Body Image and Dieting in Children

 

Ex. 1 Read and translate the text.

 

Traditionally, dieting and similar behaviors that show concern for physical appearance have been reserved for teenagers and adults. This study examines dysfunctional eating behaviors in children as young as seven. This study builds on early research that indicated that children as young as third grade were concerned about being overweight and their appearance. Preadolescent children are at a great risk of doing permanent physical and cognitive harm to themselves by dieting. Children have less body fat than adults and are growing and developing at a rapid rate. Risks of dieting for children include kidney failure, dental decay, heart beat irregularities, stunted physical growth, and reduced cognitive development.

Body image and dieting behaviors are understood by children as young as seven. Children at that age envision an ideal body shape, know that restrictive eating behaviors influence body shape, and express dissatisfaction with their current body size and shape. A sample of 431 children in the second, third, and fourth grades in Melbourne, Australia, participated in a survey. The survey was designed to assess knowledge of what dieting is and determine how many children had engaged in some type of restrictive eating behavior. Part of the survey also examined the children’s ideas about ideal body shape and weight. Parents consented to their children’s participation in the survey. Participants were assured that all their responses would be kept confidential. To begin the study, the children’s current body weights and heights were recorded. Results were as follows: The first part of the survey was a behavior inventory that asked questioned like “I diet …” with answer choices that included always, sometimes, and never. Then, more open-ended questions were asked that allowed children to explain what dieting means. One concern in designing a questionnaire to be used with children is the tendency for young children to give expected answers to leading questions. To avoid errors created by leading questions, children were given the option to answer “I don’t know,” “I never diet,” or similar responses to the opened questions. Children were next shown a series of seven gender-appropriate figures that ranged from very thin to obese. Children responded to the following questions:

1. Which figure looks most like the way you currently look?

2. Which figure looks most like the way you would like to look?

3. Which figure looks most like the way you feel?

Finally, children took a modified version of the Eating Attitudes Test designed by researchers to measure dieting behaviors, food occupation, and weight concerns. This 26-item survey asks questions like “I am scared about being overweight.” Children select from a range of responses from always to never.

The researchers examined the results of the surveys by age group, body mass (underweight, normal weight, overweight), and gender. About 28 percent indicated that they did not know what dieting was. Of the remainder, their ideas about dieting showed a clear understanding of society’s beliefs and attitudes toward dieting. Dieting has become a national pastime. About one in five Americans will go on a diet this year and many more will talk about going on a diet. Popular culture idealizes thin as beautiful. People see dieting as an acceptable way to achieve a beautiful body. About 23 percent of the participants indicated that they have dieted. More girls than boys indicated that they had dieted. The three most popular forms of dieting among participants were: actively reducing their intake of specific foods, reducing their overall intake of food, eating healthy foods.

The study clearly showed that children as young as seven have a clear understanding of their body image and are frequently dissatisfied with it. Both boys and girls displayed a significant difference between their perceived body size and the ideal body size. In addition, the difference between the ideal and how they felt was significantly different. The findings are shown in the following table: The study did not show a strong correlation between body-image dissatisfaction and dieting. This finding indicates that children do not yet have the abstract reasoning skills to relate these concepts. Studies with adolescents have shown a strong correlation between body-image dissatisfaction and dieting.

Children from all age groups sampled understand the concept and behaviors associated with dieting. A significant number of the participants expressed dissatisfaction with their body shape and size. Researchers believe that society is communicating messages about ideal body shape and size to these young children. Interestingly, the girls in the study tended to choose the tall, lean figure as their ideal. Boys chose a more muscular and solid representation for their ideal. Further study is needed to help understand why children at such a young age have such a clear understanding of behaviors that are potentially harmful to them. Possible explanations include society’s emphasis on physical appearance, better education about nutrition, and the influence of role models such as parents.

 

Ex. 2 Answer the following questions in the space provided.

