Judith Becker Bryant

The Effect of Social Context on Gender Self-Concept

In this study we re-examine the role of genderwithin the self-concept and challenge the assumptionthat our gender self-concept is static and consistentacross contexts. We used the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) to measure masculinity and femininityacross six contexts. These six contexts were interactingwith same sex friends, interacting with other sexfriends, interacting at home, work, and school, and interacting in a social context where one doesnot know many people. Two hundred twenty-three femalesand 52 males from a large public university in theSoutheast participated in the study. A majority of the participants (76%) were Caucasian with 10%being Hispanic, 4% Asian, and 4% African American.Multivariate analyses of variance provided strongevidence for differences across contexts for both males and females. The results indicated that we aredynamic beings and those characteristics associated withgender are dynamic as well.

College Students’ Compensatory Eating and Behaviors in Response to Alcohol Consumption

Abstract Objective: This study investigates college students’ behaviors in response to the calories ingested by drinking alcohol. Participants and Methods: A sample of 274 nonclinical undergraduate alcohol drinkers completed an online survey asking about behaviors that students employed to make up for calories in alcohol or to get drunk more effectively. Drive for thinness, body dissatisfaction, disordered eating, and belief in a just world were also assessed to evaluate scale validity. Results: Participants reported engaging in exercise and dietary restriction as calorie control strategies both proactively and reactively and tended toward calorie restriction activities during drinking episodes. Relatively few reported engaging in more drastic strategies such as purging or laxative use. Women scored higher than men, and students living with friends scored higher than other students. Conclusions: These findings have implications for health initiatives aimed at college students and suggest the importance of considering both social and cognitive factors.

Gender and context differences in alcohol expectancies

Abstract In 2 studies, the authors investigated gender and context effects of alcohol expectancies among U.S. college students. In Study 1, they examined the responses of 771 women and 493 men to the Sexual Enhancement (SE) subscale and the Relaxation and Tension Reduction (TR) subscale of the Alcohol Expectancy Questionnaire (S. A. Brown, B. A. Christiansen, & M. S. Goldman, 1987). They found no gender differences when they controlled for drinking quantity. When they controlled for drinking frequency, the men scored significantly higher on the TR subscale than the women did. In Study 2, also among U.S. college students, 41 women and 21 men first imagined that they were on blind dates or in long-term relationships and then completed the SE and TR subscales. On the SE subscale, the women scored higher in the relationship context than in the blind-date context, whereas the men did not vary between contexts. All the participants also reported more tension-reduction expectancies in the relationship context than in the blind-date context.

Development and validation of the Compensatory Eating and Behaviors in Response to Alcohol Consumption Scale (CEBRACS)

The goal of the current investigation was to develop and validate a measure to assess an individuals eating-related behaviors related to alcohol consumption, specifically behaviors intended to compensate for calories so that more alcohol could be consumed or restrict calories to enhance the psychoactive effects of alcohol consumption. Two hundred and seventy four undergraduate students (n=51 males; 75.2% Caucasian) completed a newly developed scale, the Compensatory Eating and Behaviors in Response to Alcohol Consumption Scale (CEBRACS), along with measures of eating restriction, bulimia, and body dissatisfaction. An exploratory factor analysis on the CEBRACS revealed the existence of 4 clear-cut factors: alcohol effects, bulimia, dieting and exercise, and restriction. Internal consistency statistics for all subscales ranged from .79 to .95. Pearson product-moment correlations between the CEBRACS and measures of bulimia, restriction, and body dissatisfaction ranged from .04 to .44. T-tests revealed no gender differences in compensatory eating behaviors. Future research directions and limitations of the current study are discussed.

Methods for controlling amount of talk: Difficulties, considerations and recommendations

The aim of this article is to focus researchers’ attention on some central methodological issues involving control of amount of talk (AOT). First, appropriate methods for standardizing the size of language samples are considered. Second, the common practice of deriving linguistic rates by dividing the frequency of some linguistic variable of interest by a frequency tapping AOT is challenged. This operation does not adequately control for AOT and may result in spurious findings. Third, appropriate contexts for achieving control of AOT through statistical partialling are discussed. Some recommendations for research are offered.

