Focuses on some guidelines for facilitating healthful life-style changes including the cultivation of good nutritional habits, good exercise habits, self-awareness, letting-go techniques, and personal planning. (Author/IRT)

States that 118 individuals reported the rituals they exercised to dissolve relationships or cope with relationship disengagement. Finds that self-enhancement rituals were performed most often during and after various relationship disengagements, and both "leavers" and "lefts" turned to their network to cope with dissolved…

Used a person-oriented approach to examine the participation of adolescents in constructive, organized activities and in relaxed leisure activities. Results for 918 adolescents in 11 activity domains show that activity involvement is related to psychological and behavioral functioning. (SLD)

Explored relation between self-nurturance and disordered eating among bulimic (N=18), dieting restrainer (N=20), and nonrestrainer (N=20) women. Results indicated that bulimics were less likely to nurture themselves in non-food-related ways and derived greater percentage of total self-nurturance from food than either restrainers or nonrestrainers.…

A total of 399 individuals completed a lethal behaviors scale and a measure of death anxiety, which were found to have no significant correlation. Predictors of lethalness included doing dangerous things for the fun of it and having ever driven a motorcycle. The most lethal individuals were young, male, and less educated. (Author/ABL)

Presents data on current adoption seeking in summary fashion and confines analyses to likelihood of ever having sought to adopt using national survey data from 8,450 women. Analysis on ever having sought adoption indicated that adoption seeking is primarily a function of desire for children coupled with inability or difficulty in having them.…

Examined motivations for condom use by adolescent males (n=1,880). About one-third reported using condoms consistently. Found greater consistency of condom use related to perceived costs benefits concerning pregnancy prevention, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, partner expectations, embarrassment, and reduction of pleasure. (Author/ABL)

Discusses use of reward and punishment as reinforcers, then considers when reward-punishment model does not seem to elicit predictable results. Discusses need to go beyond simple explanation of reward and punishment and to consider other, more subtle forms of motivation. Specifically addresses issues of identity and conformity. (NB)

Examined influence of migration on sexual behavior. Data from national probability sample of single females, ages 15-19 (n=1,287) revealed that moving was positively related to premarital sex. Migration may lower control through such mechanisms as weakening community bonds, decreasing supply and demand of parental supervision, and increasing…

Contends that comprehensive discussion of women's alcoholism must include understanding of how male-as-norm bias has affected alcoholism research, assessment, and treatment. Summarizes how male-as-norm bias has affected research on women's alcoholism and shaped perceptions of women's alcoholic behavior and their responses to treatment. (Author/NB)

Assessment of the neurotransmitter dopamine through measurement of the dopamine metabolite homovanillic acid (HVA) in adult subjects with mental retardation and with high rates of body stereotypy (n=12), compulsive behaviors (n=9), or neither (n=12) found lowest HVA concentrations in the stereotypy group and highest in the compulsive group. (DB)

Asserts that theory of mind is unique to humans and that its original function was to provide a more abstract level of describing ancient behavioral patterns, such as deception, reconciliation, and gaze following. Suggests that initial selective advantage of theory of mind may have been increased flexibility of already-existing behaviors, not…

Presents a preliminary case for the dispositionalist interpretation of grammatical knowledge by accomplishing two complementary tasks: first rejecting a prominent argument against the dispositionalist interpretation; second, advancing an original argument against the anti-dispositionalist interpretation. (Author/VWL)

Studies have shown that cigarette smokers are generally aware of increased health risks associated with smoking, but that smokers tend to underestimate their own susceptibility to disease. In general, optimistic bias has been shown to increase with greater perceived control over an event or behavior; however, this phenomenon has not been examined…

Interest and inflation rates may be major determinants of delay discounting, but these variables have not been controlled in past experiments because they depend on macroeconomic conditions. This study uses a computer game-like task to investigate the effects of inflation rates on people's subjective valuation of delayed rewards. During the task,…