1. What was the purpose of this study? Who participated in the study?

2. What percentage of boys and girls were overweight? Of normal weight?

3. What three assessments were children asked to make about the gender-appropriate figures shown to them?

4. What dieting practices did children say they had tried?

5. What part of the hypothesis was not supported by the findings of this study? What does this suggest about children’s cognitive skills?

6. Why do you think some children are dissatisfied with their body sizes?

7. What recommendations would you make to parents who are concerned about the findings of this study?

Unit 14

Teenagers in Crises

Ex. 1 Read and translate the text.

 

Many adults believe that it is more difficult to be a teenager today than when they were growing up. Although not all researchers agree, there is some evidence to suggest that American society is changing so rapidly that it is forcing its adolescents toward adulthood without the necessary time and training for a smooth transition from childhood to adulthood. The consequences to the adolescent and to society may be felt for several decades.

There is no place for teenagers in American society today ‒ not in our homes, not in our schools, and not in society at large. This was not always the case: barely a decade ago, teenagers had a clearly defined position in the social structure. They were the “next generation,” the “future leaders” of America. Their intellectual, social, and moral development was considered important and therefore it was protected and nurtured. The teenager’s occasional foibles and excesses were excused as an expression of youthful spirit, a necessary Mardi Gras before assuming adult responsibility and decorum. Teenagers thus received the time needed to adapt to the remarkable transformations their bodies, minds, and emotions were undergoing. Society recognized that the transition from childhood to adulthood was difficult and that young people needed time, support, and guidance in this endeavor.

In today’s rapidly changing society, teenagers have lost their once privileged position. Instead, they have had a premature adulthood thrust upon them. Teenagers now are expected to confront life and its challenges with the maturity once expected only of the middle-aged, without any time for preparation. Many adults are too busy retooling and retraining their own job skills to devote any time to preparing the next generation of workers. And some parents are so involved in reordering their own lives, managing a career, marriage, parenting, and leisure, that they have no time to give their teenagers; other parents simply cannot train a teenager for an adulthood they themselves have yet to attain fully. The media and merchandisers, too, no longer abide by the unwritten rule that teenagers are a privileged group who require special protection and nurturing. They now see teenagers as fair game for all the arts of persuasion and sexual innuendo once directed only to adult audiences and consumers. High schools, which were once the setting for a unique teenage culture and language, have become miniatures of the adult community. Theft, violence, sex, and substance abuse are now as common in the high schools as they are in the streets.

The imposition of premature adulthood upon today’s teenagers affects them in two different but closely related ways. First, because teenagers need a protected period of time within which to construct a personal identity, the absence of that period impairs the formation of that all-important self-definition. Having a personal identity amounts to having an abiding sense of self that brings together, and gives meaning to, the teenager’s past while at the same time giving him or her guidance and direction for the future. A secure sense of self, of personal identity, allows the young person to deal with both inner and outer demands with consistency and efficiency. This sense of self is thus one of the teenager’s most important defenses against stress. By impairing his or her ability to construct a secure personal identity, today’s society leaves the teenager more vulnerable and less competent to meet the challenges that are inevitable in life.

The second effect of premature adulthood is inordinate stress: teenagers today are subject to more stress than were teenagers in previous generations. This stress is of three types. First, teenagers are confronted with many more freedoms today than were available to past generations. Second, they are experiencing losses, to their basic sense of security and expectations for the future that earlier generations did not encounter. And third, they must cope with the frustration of trying to prepare for their life’s work in school settings that hinder rather than facilitate this goal. Any one of these new stresses would put a heavy burden on a young person; taken together, they make a formidable demand on the teenager’s ability to adapt to new demands and new situations.

 

Ex. 2 Answer the following questions in the space provided.

 

1. When teenagers were considered future leaders, how did society treat them?

2. What changes does the author believe have occurred in society to make teens lose their place?

3. According to the author, how have high schools changed?

4. What two effects on teens does the author cite as a result of society’s push toward premature adulthood?

5. Do you agree with the author’s point of view about society’s treatment of teens? Explain your reasoning.

6. Compose a letter to your congressional representative expressing your views on allowing advertisers to use sex or violence to sell products to teens.

