consider the retention in memory of the programmed information. Briefly, the pattern of results for the delay condition fell between the no-preview and preview conditions. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Measuring and modeling facial affect

In recent years, researchers in computer science and human-computer interaction have become increasingly interested in characterizing perception of facial affect. Ironically, this applied interest comes at a time when the classic findings on perception of human facial affect are being challenged in the psychological research literature, largely on methodological grounds. This paper first describes two experiments that empirically address Russell’s methodological criticisms of the classic work on measuring “basic emotions,” as well as his alternative approach toward modeling “facial affect space.” Finally, a user study on affect in a prototype model of a robot face is reported; these results are compared with the human findings from Experiment 1. This work provides new data on measuring facial affect, while also demonstrating how basic and more applied research can mutually inform one another.     

Using puns to study contextual influences on lexical ambiguity resolution: Evidence from eye movements

Participants’ eye movements were monitored while they read sentences containing biased homographs in either a single-meaning context condition that instantiated the subordinate meaning of the homograph without ruling out the dominant meaning (e.g., “The man with a toothache had a crown made by the best dentist in town”) or a dual-meaning pun context condition that supported both the subordinate and dominant meanings (e.g., “The king with a toothache had a crown made by the best dentist in town”). In both of these conditions, the homographs were followed by disambiguating material that supported the subordinate meaning and ruled out the dominant meaning. Fixation times on the homograph were longer in the single-meaning condition than in the dual-meaning condition, whereas the reverse pattern was demonstrated for fixation times on the disambiguating region; these effects were observed as early as first-fixation duration. The findings strongly support the reordered access model of lexical ambiguity resolution.