Female Scarcity Reduces Women's Marital Ages and Increases Variance in Men's Marital Ages

When women are scarce in a population relative to men, they have greater bargaining power in romantic relationships and thus may be able to secure male commitment at earlier ages. Male motivation for long-term relationship commitment may also be higher, in conjunction with the motivation to secure a prospective partner before another male retains her. However, men may also need to acquire greater social status and resources to be considered marriageable. This could increase the variance in male marital age, as well as the average male marital age. We calculated the Operational Sex Ratio, and means, medians, and standard deviations in marital ages for women and men for the 50 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas in the United States with 2000 U.S Census data. As predicted, where women are scarce they marry earlier on average. However, there was no significant relationship with mean male marital ages. The variance in male marital age increased with higher female scarcity, contrasting with a non-significant inverse trend for female marital age variation. These findings advance the understanding of the relationship between the OSR and marital patterns. We believe that these results are best accounted for by sex specific attributes of reproductive value and associated mate selection criteria, demonstrating the power of an evolutionary framework for understanding human relationships and demographic patterns.     

The effect of embodied emotive states on cognitive categorization

Research has uncovered that positive affect broadens cognitive categorization. The motivational dimensional model, however, posits that positive affect is not a unitary construct with only one cognitive consequence. Instead, this model puts forth that there are different positive affects varying in approach motivational intensity. According to this model, only positive affects lower in motivational intensity should broaden cognitive processes, whereas positive affects higher in motivational intensity should narrow cognitive processes. Consistent with these predictions, high approach positive affect has been shown to narrow attention, whereas low approach positive affect has been shown to broaden it (Gable & Harmon-Jones, 2008). High approach positive affect, therefore, might narrow categorization. Two experiments investigated this possibility by having participants respond to cognitive categorization tasks in 3 body postures designed to elicit different levels of approach motivation: reclining backward, which should evoke low approach motivation; sitting upright, which should evoke moderate approach motivation; and leaning forward, which should evoke high approach motivation. Participants smiled while in each posture in order to experience positive affect. Experiment 1 provided initial support for the idea that high approach positive affect narrows categorization and low approach positive affect broadens categorization. Experiment 2 replicated these findings with improved smiling instructions. These results extend previous work by showing that the motivational model's predictions hold for basic attentional processes as well as higher level cognitive processes such as categorization.     

A review of error correction procedures during instruction for children with developmental disabilities

Error correction procedures are remedial strategies presented following an incorrect response that increases the probability that a correct response will occur in the future. Error correction is commonly used during skill acquisition programs for children with developmental disabilities; however, the specific strategy used may differ considerably. Recent comparative studies have examined the effect of numerous error correction procedures on the efficiency of acquisition for children with developmental disabilities. Despite considerable merit, minor procedural differences and unique terms for similar procedures likely affect comparisons across studies. Here, we clarify the procedures and findings of these studies and suggest areas of future research.     

Contemporaneous Statistics for Estimation in Stochastic Actor-Oriented Co-evolution Models

Psychometrika - Stochastic actor-oriented models (SAOMs) can be used to analyse dynamic network data, collected by observing a network and a behaviour in a panel design. The parameters of SAOMs are...     

The memory‐impairing effects of simulated amnesia for a mock crime

The present study examined whether mock offenders, who were instructed to falsely deny crime details or to simulate amnesia, would consequently experience impaired memory. Ninety‐three university students were first asked to commit a mock crime and were then assigned to three different conditions (i.e., false denial, simulated amnesia, and truth telling) and then received the first memory test. The following day, participants completed a second memory test. Results showed that the memory impairment was not observed in participants in the false denial condition. However, in the simulated amnesia group, memory about being interviewed in the first session was impaired. The simulated amnesia group also had lower recollection and belief ratings in the occurrence of true details for the mock event. Findings suggest that after simulating amnesia, offenders can forget details related to the interview and exhibit diminished ratings for the recollection of and belief in their memory for experienced events.     

The Role of Police Perceptions and Practices in the Development of “Public Disorder”1,2

Recent studies suggest that crowd conflict needs to be understood as an interaction between the crowd and out‐groups such as the police. This paper describes a questionnaire survey in which 80 police officers from 2 United Kingdom forces were asked about their perceptions of crowds, appropriate “public order” policing methods, and attributions of responsibility for crowd conflict. As predicted, police officers saw the composition of crowds as mixed; yet they also constructed a dichotomy between a powerful minority, capable of exerting influence in the service of disorder, and a majority, who are unable to resist this influence. Police officers did not clearly endorse the view that crowds pose a homogeneous threat. They recommended control and quick intervention to prevent the escalation of crowd violence but denied that such methods might themselves contribute to conflict. Path analysis provides suggestive evidence that these perceptions of the crowd are related as part of a coherent ideology. Overall, these results offer support for the elaborated social identity model of crowd behavior as a dynamic intergroup process.     

How to get “kissably close”: Examining how advertisers appeal to consumers’ sexual needs and desires

This paper explores the nature of sexual appelas—sex-related promises or benefits—in mainstream advertising by describing types of sex appeals and findings from a sex-benefit content analysis. Overall, our findings reveal that sex is used to appeal to women and men, although a higher proportion of sexual ads appear in men’s (12%) compared to women’s magazines (6%). In addition, a variety of sex appeals are directed toward women (attractiveness, behavior, esteem), whereas most appeals directed toward men emphasize more and better sex. Last, male-only images are relatively absent in sexual ads compared to female-only (45%) and couples (47%) images. These findings, observations, and directions for future research are discussed.     

The man who lost his body: Suboptimal multisensory integration yields body awareness problems after a right temporoparietal brain tumour

Reports on patients who lack ownership over their entire body are extremely rare. Here, we present patient SA who suffered from complete body disownership after a tumour resection in the right temporoparietal cortex. Neuropsychological assessment disclosed selective bilateral ownership problems, despite intact primary visual and somatosensory senses. SA's disownership seems to stem from a suboptimal multimodal integration, as shown by the rubber hand illusion and the beneficial effect during and after simple exercises aiming at multisensory recalibration.     

Selective interference with verbal short-term memory for serial order information: A new paradigm and tests of a timing-signal hypothesis

Many recent computational models of verbal short-term memory postulate a separation between processes supporting memory for the identity of items and processes supporting memory for their serial order. Furthermore, some of these models assume that memory for serial order is supported by a timing signal. We report an attempt to find evidence for such a timing signal by comparing an “item probe” task, requiring memory for items, with a “list probe” task, requiring memory for serial order. Four experiments investigated effects of irrelevant speech, articulatory suppression, temporal grouping, and paced finger tapping on these two tasks. In Experiments 1 and 2, irrelevant speech and articulatory suppression had a greater detrimental effect on the list probe task than on the item probe task. Reaction time data indicated that the list probe task, but not the item probe task, induced serial rehearsal of items. Phonological similarity effects confirmed that both probe tasks induced phonological recoding of visual inputs. Experiment 3 showed that temporal grouping of items during list presentation improved performance on the list probe task more than on the item probe task. In Experiment 4, paced tapping had a greater detrimental effect on the list probe task than on the item probe task. However, there was no differential effect of whether tapping was to a simple or a complex rhythm. Overall, the data illustrate the utility of the item probe/list probe paradigm and provide support for models that assume memory for serial order and memory for items involve separate processes. Results are generally consistent with the timing-signal hypothesis but suggest further factors that need to be explored to distinguish it from other accounts.