Unit 15

Creativity and Aging

Ex. 1 Read and translate the text.

Would you describe yourself as creative? Recent research indicates that creative people tend to remain creative throughout their lives. Creativity is not reserved for the young. Composers, artists, and musicians often remain productive and creative throughout their lives. Their creativity brings meaning and purpose that enhances the quality of their lives. Despite a severe intestinal disorder, painter Henri Matisse created some of his greatest work near the end of his life. So did Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso. And some creative people, like Grandma Moses, don’t start their creative careers until they’re past 70.

Psychologists have been studying the creative lives of older people and how creativity can enhance the aging process. In a range of studies, they’ve found that being creative can add richness to the aging process; that those who followed their creative passions are happier old people; and that many creative people develop new creative styles in old age.

For the past 20 years, Dean Keith Simonton, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of California Davis, has studied the career trajectories of composers, writers and artists. Simonton has found, in part, that creativity does not decline with age, though it may change in form.

‘Swan-song’ creativity

Creative people often change strategies in old age, Simonton has found. Composer Igor Stravinsky, for example, began in later life to compose pieces much differently than he had earlier, changing from writing traditional polytonal music to more radical ‘twelve-tone’ music that used the musical scale in a different way.

Simonton has found a ‘swan-song’ phenomenon: a time in which people’s work becomes more meaningful and aesthetically concise as they face death. Different kinds of artists have different creative peaks, Simonton added: For instance, lyric poets may peak earlier than novelists. In addition, some people ‒ like Grandma Moses ‒ begin creative careers later in life, thus peaking late in life, he noted.

A recent study at University of Nebraska-Lincoln found that thinking and acting creatively can help people adapt to the aging process and find meaning in life. Participants in the study ‒ who were a mix of nonartists and artists ages 60 and older ‒ said that being creative enhanced their life satisfaction. In addition, creativity can encourage greater cognitive flexibility, the study found.

Sixty percent of the study participants said they’d become even more creative as they’ve gotten older. Of the remaining 40 percent, half said they’d remained consistently creative throughout their lives.

Follow your passion

In 1991, Dudek followed up a University of California-Berkeley study by Donald Mackinnon, Ph.D., and colleagues of 124 male architects, engineers and artists between 1958 and 1960. Participants in 1958 were 53-years-old on average. Dudek interviewed 70 of the original architects in the study, all of those who were still alive in 1991. She divided the architects into three groups: famous; very successful; and ‘nice guys,’ men who had never strived to be famous, but who had fulfilling careers. All the men in the studies had followed their creative passions in their careers, Dudek said. With few exceptions, they reported that they were happy with their lives and wouldn’t do things differently, and that creativity had enhanced their lives and made their old age more successful and enjoyable.

If people exercise creativity throughout their lives, their old age should be no different, Simonton said. ‘People with lots of creative potential keep on creating even in old age,’ he said.

Ex. 2 Answer the following questions in the space provided.

1. What does Simonton’s study of creativity and aging indicate?

2. What is ‘swan-song’ creativity?

3. Can creativity increase with age?

4. Into what three groups did Dudek divide the participants in her 1991 study? What were her conclusions?

5. Does a creative person need to achieve fame to find satisfaction with his or her talents? Why or why not?

6. List one or more areas in which you are creative. Projecting into the future, develop a life plan that would allow you to use your creativity throughout your life. Consider how you can develop your talents and how you can use them even if physical limitations slow you down.

Unit 16

Self-Hypnosis

Ex. 1 Read and translate the text.

What happens when traditional medicine fails to provide relief from chronic pain? Chronic pain is long-term pain from a known or unknown source that cannot be relieved through surgery or physical therapy. Millions of Americans suffer from chronic pain at some period in their lives. Traditional medicine has treated such pain with medications and selected exercises. Statistics show that 40 percent of the people who are prescribed medication for chronic pain will abuse their medication. Society, including those in the medical profession, is exploring alternative treatments that may prove as effective, and perhaps more effective, than traditional medical treatments.

