Merging community and faith-based organizations to empower African American males

The Holistic Needs of African American Men (HAAM) Program provides information and resources that allow African American men to take full control of their lives and tell "their" story. The majority of the participants indicated they did not trust the current service or health care systems in the United States because they felt these systems robbed them of their "voice." HAAM provided the African American men with needed support and assisted them in repositioning their lives for success.     

The Theory of Reasoned Action as a Model of Children's Health Behavior1

This research examined the applicability of the theory of reasoned action to school‐age children. Using structural equation modeling, we longitudinally modeled children's attitudes, norms, intentions, and behavior with regard to drinking alcohol. Respondents were 1,061 children attending public schools in the northwestern United States. Attitude, norms, and intentions (measured when the children were in 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th grades) were used to predict alcohol use 1 year later. Two modifications of the model improved the overall fit at each grade level: separating attitude into 2 dimensions (positive and negative), and adding a path from social norm to behavior. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.     

Occupational wage differentials among university educated technical personnel in a developing economy

Data taken in 1970–1971 from three university-trained occupational groups (2796 engineers, 1430 economists/business-administrators, and 162 basic scientists) in São Paulo's manufacturing industries are used in a path analysis to draw interoccupational comparisons concerning the antecedents of occupational wage differentials. The worker's total hourly wage is the dependent variable. A new variable, occupational influence level, is employed as immediately antecedent to wage, as in job experience (years in the present job). Years of advanced education, age, and seniority in the firm are treated as exogenous variables. Similarities and differences among occupations are discussed. As a whole the analysis illustrates a strategy of comparative occupational analysis.     

How is phonological processing related to individual differences in children’s arithmetic skills?

While there is evidence for an association between the development of reading and arithmetic, the precise locus of this relationship remains to be determined. Findings from cognitive neuroscience research that point to shared neural correlates for phonological processing and arithmetic as well as recent behavioral evidence led to the present hypothesis that there exists a highly specific association between phonological awareness and single‐digit arithmetic with relatively small problem sizes. The present study examined this association in 37 typically developing fourth and fifth grade children. Regression analyses revealed that phonological awareness was specifically and uniquely related to arithmetic problems with a small but not large problem size. Further analysis indicated that problems with a high probability of being solved by retrieval, but not those typically associated with procedural problem‐solving strategies, are correlated with phonological awareness. The specific association between phonological awareness and arithmetic problems with a small problem size and those for which a retrieval strategy is most common was maintained even after controlling for general reading ability and phonological short‐term memory. The present findings indicate that the quality of children’s long‐term phonological representations mediates individual differences in single‐digit arithmetic, suggesting that more distinct long‐term phonological representations are related to more efficient arithmetic fact retrieval.     

Utilization Behavior: Clinical Manifestations and Neurological Mechanisms

This paper describes a variety of motor release phenomena, including manual grasping and groping, imitation behavior, utilization behavior, and alien hand sign, their clinical manifestations, and proposed neural mechanisms. One of these specific neurobehavioral disorders, initially described by Lhermitte (Brain [1983] 106: 237–255), and termed utilization behavior, is addressed in more detail. Patients with this disorder are described as reaching out and using objects in the environment in an automatic manner. The current paper provides a comprehensive review of studies that have documented utilization behavior in individuals with a variety of pathologies, all having a specific predilection for the frontal lobes and frontal-striatal systems. Goldberg's (Behavioral and Brain Sciences [1985] 8: 567–616) theoretical framework for understanding motor release phenomena, which conceptualizes these behaviors as resulting from an imbalance between proposed medial (voluntary, goal directed, and future directed) and lateral (automatic, stimulus bound, and visually based) motor systems, is also discussed. Utilization behavior may prove to be a common underlying cause of high levels of excessive and intrusive motor behaviors within various clinical populations. A more comprehensive understanding of the neural systems underlying utilization behavior may prove highly useful for the differential diagnosis of conditions involving the mesial frontal cortex and fronto-striatal connections. Recent studies have started to investigate utilization behavior in clinical populations with known or suspected frontal system dysfunction, including adult patients with a variety of psychiatric conditions and children with ADHD.     

Persisting apraxia in two left-handed, aphasic patients with right-hemisphere lesions

Apraxia usually follows a left hemisphere lesion in right-handers with left hemisphere speech representation. Apraxia following a right hemisphere lesion in left-handers is rare, however, and not well documented in the literature. Two left-handed patients are described in whom apraxia and aphasia followed a right hemisphere lesion. Both the apraxic and the aphasic deficits improved but were still demonstrable 6 weeks following the infarct. The data are consistent with those for right-handers with left hemisphere lesions in suggesting some overlap of anatomical structures for the control of speech and praxis.