There is increasing interest in understanding what role, if any, sex and sexual orientation play in body dissatisfaction, its correlates to distress, and its relationship to disordered eating. The goals of the present study were to examine: (a) differences in sex and sexual orientation in internalization of societal pressure to modify physical appearance, components of body image dissatisfaction, self-esteem, and eating disorder symptomatology and (b) whether the internalization-eating disorder symptomatology was mediated by the different components of body image dissatisfaction and low self-esteem. The present data support several key trends in the literature: men generally reported less body dissatisfaction, internalization of socio-cultural standards of beauty, drive for thinness, and disordered eating, but a greater drive for muscularity than women; results also indicated that different components of body image dissatisfaction and low self-esteem partially mediated the relationship between internalization and eating disorder symptomatology. Gay men reported significantly more body dissatisfaction, internalization, eating disorder symptomatology, drive for thinness, and drive for muscularity than heterosexual men. Compared to heterosexual women, lesbians reported increased drive for muscularity, lower self-esteem, and lower internalization; however, they did not significantly differ on body dissatisfaction, drive for thinness or disordered eating. Correlation coefficients between body shape dissatisfaction and several aspects of mental distress were significantly larger for gay men than heterosexual men; the same coefficients did not differ between lesbian women and heterosexual women. Results of path analyses indicated that the relationship between internalization and disordered eating differs for gay and heterosexual men but not for lesbian and heterosexual women. These results call attention to lesbians as a generally understudied population.

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The current research examined how individuals with depression process emotional, self‐relevant stimuli. Across two studies, individuals with depression and healthy controls read stimuli that varied in self‐relevance while EEG data were recorded. We examined the late positive potential (LPP), an ERP component that captures the dynamic allocation of attention to motivationally salient stimuli. In Study 1, participants read single words in a passive‐viewing task. Participants viewed negative, positive, or neutral words that were either normative or self‐generated. Exploratory analyses indicated that participants with depression exhibited affective modulation of the LPP for self‐generated stimuli only (both positive and negative) and not for normative stimuli; healthy controls exhibited similar affective modulation of the LPP for both self‐relevant and normative stimuli. In Study 2, using a separate sample and a different task, stimuli were provided within the context of sentence stems referring to the self or other people. Participants with depression were more likely to endorse negative self‐referent sentences and reject positive ones compared to healthy controls. Depressed participants also exhibited an increased LPP to negative stimuli compared to positive or neutral stimuli. Together, these two studies suggest that depression is characterized by relatively increased sensitivity to affective self‐relevant stimuli, perhaps in the context of a broader reduction in emotional reactivity to stimuli that are not self‐relevant. Thus, depression may be characterized by a more nuanced pattern based on the degree of stimulus self‐relevance than either a global decrease or increase in reactivity to affective stimuli.

The purpose of this study is to provide insight into the sources of stress experienced by current professional year pharmacy students in the United States. Methods: An online survey related to the sources of stress of current pharmacy students was distributed nationally. The survey included a section in which the respondent could choose any or all of 10 stress factors: coursework, grades, faculty, health concerns, family, current job market, finances, lack of sleep, friends, and "other." The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) was also administered. Frequency and distribution of stressors and stress levels across professional year was also assessed. Results: A majority of respondents reported coursework, lack of sleep, finances, and grades as stressors. A minority of participants selected family, job market, faculty, friends, health concerns and "other" stressors. Grades, lack of sleep, and faculty had the largest association with increased PSS scores. P4 students reported significantly fewer stressors than other years. More advanced students were less likely to report lack of sleep, grades, or coursework, but were more likely to select the job market. Conclusion: Academic concerns are a primary source of stress for a large majority of the sample. Development of interventions should focus on earlier professional years and emphasize the importance of sleep and physical health as students in these years report these stressors more frequently than advanced students. Further research is necessary to validate and extend the present findings.

Semantic processing in 10-year-old children and adults was examined using event related potentials (ERPs). The N400 component, an index of semantic processing, was studied in relation to sentences that ended with congruent, moderately incongruent, or strongly incongruent words. N400 amplitude in adults corresponded to levels of semantic incongruity with the greatest amplitude occurring to strongly incongruent sentences at all midline electrodes. In contrast, children's N400s were greater for both moderately and strongly incongruent sentences but did not differ between these levels of incongruity. This finding suggests that semantic processing may differ in adults and children.

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