A woman in her late 40s was injured in a car accident. Her most serious injury was a compression fracture of her spine. The fracture and accompanying muscle spasms resulted in severe and continuous pain. No type of surgery could relieve her pain, so doctors gave her a series of pain medications, nerve blocks, and anesthetics. These procedures managed the pain, but had unpleasant side effects.

Two years later, the woman was in another car accident. This time, in addition to cuts and bruises, she fractured her breastbone, one rib, and a foot. After this accident, her pain worsened and she had difficulty completing simple tasks such as combing her hair and dressing herself. She was unable to work. She also experienced additional health problems in the next several months.

The pain, frustration over her limitations, and uncertainty about the future left her depressed. Over the next six months, she visited several doctors at several clinics seeking help. Doctors prescribed 13 different medications at various times to either manage her pain or affect her mood. The drugs included Darvocet, a powerful pain reliever, and Valium, a drug commonly prescribed to treat anxiety. None of these drugs proved helpful; the many side effects actually made the problems worse.

When she entered the Behavioral Medicine Clinic, she walked with a cane, had limited movement in her head and neck, and continued to be depressed. Since she had received little relief from traditional medical treatments, she had begun to study the principles of self-hypnosis from library books. She slowly learned how to manage her pain through a self-induced state of hypnosis. While seated, she would close her eyes and visualize her pain as a lake. She became progressively more relaxed by continuing to use mental imagery to reduce the size of the lake. She used these techniques to make the pain more manageable and to deal with her anxiety over the exercises physical therapists asked her to do. The doctors at the Behavioral Medicine Clinic encouraged her to continue with the selfhypnosis on a daily basis, to be as physically active as possible, and to try to live without pain medications.

Within seven months, she: was nearly free of all pain, was not taking any pain medications, had increased her physical activity and was walking without the cane, had returned to work part-time, was no longer suffering from depression.

Cases such as the one described here are helping to shift the focus of the medical community toward a biopsychosocial approach to the treatment of pain. This approach combines traditional medical treatments with psychological and social approaches to treatment. The most common alternative treatments are group therapy, relaxation therapy, biofeedback, guided imagery, and hypnosis.

The National Institutes of Health support these alternative treatments, especially relaxation therapy and hypnosis, for chronic pain sufferers. Several studies over the past 30 years indicate that hypnosis is especially effective at controlling both acute and chronic pain and at relieving the accompanying depression. Self-hypnosis is the technique preferred by many physicians and psychologists. It allows the patient more control and responsibility. It also lessens the chance that the physician or psychologist will be seen as a manipulator.

 

Ex. 2 Answer the following questions in the space provided.

 

1. What is chronic pain?

2. Why did the woman in the case study learn self-hypnosis?

3. What imagery did she use for her pain?

4. How did she use this image to reduce her pain level?

5. What types of treatment are combined in the biopsychosocial approach to pain management?

6. Why do you think self-hypnosis relieved pain when all the other treatments failed in this instance?

7. If given the option of hypnosis or self-hypnosis to manage pain, which would you prefer? Why?

Unit 17

Facial Expressions

Ex. 1 Read and translate the text.

Emotions are expressed in a variety of ways. People from one culture may misunderstand the emotional expressions of people from other cultures. Studies of facial expressions have noted similarities and differences among cultures. For example, many similarities exist between the facial expressions of Americans and Japanese. Along with those similarities, researchers have noted some striking differences. Research has identified seven universal facial expressions of emotion. People across cultures make the same basic facial expressions in reaction to anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. These facial expressions are theorized to be biologically innate in all people regardless of race, culture, or gender.

Although the same basic facial expressions are used for the seven emotions, display rules within the culture affect how and when these expressions are made. These display rules vary widely among cultures. Specifically, there are marked differences between Japanese and American display rules.

