Correlates of relationship, psychological, and sexual behavioral factors for HIV risk among Indian women

The rate of HIV/AIDS among women in India is expected to rise yet few studies have examined factors related to HIV risk among Indian women. The objective of this prospective, cross-sectional study was to characterize similarities and differences in the relationships, psychological well-being, and sexual behaviors among Indian women (N=459). Both HIV positive (N=216) and negative (N=243) women from urban and rural areas in India were included in this study. Chi-square, analysis of variance, and logistic regression analyses revealed that in both geographic groups, HIV-positive women were significantly more likely to report marital dissatisfaction, a history of forced sex, domestic violence, depressive symptoms and husband's extra marital sex when compared to the HIV-negative women. Findings also indicate that specific factors related to the quality of the marital relationship such as domestic violence, martial dysfunction, and depressive symptoms may be related to HIV-related risks for women. Implications for future research and culturally relevant interventions are discussed.     

Mask-induced priming and the negative compatibility effect

Under certain conditions, masked primes have produced counter-intuitive negative compatibility effects (NCE), such that RT is increased, not decreased, when the target is similar to the prime. This NCE has been interpreted as an index of automatic motor inhibition, triggered to suppress the partial motor activation caused by the prime. An alternative explanation is that perceptual interactions between prime and mask produce positive priming in the opposite direction to the prime, explaining the NCE without postulating inhibition. Here the potential role of this "mask-induced priming" was investigated in two experiments, using masks composed of random lines. Experiment 1 compared masks that included features of the primes and targets with masks that did not. The former should create more mask-induced priming, but the NCE did not differ between masks. Experiment 2 employed masks that contained features of either one target or the other, but not both. These asymmetric masks produced significant mask-induced priming, but it was insufficient in size to account for the prime-related NCE. Thus mask composition can contribute to NCEs, but when random line masks are employed, the major source of the NCE seems to be motor-inhibition.     

Cooperation,fairness and utility

Conclusions In the situations canvassed I have argued that (a) the dominant aim of the utilitarian will be the establishment of a fair procedure, (b) under radical uncertainty cooperation will constitute his best bet, and (c) when he knowsthat all others will cooperate it is still an open question whether he will slack, and if under some conditions he does so he does not then act unfairly. It is wise to bear in mind, however, that an enormous number of possible situations, mostly mixtures of the pure cases, simply have not been considered. It is not inconceivable that in one of them the utilitarian will clearly act unfairly; I am inclined to think not, but the possibility is not entirely ruled out.An earlier version of this paper was read on March 9, 1969 as part of a Colloquium in Political Philosophy held at the University of Toronto. I am much indebted to David Lyons for the helpful comments he delivered on that occasion; many of the subsequent revisions in the paper have been made in the light of those comments.     

The structure of verbal abilities in young and older adults

Four language sample measures as well as measures of vocabulary, verbal fluency, and memory span were obtained from a sample of young adults and a sample of older adults. Factor analysis was used to analyze the structure of the vocabulary, fluency, and span measures for each age group. Then an "extension" analysis was performed by using structural modeling techniques to determine how the language sample measures were related to the other measures. The measure of grammatical complexity was associated with measures of working memory including reading span and digit span. Two measures, sentence length in words and a measure of lexical diversity, were associated with the vocabulary measures. The fourth measure, propositional density, was associated with the fluency measures as a measure of processing efficiency. The structure of verbal abilities in young and older adults is somewhat different, suggesting age differences in processing efficiency.     

How Can We Talk about Creativity?

The Psychological Record - In his work Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953/2009) argues that our language is only clearly communicated by agreement of definitions and judgments....     

A Better Tomorrow: Toward a Stronger Science of Youth Purpose

Having a sense of purpose in life has been discussed as a psychological asset for promoting positive youth development. Yet confidence in the benefits of purpose has accumulated faster than rigorous confirmation of their existence among youth, using instruments and methods calibrated to the developmental stage of those under study. Here, the authors illuminate four problems this asymmetry creates for drawing inferences from extant research on youth purpose, namely its reliance on (1) unclear scientific criteria for distinguishing “youth” and measures that include developmentally presumptuous items, (2) single-informant and self-report methods, (3) misapplication of cross-sectional designs to test prospective or causal theories, and (4) analytic techniques insensitive to purpose content. In delineating these problems, the authors consider the extent to which the three empirical contributions included in this issue are responsive to each and may provide templates to guide future studies of youth purpose.