Performance Under Pressure: The Effect of Explanatory Style on Sensory-Motor Performance Under Stereotype Threat

Do participants with external attribution styles outperform participants with internal explanatory styles in pressure-filled situations? Explicit-monitoring theory suggests that performance becomes impaired when conscious attention is devoted to performing a task normally carried out by automatic processes. Attributing potential failure to an external source (e.g., blaming a sudden gust of wind for a poor golf shot) can decrease the negative effects of stereotype threat, a social-psychological predicament known to engender feelings of stress similar to those experienced in pressure-filled situations, by preventing explicit monitoring from taking place. The current study examined whether individual differences in attribution style, as measured by the Attributional Style Questionnaire, affects golf-putting performance under stereotype threat. The present author hypothesized that participants with external explanatory styles would perform better than participants with internal explanatory styles under stereotype threat, because external participants would be predisposed to create external sources to attribute the cause of poor performance

Ethological and experimental approaches to behavior analysis: implications for ecotoxicology.

Laboratory research in toxicology has progressed far beyond reliance on measures of mortality to make use of sophisticated behavioral preparations that can evaluate the consequences of sublethal toxicant exposure. In contrast, field studies have not evolved as rapidly. Approaches developed by experimental psychologists and ethologists provide powerful and complementary methodologies to the study of environmental pollutants and behavior. Observational data collection techniques can easily be used to broaden the number of questions addressed regarding sublethal exposure to toxic agents in both field and laboratory environments. This paper provides a background in such techniques, including construction of ethograms and observational methodologies, and the use of laboratory analogues to naturally occurring activities such as social behavior, predation, and foraging. Combining ethological and experimental approaches in behavior analysis can result in a more comprehensive evaluation of the effects of environmental contaminants on behavior

Interpretation and significance of urban deposits

In many United Kingdom cities, the late Roman to Medieval periods are an archaeological blank. The study of contemporary anthropogenic deposits is therefore crucial to any understanding of urban activity. Using pedological and micromorphological techniques, urban anthropogenic deposits of this age from London and Exeter were therefore investigated. lt can be suggested from the results that previous interpretations of such deposits, once thought of as »flood loams» and often termed »Dark Earth », as i progressively thickening within-urban area »market garden» soils, orii simple accumulations of urban dump material through time, are inadequate. Analysis of undisturbed soil samples through optical microscopy, complemented by archaeological information from individual sites, allow us to be more specific. Our observations may indicate phases of dumping of mainly local soil material from, for example, military ditch digging at Exeter; whereas, at the London sites the deposits are tentatively interpreted as accumulations of partially or fully reworked materials derived from the destruction and collapse of insubstantial buildings. This finding may infer a gross under-estimation of urban activity at this time. Micromorphology has proven tobe the best analytical technique. In contrast, analyses of bulk samples may only provide very general information in these often extremely heterogeneous deposits

A prospective study of iron status in white and black pregnant women in an urban hospital

Evaluation of the iron status (haemoglobin and ferritin concentrations, and percentage transferrin saturation) in a prospective study of 65 pregnant women (55 white and 10 black) revealed that adequate maternal iron stores during pregnancy cannot be maintained with prevailing dietary patterns. Although 80,6% of the patients had normal indices in the first trimester, only 12,3% were normal in the third. Significant depletion of iron stores occurred in the second trimester, but significant iron-deficient erythropoiesis only occurred in the third trimester. Despite the decline in iron status, iron deficiency anaemia was only seen in 7 - 8% of the patients. Even after correction for the haemodilution and increased transferrin concentrations in pregnancy, over 70% of women had depleted iron stores in the third trimester. No beneficial effect on fetal birth weights was found on withholding of maternal iron supplementation. This study clearly demonstrated that white and urban black pregnant women require iron prophylaxis to maintain iron stores

Soil micromorphological evidence of early agriculture in north-west Europe

International audienceThe study of early agricultural soils using micromorphology is outlined. The effects of tillage due to modern agriculture are reviewed and the results from four experiments in ‘prehistoric cultivation’ are presented. These are used in the interpretation of prehistoric agricultural practices, based on a study of soils from various archaeological sites in north‐west Europe. It is suggested that microfabric features, varying according to soil texture, can be diagnostic of tillage. Microfabric type, textural features (e.g. coatings) and structure are, taken together, better indicators of ancient tillage than single features

Constructing and deconstructing the Gokstad mound

Viking Age burial mounds are usually interpreted with reference to their exterior dimensions, the funerary treatment of the deceased and the artefacts placed within them. The process of constructing these mounds, however, may also have played an important role in funerary traditions. Investigations at the Gokstad mound in Norway demonstrate that the building of this mound—in terms of its phases and material expressions—formed an integral part of the overall burial rite. The complex construction sequence contained references to both the physical and mythical landscapes, revealing the potential of the study of burial mound construction at other sites in Viking Age Scandinavia and beyond

Revertibility of me-1 alleles

Revertibility of me-1 allele

First Evidence for Wollemi Pine-type Pollen (Dilwynites: Araucariaceae) in South America

We report the first fossil pollen from South America of the lineage that includes the recently discovered, extremely rare Australian Wollemi Pine, Wollemia nobilis (Araucariaceae). The grains are from the late Paleocene to early middle Eocene Ligorio Márquez Formation of Santa Cruz, Patagonia, Argentina, and are assigned to Dilwynites, the fossil pollen type that closely resembles the pollen of modern Wollemia and some species of its Australasian sister genus, Agathis. Dilwynites was formerly known only from Australia, New Zealand, and East Antarctica. The Patagonian Dilwynites occurs with several taxa of Podocarpaceae and a diverse range of cryptogams and angiosperms, but not Nothofagus. The fossils greatly extend the known geographic range of Dilwynites and provide important new evidence for the Antarctic region as an early Paleogene portal for biotic interchange between Australasia and South America.Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Muse

Mercury enrichment in anthrosols and adjacent coastal sediments at a Classic Maya site, Marco Gonzalez, Belize

Elevated concentrations of total mercury (THg) are found in the surface soils and flanking wetland sediments at the Classic Maya coastal site of Marco Gonzalez, Belize. Significant concentrations (up to 1.3 µg·g−1 dry mass) of THg occur in leaf litter-rich soils, as well as in the artefact-rich anthrosol spread over the vegetated mound site of structures and occupation debris. The abundance and spatial pattern of major and trace elements measured in the surface soils indicate both site-scale controlling factors of topography, structures and vegetation on soil geochemistry as well as local highs in concentration compared with background, due to human activity. Geochemical stratigraphy of wetland sediment cores shows that a shift from carbonate-reef sediments to mangrove peat in the 13th century AD was attended by an input of allogenic (mineral) elements, including mercury. A THg concentration peak (0.8 μg·g−1) in brackish pool sediment is 210Pb-dated to 1960–1970 AD, but the incorporation of mercury in multiple cores adjacent to the site shows increasing mercury inputs to have occurred before, during Classic-period Maya occupation and following the sites abandonment. Analysis of element values from site-scale soil sampling, combined with results from off-site cores, provides a numerical framework upon which outlier values of THg and other element spatial patterns can be assessed, especially the spatial co-association of elements related to differences in soil–sediment matrices. Geochemical results from active soils developing from occupation deposits (anthrosols) and sediment cores open up questions concerning contemporary and past mercury accumulation at coastal Mayan sites, and the wider interaction of human and natural biogeochemical processes that occur in human-modified soils and coastal wetland sediments