Gender stereotyping in medical advertising: Much ado about something?

Gender bias in medical advertising may be one factor contributing to differential treatment of women and men by physicians. Four hundred forty advertisements from three prominent medical journals were analyzed. Significantly more male, compared to female, recipient ads were found overall as well as for cardiovascular drugs. Males and females were both portrayed stereotypically in the ads, but this trend was especially true for males. The facial expressions of men were more likely to be serious/neutral whereas the facial expressions of women were more often judged to be pleasant. Females tended to be younger than the males that were depicted. Since heart disease is the number one killer of both men and women, underrepresentation of women in cardiovascular ads was questioned. Stereotypical portrayals as well as differences in facial expressions and age of depicted recipients may contribute to physicians being less likely to take the complaints of women, compared to men, seriously.     

Relations among regular and irregular morphologically related words in the lexicon as revealed by repetition priming

Several experiments examined repetition priming among morphologically related words as a tool to study lexical organization. The first experiment replicated a finding by Stanners, Neiser, Hernon, and Hall (Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1979,18, 399-412), that whereas inflected words prime their unaffixed morphological relatives as effectively as do the unaffixed forms themselves, derived words are effective, but weaker, primes. The experiment also suggested, however, that this difference in priming may have an episodic origin relating to the less formal similarity of derived than of inflected words to unaffixed morphological relatives. A second experiment reduced episodic contributions to priming and found equally effective priming of unaffixed words by themselves, by inflected relatives, and by derived relatives. Two additional experiments found strong priming among relatives sharing the spelling and pronunciation of the unaffixed stem morpheme, sharing spelling alone, or sharing neither formal property exactly. Overall, results with auditory and visual presentations were similar. Interpretations that repetition priming reflects either repeated access to a common lexical entry or associative semantic priming are both rejected in favor of a lexical organization in which components of a word (e.g., a stem morpheme) may be shared among distinct words without the words themselves, in any sense, sharing a “lexical entry.”     

Cognitive and affective correlates of decisional balance regarding screening mammography in older women

Participation in screening mammography remains suboptimal. This research aimed to improve understanding of ways to facilitate screening mammography attendance. One hundred and forty-two women from Gold Coast, Australia, aged 50-75, participated in the study. Social cognitive variables were assessed as potential predictors of mammography attendance. Most participants (79%) were maintaining regular screening mammography. Greater knowledge of breast cancer was the strongest predictor of decisional balance in favor of attending screening. Women who had relapsed from screening had significantly lower breast cancer worry than those contemplating attending for the first time. The results were consistent with previous research and point to factors screening services could consider to increase uptake.     

THE AFTERMATH OF THE VIOLENT DEATH OF A CHILD: AN INTEGRATION OF THE ASSESSMENTS OF PARENTS' MENTAL DISTRESS AND PTSD DURING THE FIRST 5 YEARS OF BEREAVEMENT

Mental distress and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were assessed simultaneously among 173 parents bereaved by the accident, suicide, or homicide death of an adolescent or young adult child. Official death records were used to identify potential participants. Study data were collected prospectively 4, 12, 24, and 60 months post-death. T tests compared study parents and normative samples on mental distress and PTSD, whereas repeated measures analysis of variance compared mothers and fathers on the same two outcomes over time. The results showed that 5 years after the deaths, 61% of the study mothers and 62% of the fathers met diagnostic criteria for mental distress, and 27.7% of the mothers and 12.5% of the fathers met diagnostic criteria for PTSD. The hypothesized interactions between gender and trends over time were partially supported, and the hypothesized main effects for both time and gender were supported. Finally, parents' self-reports were that 3 to 4 years were required to reach loss accommodation. Parents' long-term health and well-being and their bereavement service needs are discussed in light of the findings.     

A test of the CaR-FA-X mechanisms and depression in adolescents

ABSTRACT

People who have depression have difficulty recalling specific autobiographical information (Sumner, (2011) The mechanisms underlying overgeneral autobiographical memory: An evaluative review of evidence for the Ca R-FA-X model. Clinical Psychology Review, 3231(1), 34–48). This is called overgeneral autobiographical memory (OGM) and is associated with the development and persistence of depression. Williams, Barnhofer, Crane, Hermans, Raes, Watkins, & Dalgleish (2007 Autobiographical memory specificity and emotional disorder. Psychological Bulletin, 133(1), 122–148) proposed that OGM is maintained by three mechanisms: capture and rumination (CaR), functional avoidance (FA), and impaired executive control (X), and integrated these into the CaR-FA-X model. The aim of this study was to assess OGM and test the CaR-FA-X model in adolescents with low mood. We recruited 29 young people aged 12–17 with elevated symptoms of depression and 29 with minimal symptoms of depression, matched for gender and age. After controlling for IQ, adolescents with elevated depression retrieved fewer specific memories, ruminated more, and had poorer working memory and verbal fluency than adolescents with minimal depression. The groups did not differ on measures of inhibition or functional avoidance. The CaR-FA-X model was therefore partially supported. These results confirm that there is a relationship between low mood and OGM in young people and that OGM may arise as consequence of impaired working memory and verbal fluency and cognitive interference due to rumination.     

Existential Assessment

Present day psychological assessment stems from a philosophy of sicence that values objectivity but fails to comprehend the existence of the person being evaluated. A humanistic-existential model shifts the focus from omnipotence to encounter and encourages client responsibility. The vehicle for this conceptualization is the nature and meaning of the encounter between clinician and client. New questions are posed for the assessor by altering the assessment goals, the stance toward interpretation, and the criterion for validation.     

Perceptual closure and object identification: electrophysiological responses to incomplete pictures.

Event-related potentials were recorded during the naming of pictures of concrete objects. The pictures were presented at three levels of completeness: 10, 30, and 60%. The ERP waveforms were evaluated according to the level of picture completeness and the correctness of naming. A negative wave in the latency range of 250-550 ms was significantly more negative when the pictures were more incomplete, regardless of the correctness of response. This N400 wave is proposed as being related to hypotheses about the identity of the object. A late positive wave in the latency range of 550-650 ms followed the negativity, but only when the response was correct. This may reflect the subject's certainty about the perceptual analysis, a verification of the identity of the object. A slow parietal negativity lasting up to 2 sec was largest for the least complete picture. This therefore varied with the perceptual difficulty.     

Jack Went up the Hill. but Where Was Jill?

To assess the premise that picture books are important transmitters of sex-role information, 206 picture books for children, ages 3 to 6, were analyzed. Three groups were formed: (1) titles published before the women's movement (1903-1965); (2) titles published after the women's movement (1966-1975); (3) titles chosen from a specialized nonsexist list of books about girls (1882-1973). Analyses indicated that children are presented with sex-typed book models: females, underrepresented in titles, central roles, and illustrations; males, overrepresented in instrumental pursuits and underrepresented in expressive activities. On the other hand, the third group of books featured mostly female characters and contained a predominance of instrumental models with a minimum of expressive activities. The data revealed that picture books today provide stereotyped models for young children to emulate.