This study examined the effects of racial insult on the propensity to either categorize or individuate outgroup members. Reaction times and self-reports measures were employed to gauge reactions to an insulting video. White and African American participants heard an insult, and then completed the Go/No-Go Association Task (GNAT), as well as the Internal Motivation to Control Prejudice Scale (IMS) and the External Motivation to Control Prejudice Scale (IMS), the Motivation to Control Prejudice Scale (MCPRS) the Social Distance Scale (SDS), and made ratings on a feeling thermometer about the people in the insult video. African Americans showed more negative responses to outgroup members than Whites on the explicit measure, but Whites showed more negative responses to outgroup members than African Americans on the implicit measure.

Estimates of the capacity of visuospatial short-term memory (VSTM) have ranged from less than 1 item to 4 +/- 1 items. The purpose of the present study was to find the capacity of VSTM by looking at the contribution of the other working memory systems (phonological loop and central executive) and determine the factor that limits VSTM capacity (either number of objects or object complexity). In this study, the psychophysiological measure of cerebral blood flow velocity also was incorporated to determine whether changes in cerebral blood flow velocity were indicative of VSTM performance and capacity. Both performance measures and cerebral blood flow velocity indicate that capacity for random polygons is approximately one object. Complexity of the objects affected capacity, such that simple objects had higher capacities and lower cerebral blood flow velocity than complex objects. Other working memory systems were not found to have an effect on performance.

Fructose consumption has increased exponentially during the past four decades. The physiological effects of a high fructose diet include obesity and insulin resistance. In animal models, the effects of a high fructose diet on fat distribution are inconclusive in that some studies find increases in body mass and lipids while others find no effect. Recent findings indicate that a high fructose diet causes hippocampal insulin resistance in hamsters, raising the possibility that the diet causes impairments in cognition. The following experiments tested the hypotheses that a high fructose diet alters fat distribution rather than total body mass and impairs hippocampal-dependent memory. Results indicated that the high fructose diet did not affect fat distribution, but did increase plasma triacylglycerides. Interestingly, the diet also impaired spatial reference memory in the Morris water maze, and this effect was correlated with plasma triacylglycerides. These results indicate that a high fructose diet impairs brain function.

This study examined the relationship among implicit and explicit measures of prejudice (against African-Americans, homosexuals, and Muslims), Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA), Religious Fundamentalism (RF), and Christian Orthodoxy (CO). The implicit measure of prejudice was Facial EMG, which is the measurement of the activity of key facial muscles when participants were exposed to pictures of members of the minority groups, as well as to pictures of the corresponding group. The explicit measure of prejudice was the Social Distance Scale, which measures how willing people are to have someone in a variety of close relationships. The primary hypothesis was that one’s score on the implicit (and some of the explicit) measures of prejudice can be predicted using RF, CO, and RWA. The analyses revealed that RWA was predictive of prejudice against homosexuals and Muslims, but not against African-Americans.

The association between drug court clients’ pro-drug and pro-recovery social context at multiple ecological levels, and phase of recovery was assessed, and gender comparisons were evaluated. Drug courts provide alternatives to incarceration for substance abusing offenders, providing treatment within clients’ social environments. The findings indicated that social context is associated with recovery, and that this relation differs by gender. Specifically, increased favorable attitudes toward drug use among social referents were associated with men being in an earlier phase of recovery and women being in a later phase of recovery. Furthermore, perceived encouragement to use drugs was associated with being in earlier phases of recovery, while positive outcome beliefs related to recovery were associated with being in later phases of recovery. Therefore, drug courts may lead to positive long-term outcomes, as social context can be addressed during the recovery process. Additionally, these courts might benefit from incorporating gender-specific components into treatment.

