Examining posttraumatic growth among Japanese university students

To determine the underlying factor structure of the Japanese version of the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI-J), a principal components analysis was performed on data from 312 Japanese undergraduate students who reported growth due to their most traumatic event within the last 5 years. Results showed the PTGI-J has high internal consistency and, of the original five factors reported by Tedeschi and Calhoun (1996), three were replicated: Relating to Others, New Possibilities, Personal Strength, and a fourth factor integrating Spiritual Change and Appreciation of Life emerged. There were neither gender differences nor relationships with time since trauma. PTGI-J scores were positively associated with posttraumatic symptoms and correlated with type of traumatic event experienced. These results and future directions are discussed from a cross-cultural viewpoint.     

Sublexical and Lexical Influences on Gender Assignment in French

Two experiments showed that French native speakers rely on sublexical and lexical cues to allocate gender during word recognition. Sublexical cues were based on whether the word ending was typical for a particular gender rather than neutral with regard to gender. Lexical cues were based on whether the associated definite article was informative (for words beginning with a consonant) or uninformative (for words beginning with a vowel). Classification of single nouns and verification of grammatical combinations of indefinite article and noun led to longer times when both sublexical and lexical cues were uninformative compared with when one or both cues were informative. Verification of ungrammatical combinations of indefinite article and noun yielded separate effects of both cues, though only when monitoring for both semantic and syntactic unacceptability in meaningful phrases did people attend to both cues independently. It was argued that people became more cautious in their gender assignments as task requirements became deeper. If strategic changes as a function of task demands are incorporated, the results are compatible with connectionist models proposing that gender decisions are computed from strength of past associations of the word and gender-specifying elements.     

Age differences in memory control: evidence from updating and retrieval-practice tasks

Some contemporary approaches suggest that inhibitory mechanisms play an important role in cognitive development. In addition, several authors distinguish between intentional and unintentional inhibitory processes in cognition. We report two experiments aimed at exploring possible developmental changes in these two types of inhibitory mechanisms. In Experiment 1, an updating task was used. This task requires that participants intentionally suppress irrelevant information from working memory. In Experiment 2, the retrieval-practice task was used. Retrieval practice of a subset of studied items is thought to involve unintentional inhibitory processes to overcome interference from competing memories. As a result, suppressed items become forgotten in a later memory test. Results of the experiments indicated that younger children (8) were less efficient than older children (12) and adults at intentionally suppressing information (updating task). However, when the task required unintentional inhibition of competing items (retrieval-practice task), this developmental trend was not found and children and adults showed similar levels of retrieval-induced forgetting. The results are discussed in terms of the development of efficient inhibition and the distinction between intentional and unintentional inhibitions.     

Strength-based assessment of African-American adolescents with behavioral disorders

The study examined consistencies and differences between 60 parents and their adolescent children with behavioral problems when rating the adolescents' strengths. The parents and teenagers agreed on most of the strength categories of the Behavior and Emotional Rating Scale. However, caretakers rated the adolescents as more involved in family life, while the adolescents rated themselves as more involved in school activities.     

The effect of hormone replacement therapy on mood and everyday memory in younger mid-life women

Research on the effect of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) on both mood and memory indicates that oestrogen may enhance verbal memory in younger mid-aged women. This study examined the effect of HRT on everyday memory, while accounting for mood changes, in women between ages 40 and 60. A within-subjects comparison of 17 women, showed that mood, everyday memory, working memory, and delayed verbal memory improved after 3 months of HRT use. The improvement in memory was not mediated by mood, but changes in mood were moderated by exercise habits. The results suggest that verbal memory in particular may be enhanced by HRT in this age group, and everyday memory is an important construct to consider in future research.     

Development of preferences for the human body shape in infancy

Two studies investigated the development of infants' visual preferences for the human body shape. In Study 1, infants of 12, 15 and 18 months were tested in a standard preferential looking experiment, in which they were shown paired line drawings of typical and scrambled bodies. Results indicated that the 18-month-olds had a reliable preference for the scrambled body shapes over typical body shapes, while the younger infants did not show differential responding. In Study 2, 12- and 18-month-olds were tested with the same procedure, except that the typical and scrambled body stimuli were photographic images. The results of Study 2 again indicated that only the 18-month-olds had a reliable preference for the scrambled body shapes. This finding contrasts sharply with infants' precocious preferences for human faces, suggesting that infants' learning about human faces and human bodies follow different developmental trajectories.     

Personality change over 40 years of adulthood: hierarchical linear modeling analyses of two longitudinal samples

Normative personality change over 40 years was shown in 2 longitudinal cohorts with hierarchical linear modeling of California Psychological Inventory data obtained at multiple times between ages 21-75. Although themes of change and the paucity of differences attributable to gender and cohort largely supported findings of multiethnic cross-sectional samples, the authors also found much quadratic change and much individual variability. The form of quadratic change supported predictions about the influence of period of life and social climate as factors in change over the adult years: Scores on Dominance and Independence peaked in the middle age of both cohorts, and scores on Responsibility were lowest during peak years of the culture of individualism. The idea that personality change is most pronounced before age 30 and then reaches a plateau received no support.