Predicting adolescent eating and activity behaviors: the role of social norms and personal agency.

Guided by the theory of planned behavior, this 2-week longitudinal study examined health behaviors in a sample of 279 adolescents. Social norms and perceived behavioral control (PBC) were tested as predictors of self-reported intentions and behaviors in 2 domains, eating and physical activity. Differentiating, as opposed to aggregating, parent and peer norms provided unique information. For PBC, the authors distinguished global causality beliefs from self-related agency beliefs and intraself (effort, ability) from extraself (parents, teachers) means. Intraself agency beliefs strongly predicted healthy intentions, whereas intraself causality beliefs had a negative influence. Patterns differed somewhat across behaviors and gender. Results highlight theoretical issues and provide potential targets for research on health promotion programs for youth.     

How Change Happens: Controlling Images,Mutuality, and Power

SUMMARY

Change is inevitable but it can go in a positive direction toward growth or in a negative direction. Extending Patricia Hill Collins' concept of controlling images (2000), we can see how these images interact with relational images and strategies of disconnection to obstruct growth on both the societal and the personal level. In therapy, change is defined as movement-in-relationship toward better connection; and increased connection leads to growth. Several aspects of therapy that lead to deeper and wider connection are explored, especially increasing the patient's power. Prior versions of parts of this article were presented at the Jean Baker Miller Summer Training Institutes in 2001 and 2002 and at the 2002 Learning from Women Conference sponsored by the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute and the Harvard Medical School/Cambridge Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.

As therapists, we're “in the business” of change–change for the better. That's our goal. Another word for change for the better is growth. Change is the essence of life. It is most obvious in children but it is a necessity through all of life. Change will occur inevitably but it can go in a positive or a negative direction. Further, I believe change toward growth creates pleasure. We feel most alive and zestful when we are engaged in this expanding activity.     

Manipulation of the apparatus and response context may reduce the US pre-exposure interference effect

In two experiments, we investigated whether manipulations of associations formed between the context and unconditioned stimulus (US) during exposure would reduce the retardation of future conditioning produced by exposure to the US. In the first experiment, we found that extinguishing the context reduced fear of the context and partially attenuated interference with future conditioning. This attenuation was only transient and there was considerable interference which was unaffected by extinction. In the second experiment, we found that signalling the US during pre-exposure which was carried out off-baseline did not reduce interference when conditioning was also carried out off-baseline. However, signalling the US did reduce interference when conditioning was subsequently continued on-baseline. These results suggest that although the US interference effect is partly mediated by conditioning of the context, it may also depend on learning about the unpredictability of the US during exposure, and some long-term, perhaps context specific, adaption-like mechanism.