In Syrian hamsters, social behavior is mediated exclusively by chemosensory cues and circulating gonadal steroid hormones. Where these two signals are processed in the brain is unknown, but the posterior bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (pBNST) has been suggested as a candidate site. Therefore, we tested male hamsters’ preference for opposite-sex odors following excitotoxic lesions of the pBNST. Lesions of the pBNST (pBNST-X) eliminated male hamsters’ preference for opposite-sex odors. Furthermore, pBNST-X males spent significantly less time investigating female odors than clean odors and significantly less time investigating female odors than control males did. Lesions of the pBNST did not change male hamsters’ investigation of male odors. The deficits observed in pBNST-X males were not due to a failure to discriminate between odors, as pBNST-X males were able to distinguish between odors. Together, these data suggest the pBNST is critical for opposite-sex odor preference in male hamsters.

The effect of gender-neutral language in a survey designed to measure unwanted sexual experiences was examined. Methodological issues pertaining to survey design and significant variability in prevalence estimates of sexual violence demonstrate that further refinement of self-report instruments is necessary. As a variety of macrolevel forces influence individual behavior, the current study contends that coercive tactics used to obtain sex in mixed-gender interactions are normalized by the traditional heterosex script and conveyed through gender-specific language. Reference to respondents’ sexual partners in gender-neutral, as opposed to gender-specific terms, was hypothesized to result in more disclosure of sexually coercive victimization and perpetration experiences. Logistic regression analyses revealed no statistically significant differences in disclosure between language conditions. Null findings are interpreted with reference to the broader gender-neutral language literature and implications for future research are suggested.

Childhood maltreatment increases risk for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Maladaptive patterns of attention to threat-related stimuli warrant examination as possible contributing risk factors. It remains unclear whether persistent threat-processing biases are differentially apparent in adults who were maltreated as children and either did, or did not, develop later PTSD. The present study examined associations among attention bias, childhood maltreatment, and PTSD in adults. We hypothesized that attentional bias toward threat significantly mediates associations between childhood maltreatment and adult PTSD symptoms. 183 adults with and without childhood maltreatment histories participated in this study, which involved completion of a range of clinical measures; attention bias was measured by the Dot Probe task. We found that attention bias toward happy faces partially mediated the relationship between childhood maltreatment and PTSD avoidance and numbing symptoms. Childhood maltreatment, happy face attention bias, and perceived racially discriminative experiences all accounted for significant variance in PTSD symptoms.

The purpose of this study was to examine group perpetrated antigay violence. Specifically, the effects of MGRS, peer dynamics, and increases in negative affect on antigay aggression were examined. The differential utility of aggression toward gay and heterosexual targets in relieving a state of negative affect (e.g., anger, fear) was also evaluated. Participants completed questionnaires that included a measure of MGRS, and then were assigned to one of three group conditions(individual, stranger, and friend). Participants then viewed a video depicting male-male intimacy and competed in the TAP against either a fictitious gay or heterosexual opponent. Results showed a main effect for condition, such that higher levels of aggression were observed in the group, relative to the individual, conditions. Analyses also revealed a significant positive relation between MGRS and aggression among participants competing with a stranger against a heterosexual opponent. Neither condition nor opponent differentially predicted changes in negative affect.

Ability of human listeners to understand altered speech is argued as evidence of uniquely human processing abilities, but early auditory experience also may contribute to this capability. I tested the ability of Panzee, a language-trained chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes), reared and spoken to from infancy by humans, to recognize synthesized words. Training and testing was conducted with different sets of English words in natural, “harmonics-only” (resynthesized using only voiced components), or “noise-vocoded” (based on amplitude-modulated noise bands) forms, with Panzee choosing from “lexigram” symbols that represented words. In Experiment 1 performance was equivalent with words in natural and harmonics-only form. In Experiment 2 performance with noise-vocoded words was significantly higher than chance but lower than with natural words. Results suggest specialized processing mechanisms are not necessary to speech perception in the absence of traditional acoustic cues, with the more important factor for speech-processing abilities being early immersion in a speech-rich environment.