The purpose of this study was to determine whether the presence of a dog would have an impact on object recognition memory performance of preschool children. This work represents an extension of previous research which found that preschoolers require fewer instructional prompts to complete this type of memory task when in the presence of a dog. If children require fewer instructional prompts it is possible that they are better able to focus on the task itself and as a result, improved memory performance is likely. Because the earlier experiment utilized a very simple version of the task that was readily completed by the preschool children, the overall performance data were at ceiling. The current study, involving 20 preschool children, included a manipulation of task difficulty through varying the number of distracters (one versus four) present at test. Increasing the number of distractors in a simple recognition task is known to make that task more challenging, and thus performance was expected to be slower and less accurate in the four distracter conditions relative to the one-distracter conditions. The collaborators in the study were either a therapy dog or a human. A two-way repeated measures design was used such that each child served as his/her own control and was tested in each of four separate conditions: dog present (one and four distracters) and human present (one and four distracters). The results showed that the preschool children performed the object recognition task faster and more accurately in the presence of the therapy dog relative to a human and also in the one-distracter versus four-distracter condition. The authors conclude that these effects result from increased focus and/or motivation resulting from the presence of the dog. 289Anthrozoös

implicit inversion theory suggests that stereotypes about gay men include beliefs that they possess certain mental health traits more characteristic of women than men. however, no research has explored gay men's stereotype about their own mental health or how their self-stereotype relates to stereotypes of women (i.e., heterosexual women and lesbians). three studies documented gay men's self-stereotype about mental health and compared it to other stereotypes. Comparisons among stereotypes about gay men, heterosexual women, and lesbians suggested that the stereotype about gay men partially overlaps with the stereotypes about heterosexual women and lesbians but also has traits independent of those female stereotypes. overall, there appears to be a prevalent stereotype about gay men's mental health that is partially explained by the implicit inversion theory.