Adult attachment style and narcissistic vulnerability.

Argues that, in adult relationships, insecure attachments reflect strategies for managing a greater level of narcissistic vulnerability than exists in secure attachment. Attachment theory (AT) has traditionally emphasized adaptive responses in the child–parent relationship. However, researchers have applied AT to adult love relationships. Both the child literature and the adult literature have explored individual differences in attachment behavior and have identified stylistic categories of secure and insecure attachments. Although the insecure categories are characterized by overt behavior that appears quite different (i.e., clinging vs distance), in adult relationships where attachment is reciprocal, these stylistic patterns may achieve a similar function. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Radiative heat flux measurement uncertainty

As part of an effort to characterize the uncertainties associated with heat flux measurements in a fire environment, an uncertainty analysis example was performed using measurement data from a room corner surface products test that followed the guidelines of ISO 9705. Equations to model the heat transfer at the surface of a Schmidt‐Boelter (thermopile) type total heat flux gauge were selected for use to calculate the incident radiative flux from a total heat flux measurement. The effects of the heat flux measurement uncertainty sources were evaluated by conducting an uncertainty propagation on the resulting equation for incident radiation. For the model equations and the example conditions selected, the free‐stream temperature estimate and the heat flux gauge calibration constant were determined to be major uncertainty contributors. The study demonstrates how to systematically identify major sources of uncertainty for the purpose of reducing total uncertainty and thereby enhancing experiment design. Published in 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Psychological androgyny and sex role flexibility: A test of two hypotheses.

In a conceptual replication and extension of a study by S. L. Bem and E. Lenney (1976), 90 male and 118 female college students rated their comfort in and preference for performing several series of masculine, feminine, and neutral activities. Correlations between ratings and scores on the masculinity (instrumentality) and femininity (expressiveness) scales of the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ) of J. T. Spence and R. L. Helmreich (1978) tended to be theoretically reasonable in sign but in each sex were low in magnitude and only occasionally significant. Classification of Ss into 4 PAQ groups (androgynous, masculine, feminine, and undifferentiated) on their joint masculinity and femininity scores revealed that androgynous and masculine Ss of both sexes had higher comfort ratings, independent of type of task, than did feminine and undifferentiated Ss, suggesting the importance of instrumentality and expressiveness per se. For forced-choice preference ratings, significant differences were found only in males, masculine Ss having a stronger preference for sex-typed tasks than those in other categorical groups. The PAQ variable, however, accounted for only a small percentage of the variance. The data support the Spence-Helmreich hypotheses that the PAQ and similar instruments are largely measures of instrumental and expressive personality traits rather than sex roles and that these personality dimensions are only minimally related to many sex role behaviors. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's orientation of a listener to the context of their narratives.

Studied narratives from 96 3.5–9.5 yr olds; the adequacy of the children's orientation to context was also assessed by an analysis of the number of clauses produced that were solely orientative in function, a quantitative analysis of the types of orientative comments given by the children, and qualitative analysis of how well they answered the traditional questions of who, where, what, when, how, and why. All Ss provided a substantial amount of orientation, and the proportion of the narratives that was devoted to orientation remained constant across age. Ss gave good orientation about what props were used and how the events occurred. They were less explicit about who, where, and why. They seldom provided information about when the events took place. Older Ss increasingly clustered their orientative comments at the beginning of their narratives and gave more complete contextual embedding. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Projections of aging: Impact of generational differences and the aging process on perceptions of adults.

In the domain of personality, a variety of stereotypes about old age are found. Unfortunately, the methodologies of previous studies have not dealt with a potential confound as to whether attitudes are a function of the aging process or of perceptions of generations. The present study was designed as a first step toward distinguishing between these possibilities. Young adults rated one target generation (i.e., today's 22-, 41-, or 69-year-olds) at one age period (i.e., as 22-, 41-, or 69-year-olds) on a series of personality attributes. Results demonstrated that attitudes (i.e., perceptions of personality) varied more often as a function of target generation, reflecting a general tendency for young adults to view other generations in a different fashion from the way they view their own. Overall, attitudes toward the older generation or age period were more positive than negative. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Localisation de l'interférence forme/couleur au niveau perceptuel dans une tache de type Stroop avec des stimuli-dessins.

Four studies with 24 19–35 yr old French-speaking adults examined the localization of perceptual form–color interference in a Stroop task with drawings. Results indicate that the time required to name the color of an incongruently colored object, such as a blue banana, was significantly longer than that for a neutral object (a red book). The same effect was found for identifying the color of the ink in which the names of these observed objects were printed. However, there did not appear to be a common semantic component in the interference observed in the 2 tasks. Extended practice on the task with the names of incongruently colored objects did not transfer to the task with the drawings of the same objects. The time to discriminate the colors of 2 drawings of incongruently colored objects was significantly longer than that for 2 drawings of neutral objects, suggesting that a perceptual inhibition occurred for incongruently colored objects (objects for which color was normally an integral part of the stimulus) that created a delay in perceiving the object's color. This contextual interference may be the complementary phenomenon to the object superiority effect. (31 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ratioquadrics: an alternative model for superquadrics

This paper presents a new family of 2D curves and its extension to 3D surfaces, respectively, calledrationconics andratioquadrics that have been designed as alternatives to the well-known superconics and superquadrics. This new model is intended as an improvement to the original one on three main points: first, it involves lower computation cost and provides better numerical robustness; second, it offers higher order continuities (C ¹/G ² orC ²/G ² instead ofC ⁰/G ⁰); and third, it provides a greater variety of shapes for the resulting curves and surfaces. All these improvements are obtained by replacing the signed power function involved in the formulation of superconics and superquadrics by linear or quadratic rational polynomials.