No abstract

This investigation studied eating disorder symptoms and psychosocial correlates of eating disorders among heterosexual females, lesbians, heterosexual males, and gay males. The dependent variables of the study measured: depression, concern for physical appearance, personal evaluation of physical appearance, perceived sociocultural pressure for thinness, media influences promoting thinness, and overconcern with body size/shape. A sample of 41 2 young adults was studied, in cluding 97 heterosexual males, 1 16 heterosexual females, 1 10 gay males, and 89 lesbians. Heterosexual females were found to report the highest level of eating dis order symptoms and concern with body size/shape. Heterosexual males reported the lowest level of eating disorder symptoms and concern with body size/shape, with gay males and lesbians falling between these two groups. Lesbians reported the least concern for physical appearance. Of the variables which were studied, overconcern with body size/shape was the strongest psychosocial correlate of eat ing disorder symptoms in heterosexual females, gay males, and lesbians. We con cluded that eating disorder symptoms and concerns about body size were similar for heterosexual females, gay males, and lesbians, but weie quite different for het erosexual males.Anorexia and bulimia nervosa are strongly associated with the female gender (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Males account for ap proximately 10% of cases diagnosed with an eating disorder (Anderson, 1992), and homosexual males account for approximately 30% of the males who are diagnosed with an eating disorder

A vaginal plethysmograph system utilizing an indirectly (reflected) lighted photocell probe has been developed and used experimentally with excellent results. While the standard lamp and photocell plethysmograph using transmitted light is not unique, its application in measuring vaginal blood volume presented numerous instrumentation and mechanical problems not previously encountered. It is believed that this is the first system to reliably measure vaginal blood volume changes by indirect methods.

Sixty-two women participated in a study designed to explore the association between genital and subjective sexual arousal. Four stimulus conditions were created, designed to evoke differential patterns of genital arousal over time. Subjects were instructed to report sensations in their genitalia while being exposed to the same erotic stimulus on repeated trials or to a series of varying erotic stimuli. Detection of genital arousal was facilitated by the occurrence of changes in genital arousal over trials. That is, genital and subjective sexual arousal were linearly related in conditions that resulted in large differences in genital arousal over trials, whereas such a relation was absent in conditions in which genital arousal levels remained relatively constant. In women, peripheral feedback from consciously detected genital arousal seems to be a relatively unimportant determinant of subjective sexual arousal.