Relative Weights of the Backpacks of Elementary-Aged Children:

The purpose of the study was to describe the range of relative backpack weights of one group of elementary-aged children and the extent to which they exceeded recommended levels. A second purpose was to explore whether gender and age help predict the relative weight of children’s backpacks. Ninety-five 8- to 12-year-old elementary school students (56% girls; 88% car or bus riders) participated. Their school backpacks were weighed, and their age, gender, and mode of transportation to school were recorded. Only 40% of the sample carried backpacks that were less than 10% of their body weights. Five percent of the students’ backpacks exceeded 20% of their body weights. Neither age group nor gender significantly predicted relative backpack weight or relative weight levels. Recommendations are made for ways to reduce the weight these young children carry.

Spoken word recognition in quiet and noise by native and non‐native listeners: Effects of age of immersion and vocabulary size.

In spoken word recognition, high‐frequency words with few and less frequently occurring minimal‐pair “neighbors” (lexically easy words) are recognized more accurately than low‐frequency words with many and more frequently occurring neighbors (lexically hard words). [Bradlow and Pisoni, J. Acoust. Soc. Am.,106, 2074–2085 (1999)] found a larger “easy‐hard” word effect for non‐native than native speakers of English. The present study extends this work by specifically comparing word recognition by non‐native listeners with either earlier (age 10 or earlier) or later (age 14 or later) ages of immersion in an English‐speaking environment to that of native English speakers. Listeners heard six lists of 24 words, each composed of 12 lexically easy and 12 lexically hard target words in an open‐set word‐identification task. Word lists were presented in quiet and in moderate background noise. A substantially larger easy‐hard word effect was obtained only for the later learners, but a measure of oral vocabulary size ...

Effects of age of immersion, task demand, and word type on word‐recognition response times by native and non‐native English‐speaking listeners.

Although listeners can adapt to many challenging listening conditions, often with little apparent effect on recognition accuracy, speed of processing may also affect an individual’s ability to cope with such challenges in everyday contexts. Native and non‐native listeners with either earlier (age 10 or earlier) or later (age 14 or later) ages of immersion in an English‐speaking environment heard six lists of 24 words, each composed of 12 lexically easy target words (high‐frequency words from sparse, low‐frequency phonological neighborhoods) and 12 lexically hard target words (low‐frequency words from dense, high‐frequency phonological neighborhoods) in an open‐set word‐identification task. Word lists were presented in quiet, in a moderate degree of background noise, and with or without a competing digit‐recall task. In the digit‐recall task, listeners saw three or six digits on the monitor prior to presentation of the word list and were asked to recall the digits at the end of the word‐recognition task. W...

Effects of noise, cognitive demand and lexical characteristics on word recognition by normal hearing native listeners.

Although listeners can adapt to many challenging listening conditions, the combined effects of multiple co‐occurring challenges on speech understanding are less well known. The present study examines the combined effects of background noise, cognitive demand, and lexical characteristics on isolated word recognition. Young normal‐hearing native English speakers heard six lists of 24 words, each composed of 12 lexically “easy” and 12 lexically “hard” target words in an open‐set word identification task. Easy words had high target word frequency, few phonological neighbors, and low‐neighborhood frequency; conversely, hard words had low frequency, many neighbors, and high‐neighborhood frequency. Word lists were presented in quiet, in a moderate degree of background noise, and with or without a competing digit recall task. In the digit recall task, listeners saw three or six digits on the monitor prior to presentation of the word list and were asked to recall the digits at the end of the word recognition task....

L2 use and stimulus complexity in perceived acceent ratings

Listener perception of accentedness has been shown to be influenced by experience with L2 (measured by length of residence in US). However, frequency of L1 use and degree of linguistic complexity (defined by the number of non‐native phonetic features targeted) may provide more insight into the role of experience in the perception of accentedness. Three groups of listeners (monolingual English and Spanish [L1] speakers divided into two groups of high and low use of English [L2]) rated the accentedness of bilingual speakers who spoke with varying degrees of accentedness. The speakers read sentences adapted from Magan (1998) to include linguistic aspects likely to be difficult for native Spanish speakers. Listeners performed similarly in rating speakers degree of accent. Amount of daily L1 use only influenced the ratings of the slightly accented group; the high‐use bilingual group rated these speakers as more accented than the native English group, regardless of level of linguistic difficulty. These results ...