Exposure to pornography,permissive and nonpermissive cues,and male aggression toward females

The present study examined the role of permissive and nonpermissive cues in mediating the relationship between exposure to erotica and aggression. Male subjects viewed either neutral slides with a silent female or erotic slides with a female who made permissive, nonpermissive, or no comments about the slides. The males rated the slides and subsequently rated the female confederate. Male subjects were then given an opportunity to administer their choice of several intensities of shock to the female in a competitive reaction-time task. Subjects in the permissive cues condition rated the erotic slides as more arousing, saw the female as more reasonable and accepting, and selected more intense shocks for the female than did subjects in the other conditions. One explanation of these results is that permissive cues in the presence of erotica led the male to believe that other normally inappropriate behaviors would be tolerated.     

Three methods of developing MMPI taxonomies of sexual offenders

In a sample of 261 state hospital sexual offenders, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) profiles did not differ for offenders with adult victims versus offenders with child victims when offender age was controlled. MMPI 2-point analyses for the whole sample revealed five common codes that were independent of victim maturity. The sample was randomly divided in half and subjected to a cluster-analytic procedure which revealed two MMPI clusters. The first cluster was unelevated, with Scale 4 as its high point. The second cluster had multiple elevations, with Scales 8, 4, 2, and 7 as the highest scales. These clusters were replicated in a cluster analysis of the second half of the sample. However, when the sample was recombined, the two clusters were not externally validated basis on demographic and criminological variables. The results suggest that common psychological variables among sexual offenders may have more discriminative value than victim maturity in developing sexual offender taxonomies.     

The Fraser illusion: complex figures

The cause of the Fraser illusion, which occurs when a line made up of tilted segments itself appears tilted, is examined further. In this series of experiments, we used figures that resembled the original Fraser illusion; they were more complex than those reported on in our previous paper (Stuart & Day, 1988). The figures were used to explore two theories of the Fraser illusion further: that it is the result of interactions between orientation selective units, and that it is a consequence of the local, distributed processing of orientation. The presence of background elements like those used in the original illusion led to an increase in the strength of the illusion, but the shape of these elements had no differential effect on illusion strength. There was a differential effect of the background on the assimilative and contrast illusions, owing respectively to small and large tilts of the inducing elements. The illusion was markedly reduced at small visual angles when the background was absent, but it was only slightly affected when the background was present. All these findings are difficult to explain in terms of interactions between single units, either at the same or at different scales in the image. The effects of luminance contrast and isoluminance on the illusion were not consistent with either theory, but they indicated that researchers need to consider the role of figure-ground organization in this illusion.     

Polysemy and the acquisition of the cognitive internal state lexicon

Previous research (Hall, Scholnick, & Hughes, 1987) suggested that cognitive word meanings denote six increasingly abstract and complex cognitive processes. In this paper, we further investigated two interrelated aspects of this framework. A set of 36 conversations with children aged 4:5 to 5 provided the data. In Study 1, issues related to the optimal ordering of levels were examined by comparing the original sequence with a restructured model. In Study 2, the hypothesis that, in addition toknow, other polysemous cognitive internal state words would be hierarchically organized was tested. The findings lent support to the restructured model, but rejected the hypothesis that polysemous words within the domain were characterized by equivalent,hhierarchically organized levels. We conclude by proposing that cognitive internal state words were related by complementarity of levels rather than equivalence.The research on which this paper is based was supported by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York to William S. Hall. Data analysis was supported by the Computer Science Center at the University of Maryland, College Park.     

Extraversion and attitude towards capital punishment

Male and female Canadian undergraduate students identified as extraverts or introverts on the basis of the Eysenck Personality Inventory were administered a questionnaire measuring attitude towards Capital Punishment. Both effects of sex and personality were significant, males and extraverts reporting stronger beliefs in Capital Punishment than females and introverts. These results were interpreted as providing support for Eysenck's proposal that the social attitude dimension of Toughmindedness reflects the personality trait of Extraversion.     

Computer-Assisted Careers Counselling: A New Approach

This paper describes the outcome of a research and development project concerned to construct a computer aid for careers advisers and career decision-makers which differs in basic philosophy and design from others currentiy in the field. The resulting Careers Decision Aiding System (CDAS) is principally concerned with improving the quality of the decision-making strategy employed by clients by raising their awareness of the way in which their career choice is made, ratherthan with employing computer technology to attempt to match people to careers. The use of the CDAS by clients and careers advisers is illustrated by two case-studies.     

Auditory adaptation to gradual rise or fall in intensity of a tone

The auditory system adapts to gradual changes of intensity. After listening to a gradually loudening (or softening) tone, a steady test tone appeared to be growing gradually softer (or louder). “Tuning curves” for these aftereffects were measured by adapting to one audio frequency and testing at another. Softening tones produced larger aftereffects, which were more sharply tuned for audiofrequency, than did loudening tones.     

Brain transections selectively alter ingestion and behavioral activation in neonatal rats

Food-deprived neonatal rats actively ingest milk that is infused into their mouths through intraoral cannulas. This ingestion is accompanied by behavioral activation. The involvement of various brain regions in ingestion and activation was examined by making transections along the neuraxis from the olfactory bulbs to the anterior pons in 2-day-old rats. Following a 24-hr deprivation period, a series of oral milk infusions was given, and milk intake and activity were measured. Intake was severely reduced only in animals with diencephalic transections. Cuts in front of or behind the diencephalon resulted in normal or slightly decreased intake. In contrast, activity tended to decline as the level of the transection became more caudal. Thus ingestion and its accompanying behavioral activation could be separated neuroanatomically. These results suggest that two brain mechanisms are involved in the ingestive response of the infant rat, one in the diencephalon and another caudal to the mesencephalon. However, behavioral activation appears less discretely organized, involving most of the neuraxis.     

Facial and vocal cues of deception and honesty

Facial expressions and vocal cues (filtered speech) of honest and deceptive messages were examined in posed and spontaneous situations. The question of interest was the degree to which nonverbal cues transmit information about deception. Results indicated that (a) for both the facial and vocal channels, posing (as compared to spontaneous behavior) produced a higher level of communication accuracy; (b) facial expressions of deceptive (as compared to honest) messages were rated as less pleasant, while vocal expressions of deception were rated as less honest, less assertive, and less dominant, particularly in the posed condition; (c) the sender's ability to convey honesty was negatively correlated with his/her ability to convey deception, suggesting the existence of a demeanor bias—individual senders tend to appear and sound consistently honest (or dishonest) regardless of whether they deliver an honest or a deceptive message; (d) in the posing condition, the sender's abilities to convey honesty/deception via facial and vocal cues were positively and significantly correlated, whereas in the spontaneous condition they were not; and (e) senders whose full (unfiltered) speech indicated more involvement with their responses were judged as more honest from both their vocal (filtered speech) and facial cues, in both the honest and deceptive conditions.