When an emotion is sent to the brain to be processed, the signal is filtered through both the innate signal for the facial expression and the culturally accepted display rules learned during early childhood. The actual expression is a result of the innate signal and the learned display rules. Cultures may affect the innate signal in five ways:

1. Deamplify the expression, which results in showing less emotion than is felt.

2. Neutralize the expression, which results in no facial expression even when one is felt.

3. Amplify the expression, which results in showing more emotion than what is felt.

4. Mask the expression, which results in showing something different than what you feel.

5. Blend expressions, which mixes two or more of the expressions at the same time.

A study conducted by Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen used American and Japanese participants. In the study, the participants were asked to view extreme stress-inducing films including an amputation and a childbirth with forceps. The participants’ facial expressions were videotaped without their knowledge. In the first series, participants viewed the videotapes alone. In the second series, participants viewed the stressful films again, but this time a higher status experimenter was in the room with each participant.

During the first series, both American and Japanese participants exhibited the same facial expressions, which included fear, disgust, sadness, and anger. This finding continues to support the findings that there are universal expressions. During the second series, the presence of the experimenter had no effect on the facial expressions of the American participants. The Japanese participants, however, either displayed no emotion or smiled. These responses not only differed from their American counterparts, they were totally different from their initial responses to the same films.

The Americans had no culturally based display rule that was affected by the presence of the experimenter. The Japanese participants were reacting to the culturally based display rule that negative emotions are not shown in the presence of someone of higher status. This display rule caused them to mask their facial expressions.

Ex. 2 Answer the following questions in the space provided.

1. What has research indicated are the seven universal facial expressions of emotion?

2. How do researchers believe we acquire these seven universal facial expressions?

3. If there are universal facial expressions, what causes differences in the way emotions are expressed?

4. Identify two of the five display rules.

5. According to this experiment, what difference exists between the way in which Americans and Japanese express emotions?

6. What display rules do Americans have?

7. How are display rules, like the Japanese rule in the study, formed?

 

Unit 18

The Excited Brain

Ex. 1 Read and translate the text.

When you do not get enough sleep, what happens to your motivation? Do you lack the energy and drive to care about what is happening around you? Psychologists and other scientists are discovering that our moods are largely regulated by chemical activity in the brain. Sleep deprivation affects the levels of these chemicals and reduces our motivation.

The neuroscience of emotion is still in a fairly early stage of development. For thousands of years, people have been thinking about what sorts of things make us feel happy or unhappy, elated or depressed. While it is not known exactly how sleep and sleep debt help the brain create good feelings and bad, we are learning how the brain puts itself in an “up” mood and how addictive drugs create a “high” by stimulating the brain’s pleasure centers. We also have a simple model of how the brain becomes activated and fully conscious during waking and dreaming activity. What we have found is that the biochemistry of wakefulness and sleep is intimately tied in with the state of the emotional part of the brain. The waking brain naturally excites and primes itself for vital interaction with the external world, while the sleep-deprived brain suppresses that natural buoyancy by damping the brain’s neurochemical activity.

A brain circuit called the reticular activating system plays a major role in arousal. It is highly likely that the biological clock operates on this system to wake up the brain and keep it awake. The reticular activating system is a small collection of nerves that originates deep in the brain stem, the most ancient and primitive part of the brain. A relatively few cells in the brain stem reach out and touch nearly every cell in the brain. These cells carry neurotransmitters, that relay activating signals from the reticular activating system.

These neurotransmitters are norepinephrine, dopamine, and acetylcholine. Norepinephrine is one of the key neurotransmitters for arousal, acting as the brain’s form of adrenaline. Dopamine is known to be involved in body movement and pleasure. Acetylcholine also acts as a prime arousal chemical and is known to be important in carrying signals concerning muscle movements. Another neurotransmitter, serotonin, also has a strong effect on mood. These excitatory neurochemicals prepare the brain’s 100 billion nerve cells to react more quickly. It is also no surprise that they interface closely with the limbic system, which is sometimes called the emotional brain. This is because we must be wired not only to react quickly to challenge in a purely mechanical way but also to be motivated emotionally to face challenges. The reticular activating system sets the emotional brain on edge, as when runners ready to start a race get down on their hands and the balls of their feet. The activating system doesn’t so much create feelings as set an emotional tone for any stimulus that filters into our brain.

