Null effect of mood as a semantic prime.

Semantic tasks, such as lexical decision making and word recognition, have not produced a mood priming effect. Earlier studies have been criticized because they included (a) mood induction techniques that required instruction to feel the mood, and (b) the use of overlearned tasks that did not require controlled processing. In this pair of experiments, the authors attempted to address these criticisms. However, the results of this study did not demonstrate a mood priming effect for happy and sad subjects who appraised sentence content as being happy or sad. The results of this study supported the dissociation of semantic and episodic memory.     

The influence of religion on death anxiety and death acceptance

Parishioners (n?=?130) of an Episcopal church in New York City participated in a survey to explore the relationship between the religiosity, death acceptance, and death anxiety. Among the four different types of religiosity measured by the Rohrbaugh and Jessor scale, theological religiosity was the only one to have a significant effect on death acceptance and death anxiety. Belief in God’s existence (r?=??0.27), and belief in the afterlife (r?=??0.25) were both negatively correlated with death anxiety (p?<?0.01), and positively correlated with death acceptance (respectively, r?=?0.21 and r?=?0.22, p?<?0.05). The effects remained significant even after controlling for a number of demographic variables using multiple regression procedures. Being a woman was the only demographic variable that was significantly correlated with greater anxiety about death. On average, women displayed significantly higher levels of death anxiety (M?=?8.1, SD?=?2.8) than men (M?=?6.2, SD?=?2.9).     

THE RELATIONSHIPS AMONG BODY IMAGE, BODY MASS INDEX, EXERCISE, AND SEXUAL FUNCTIONING IN HETEROSEXUAL WOMEN

Problems related to negative body image are very common among young women. In this study, we examined the relationship between women's body image and their sexual functioning over and above the effects of physical exercise and body mass index (BMI) in a sample of 214 university women. Low situational body image dysphoria and low body dissatisfaction were associated with high sexual assertiveness and sexual esteem, low sexual anxiety, and fewer sexual problems. Positive body image was significantly associated with better sexual functioning, even after controlling for BMI and exercise. Although related to body image, BMI and exercise did not predict sexual functioning. These results were interpreted as indicating that a woman's subjective body image is significantly related to her sexual functioning beyond the effects of actual body size and level of physical exercise.     

LEADERS IN READING RESEARCH AND INSTRUCTION

In this review, we examined the role of phonological awareness in literacy development for Spanish-speaking students. There appears to be a close relationship between Spanish-language phonological awareness and literacy development. In particular, Spanish phonological awareness appears to develop in stages. Not only is the development of phonemic awareness skills probably supported by reading instruction, but it likely contributes to reading development as well. Sensitivity to syllables in Spanish may be particularly important for later reading success, and the ability to segment words into their phonemes may play a critical role in reading acquisition. Training students in spelling, blending, and segmenting syllables and phonemes may be especially valuable because these skills are closely related to those which students use when actually reading and writing words. Finally, there is evidence of cross-language transfer of phonological awareness skills between Spanish and English. Suggestions for Spanish phonological awareness instruction are given, and an agenda for further research is included. Based on this review, many different experimental procedures have been used to evaluate students' Spanish-language phonological awareness, but there is a need for measures that are psychometrically sound and that have documented validity and reliability to assess phonological awareness in Spanish. In addition, although training in Spanish phonemic awareness seems to have a positive effect on the development of spelling ability, we found little direct evidence that this type of training increases Spanish reading performance. Further research in this area is needed.     

A stress and coping model of medication adherence and viral load in HIV-positive men and women on highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART).

The authors tested a structural model that incorporated age, time since diagnosis, social support, coping, and negative mood as predictors of medication adherence and HIV viral load on 188 men and 134 women on highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). The authors used psychosocial latent factors formed from baseline measures to predict latent factors of adherence, as assessed by electronic monitoring and self-report, and viral load defined by indicators assessed over a 15-month period. Results from the model indicate that greater negative mood and lower social support are related to greater use of avoidance-oriented coping strategies. Use of these coping strategies by patients on HAART is related to poorer medication adherence and, subsequently, higher viral load. This model advances researchers' understanding of the contribution of psychosocial variables in predicting treatment adherence and disease progression in HIV-positive men and women.