Gendered racism, psychological distress, and coping styles of African American women

This study explores the relationship of the accumulative effect of gendered racism, the discrimination felt by African American women, on psychological distress. The study also explores whether coping serves as a mediating variable between gendered racism and psychological distress. Over 300 African American women participated in the study and were administered the Symptoms Checklist 90, a revised version of the Schedule of Sexist Events, and the Africultural Coping Styles Inventory. A positive significant relationship between global psychological distress was found with experiences of gendered racism. Regression analyses suggest some degree of partial mediation on the relationship between gendered racism and global psychological distress via cognitive-emotional coping styles, but no mediating effects with spiritual-centered, collective, and ritual-centered coping. Suggestions for future research and implications are discussed.     

Family perceptions and coping strategies in cases of intersexuality: understanding their significance

Considering that the intersexual condition has a negative impact on the individual, their family, and society, health professionals and researchers have dedicated themselves to is to describe and understand the perceptions of primary caregivers regarding intersexuality and its developmental aspects. Six mothers and one grandmother of school age children were interviewed. The data indicated that living with the stigma of intersexuality can mean a permanent state of crisis within the family system. Issues such as guilt about the child's suffering and questions related to the choice of gender follow the family from the moment of diagnosis. It is suggested that the therapeutic follow-up should foster the necessary conditions for the family group to be organized as a model of competence, replacing the model of guilt.     

Attentional bias for body and food in eating disorders: increased distraction, speeded detection, or both?

Previous research suggests that eating disorder patients show an attentional bias for body- and food-related information. However, so far little is known about the mechanisms that underlie the attentional favoring of this particular information in eating disorder patients. In the present study, we used both a body and a food visual search task to study speeded detection and increased distraction in eating disorder patients (n=67) and healthy controls (n=60). Compared with controls, eating disorder patients showed evidence of speeded detection of body-related information, and increased distraction by food information. These results suggest that the mechanism underlying the biased attentional allocation of eating disorder patients varies, and is dependent upon the type of information they are presented with.     

Dimensions of behavior of toddlers entering early intervention: child and family correlates

This study examined the nature and correlates of the behavioral characteristics of a nationally representative sample of 1612 toddlers 18-31 months of age entering Part C early intervention services in the U.S. Factor analysis of 15 items describing child behavior collected as part of an extensive telephone interview of parents yielded four dimensions of behavior: difficult behaviors, lack of persistence, distractible, and withdrawn. Demographic and personal characteristics of the child and family were found to be related to the four behavioral dimensions. Parent reports of behavior of toddlers with fair or poor health or those with communication difficulties were less positive for all behavioral dimensions, suggesting the development of toddler behavioral characteristics is influencing or being influenced by other facets of development.     

A Content and Sample Analysis of Quantitative Articles Published in the Journal of Counseling & Development Between 1991 and 2000

This study reviewed the content of articles and characteristics of samples in all quantitative articles published in the Journal of Counseling & Development between 1991 and 2000. The content analysis revealed that the areas that received the most attention were academic/career, multicultural issues, symptoms/disorders, and counseling process. Gender was reported in 88%, race/ethnicity in 60%, socioeconomic status in 11%, and sexual orientation in 1% of the articles. Implications for future research are addressed.     

Adolescents in Transition to Adulthood: Parental Support, Relationship Satisfaction, and Post-transition Adjustment

The transition from high school is a pivotal period for intergenerational relations, as the asymmetry characterizing pre-transition relations with parents is reconfigured. Changes in adolescent–parent relations across this transition have potentially important implications for post-transition adjustment. A prospective study was conducted with an ethnically diverse sample that included adolescents who were not college-bound. Maternal, but not paternal, relations improved across the transition from high school to adult life. Changes in support from both mothers and fathers were associated with changes in relationship satisfaction and changes in satisfaction predicted post-transition adjustment. The results verify the importance of parental support to the quality of relational bonds between young adults and their parents. They also affirm the significance of these bonds for post-transition adjustment.     

The efficacy of cue exposure with response prevention in extinguishing drug and alcohol cue reactivity

It has been suggested that drug cue‐elicited urges and psychophysiological reactions are the results of Pavlovian conditioning processes and that it should be possible to extinguish these responses with cue exposure with response prevention. It has already been shown that subjective cue‐elicited urges can be extinguished, but it is unclear whether this is also true for cue‐elicited psychophysiological arousal. This was tested in the present study in a heterogeneous sample of drug and alcohol dependent patients. It was found that cue‐elicited urges can indeed be extinguished. However, such a clear pattern of extinguished cue reactivity was not found for the psychophysiological measures. Furthermore, the extinction of drug urges was not specific for cue exposure treatment. It is concluded that cue‐elicited psychophysiological arousal does not underlie subjective cue reactivity and may not reflect Pavlovian conditioned drug responding. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Developing a sense of virtual community measure.

Sense of virtual community is an important feature of virtual communities. This study develops a sense of virtual community (SOVC) measure, building off the strengths of a widely used measure of sense of community (SOC) for face-to-face communities. Although there is overlap between the senses of community for face-to-face and virtual communities, there are significant differences. The new SOVC measure is compared to the SOC measure on 265 members of seven online groups, explaining at least 7% more of the variance from exchanging support and member identification. This study represents an important step in developing a valid measure of SOCV.