The activity of the limbic system is like the background music in a movie. The screen shows someone creeping down a hallway at night toward a closed door. If the background music is tense, perhaps in a minor key, with a few discordant notes thrown in, we interpret the scene as suspenseful and feel anxious about what might lie behind the door. If the music is bouncy and jovial, like something out of an old Charlie Chaplin movie, we interpret the same scene quite differently. We are prepared for humor and might imagine the doorknob coming off when the person tries to open the door. If a monster does pop from behind the door, we might think “What a silly monster suit.”

Now consider the movie that constantly plays in your head ‒ the images of the world around you that sensory stimulation tells you is “reality.” The nerve cells sprouting out of the base of the brain are creating the mood music inside you by acting directly on all the other brain cells, making them more or less reactive to the scenes that are coming in from the outside world. When we get a good night of sleep, and the reticular activating system is priming the emotional brain properly, our norepinephrine and dopamine infusions create a positive, energetic “background music.” The result is a feeling of mental and physical energy we call vitality and an internal psychological push called motivation. Without them we get depressed. (I should note that clinical depression is very different from feeling low or down. In clinical depression, the brain’s natural biochemistry is seriously altered.)

One major hypothesis about how sleep affects mood is that sleep somehow replenishes these excitatory neurotransmitters in the brain. Over the course of the day, neurotransmitters are released from nerve cells. Some are recycled back into the cell and others are lost. By keeping brain activity high, sleep deprivation may prevent the brain from replacing lost neurotransmitters. When nerve activity is decreased, alerting is impaired. Your thoughts don’t flow as smoothly as they should. You feel down.

To counterbalance the brain’s accelerators, other nerve cells and neurotransmitters act as the brain’s brakes. The most widely distributed nerve cell receptor in the brain is GABA, the receptor that alcohol and benzodiazepine sleeping pills act on. An activated GABA receptor makes a nerve cell much less reactive to stimuli, slowing the rate of information processing, and uncocking the hammer in the emotional brain.

Another of the brain’s primary braking mechanisms is adenosine. Adenosine is one of the molecules that results when the brain breaks down its primary energy source, adenosine triphosphate, or ATP. When the brain is very active and using a lot of energy, more adenosine is present in the brain. This surplus of adenosine acts as a natural governor, reining in brain activity so that it doesn’t run too fast. Increasing adenosine concentration in the brain may be part of the reason we feel mental fatigue when we face emotional or mentally challenging situations. The increased brain activity may create a lot of free adenosine, which then depresses brain activity.

One school of thought holds that the sleep drive actively suppresses brain activity through this braking mechanism, thereby linking sleepiness and mood. The more time we are awake, the more the inhibitory circuits of the brain damp down the stimulation of the reticular activating system, as if the nerve excitatory and dampening systems are fighting for control of the brain. As various areas of the brain are slowed down by this braking action, the effects show up in how we act, think, and feel. The dampening of nerve activity of motor areas makes us less coordinated; the dampening of nerve activity in the cerebral cortex makes us slow in thought; and quenching nerve activity in the emotional brain makes us feel less vital, less motivated. To counteract this we can walk around, concentrate harder, and give ourselves a pep talk, but eventually the brain’s sleep drive triumphs. At some point no mental trick will stimulate brain activity in the areas we need to stay awake ‒ it’s like trying to light wet sawdust with a match. We have to fall asleep.

After we sleep, the brakes are off again. Dopamine and norepinephrine release in the brain increases. We feel alive again.

 

Ex. 2 Answer the following questions in the space provided.

1. What part of the brain plays a major role in motivation?

2. Which neurotransmitters control motivation?

3. How do the excitatory neurochemicals affect motivation?

4. What is the “emotional brain” and what does it do?

5. What is one hypothesis of how sleep affects our moods?

6. What are the two primary receptors that slow activity in the brain?

7. As nerve activity slows in the limbic system, how do we feel?

 

Unit 19