We assessed the contributions of personality and family environment to variations in self-reported eating attitudes and behaviors. Female college undergraduates (N = 137) completed the NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI; Costa & McCrae, 1985), Family Environment Scale (Moos & Moos, 1986), Eating Disorder Inventory (EDI; Garner & Olmsted, 1984), and revised Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26; Garner, Olmsted, Bohr, & Garfinkel, 1982). Correlation and multiple regression analyses showed that among the personality variables, NEO-PI Neuroticism and Extraversion made the largest unique contributions to the EDI subscales and EAT-26. The family-environment measures made significant contributions to those, EDI subscales that are reflective of broader emotional and interpersonal problems, rather than eating disorders per se. Suppression effects were found for NEO-PI Extraversion and Neuroticism, underscoring the need for researchers to assess comprehensive sets of etiologic factors--and associations among them--to properly interpret complex predictor/criterion relationships.

The relationships among the severity of childhood abuse and neglect, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and adult obesity were investigated. 207 women (M age = 26.5 yr., SD = 6.7) completed the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, Millon Clinician Multiaxial Inventory, and a demographic questionnaire. Analyses of variance indicated that women who reported moderate-to-extreme emotional neglect (n = 71) had significantly higher PTSD scores and increased BMI compared to women who reported low emotional neglect (n = 84). Women who reported severe sexual or emotional abuse also had higher PTSD scores, but no relationship was found with BMI when other factors were controlled. Although PTSD scores and self-reported severity of childhood emotional neglect were strongly correlated (r = .61, p < .001), PTSD was not found to be a mediating factor in obesity in women who reported childhood emotional neglect, although depression was.

These experiments were aimed at quantifying the temporal information (in bits) that

Previous research on route learning has shown that men learn routes faster and with fewer errors than women. The same patterns have also been found for girls and boys. In this study, 19 children of ages 5 to 6 years, 26 children of ages 7 to 9 years, and 22 children of ages 10 to 12 years were presented a route learning task. The children were randomly assigned to either the Landmark group in which they were required to learn a route on a map that included landmarks or the No-landmark group in which they learned a route on a map without landmarks. Significant main effects were found for age and sex. Older children learned the route faster and with fewer errors than younger children. Boys made significantly fewer errors and took less time and fewer trials to reach criterion in learning the route regardless of whether landmarks were present or not. The role of landmarks in route learning needs to be further clarified.