INCREASING CALORIE CONSUMPTION IN CHILDREN WITH CYSTIC FIBROSIS: REPLICATION WITH 2-YEAR FOLLOW-UP

Three mildly malnourished children with cystic fibrosis and their parents participated in a behavioral group-treatment program that focused on promoting and maintaining increased calorie consumption. Treatment included nutritional education, gradually increasing calorie goals, contingency management, and relaxation training, and was evaluated in a multiple baseline design across four meals. Children's calorie intake increased across meals, and total calorie intake was 32% to 60% above baseline at posttreatment. Increased calorie consumption was maintained at the 96-week follow-up (2 years posttreatment). The children's growth rates in weight and height were greater during the 2 years following treatment than the year prior to treatment. Increases in pace of eating and calories consumed per minute were also observed 1 year posttreatment. These findings replicated and extended earlier research supporting the efficacy of behavioral intervention in the treatment of malnutrition in children with cystic fibrosis.     

Psychosocial Predictors of Intent to Emigrate Among Portuguese Adolescents

Information about the intent to emigrate was collected for a sample of 960 adolescents living in the northern region of Portugal. This question was part of a detailed questionnaire designed to assess specific issues concerning social representations of migration-namely, information, attitude, and fields of representation. Using information about the sociodemographic characteristics and the components of social representation mentioned above, our aim was to identify the independent predictors underlying the adolescent's intent to emigrate. Due to the great number of factors involved in the analysis, we conducted a preliminary selection of independent predictors within each of the aforementioned components and created a global index describing their importance. The findings indicate that, among all components of a social representation, attitude and representation of detachment and adaptation are the most important predictors of intent to emigrate. The relatively poor ability of sociodemographic variables to predict a future emigration does not mean that they are not important, but rather that they are more likely to condition attitude, the strongest predictor of a future emigration in the northern region of Portugal. The implication of these findings for handling intervening migration policies is discussed.     

Grading the ‘cultural literacy’ project

The essay examines the argument advanced by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., for instituting ‘cultural literacy’ as a fundamental priority of schools. A number of confusions and equivocations in Hirsch's reasoning are identified, and the propensity of his project to indoctrinate is exposed. Among the features of Hirsch's argument shown to be troubling are his shifting construal of ‘language’, his inconsistency about the requirements of cultural literacy, and his uncritical relation to traditional images of the American past and present. The upshot is to raise the question why Hirsch's project has elicited wide support and praise.     

Minority influence and social categorization

In this article, a theoretical distinction is proposed between representative outgroup minorities (representative of a minority category in the society, e.g. gays) and dissident outgroup minorities (defined as a minority subgroup within a larger outgroup category). Two studies are reported comparing the social influence of dissident outgroup minorities with that of ingroup minorities (belonging to the subject's own social category). It was predicted that a position advocated by a dissident outgroup minority would be more readily accepted than that of an ingroup minority, but that the ingroup minority would be more likely to elicit the generation of new, alternative solutions. A first experiment in which subjects were either exposed to an ingroup minority, an outgroup minority, or no influence source confirmed these predictions. In a second experiment, subjects were either exposed to a majority or to a minority source either belonging to the subject's own social category or to the outgroup. The results indicate that the position of an ingroup majority was readily accepted whereas the otherwise identical message of an outgroup majority was rejected; neither ingroup nor outgroup majority stimulated the development of alternative proposals. Again, in line with Nemeth' (1986a) theory, the position of an ingroup minority was rejected but stimulated the generation of new, alternative proposals. The differential role of social category membership in minority and majority influence and the applicability of Nemeth' (1986a) theory to the attitude change area are discussed.     

Referenzsemantik in der Partnermodellierung

How can we explain that an assertion on something perceived can be understood in the same manner by somebody who cannot perceive that scene? This problem bases the interest in computational linguistics in how listener modeling could possibly be harmonized with reference semantics. Mental images substituting real perception appear as a way out. The architecture of the listener model has to be adapted to the creation and use of such pictorial data structures. Furthermore, the relation between the latter and a verbal (i. e., propositional) representation must be understood. The resulting architecture of a listener model with reference semantics can be employed to solve communicational problems from three general classes in a better way, as is demonstrated by an example implementation.     

Cognitive Biases and Political Party Affiliation in Intergroup Conflict

Employing the motivational basis of the false consensus bias, this study hypothesized that the degree of assumed similarity to in-group attitudes would differ among supporters of various political groups in intergroup conflict. We defined a conflict-maintaining bias, the adversary's extremity bias, and examined how the degree of the bias would also differ among supporters of various political groups. Data were gathered from Arab and Jewish high school and university students in Israel. Our hypotheses, that in intergroup conflict assumed similarity to in-group attitudes and the adversary's extremity bias would be greater among supporters of less conciliatory political parties than among supporters of more conciliatory political parties, were supported for one group in the conflict but not the other. Explanations of our findings are based on the differential power status of the 2 groups in the particular conflict.     

Coping Strategies as Predictors of Distress in Survivors of Single and Multiple Sexual Victimization and Nonvictimized Controls

This study investigated the relationship between coping strategies and distress symptomatology in survivors of sexual revictimization. Coping strategies were assessed with the revised Ways of Coping Scale (Aldwin & Revenson, 1987). Distress symptoms included global distress, depression, anxiety, and somatization. Subjects were 44 survivors of sexual victimization in both childhood and adulthood; 54 survivors of a single incident of sexual victimization in childhood; and 256 nonvictimized individuals. All were drawn from a subject pool of female undergraduate students. Multivariate analysis of variance revealed significant differences between groups on reported symptomatology and coping strategies. Victimized groups reported more distress than did the nonvictimized group. The multiple victimization group indicated greater use of coping strategies than did the nonvictimized group, and both victimized groups reported greater use of the escapism strategy than did the nonvictimized group. Multiple backward regression analysis found that coping strategies were predictive of distress symptomatology in all three groups, with escapism as the most potent predictor of distress for each group. Coping strategies were the most powerful predictors of distress in the multiply victimized group. The results of this study provide strong support for the importance of addressing coping strategies in clinical intervention of distress, particularly with survivors of multiple sexual victimization.