Reducing STD/HIV Stigmatizing Attitudes Through Community Popular Opinion Leaders in Chinese Markets

Reducing STDs and HIV/AIDS incidence requires campaigns designed to change knowledge, attitudes, and practices of risky sexual behavior. In China, a significant obstacle to such changes is the stigma associated with these diseases. Thus 1 campaign intervention strategy is to train credible community leaders to discuss these issues in everyday social venues. This study tested the effectiveness of such an approach on reducing HIV/AIDS stigma, across 2 years, from a sample of over 4,500 market vendors, in 3 conditions. Results showed an increasing growth in market communication about intervention messages, and concomitant declines in stigmatizing attitudes, across time, with the greatest changes in community popular opinion leaders, significant changes in intervention nonopinion leaders, and little change in the control markets.     

Audience Design in Multiparty Conversation

How do speakers design what they say in order to communicate effectively with groups of addressees who vary in their background knowledge of the topic at hand? Prior findings indicate that when a speaker addresses a pair of listeners with discrepant knowledge, that speakers Aim Low, designing their utterances for the least knowledgeable of the two addressees. Here, we test the hypothesis that speakers will depart from an Aim Low approach in order to efficiently communicate with larger groups of interacting partners. Further, we ask whether the cognitive demands of tracking multiple conversational partners' perspectives places limitations on successful audience design. We find that speakers can successfully track information about what up to four of their partners do and do not know in conversation. When addressing groups of 3–4 addressees at once, speakers design language based on the combined knowledge of the group. These findings point to an audience design process that simultaneously represents the perspectives of multiple other individuals and combines these representations in order to design utterances that strike a balance between the different needs of the individuals within the group.     

Doctoral training in behavior analysis: Training generalized problem-solving skills

This essay provides guidelines for designing a doctoral program in behavior analysis. First, we propose a general accomplishment for all behavior analytic doctoral students: that they be able to solve problems concerning individual behavior within a range of environments. Second, in order to achieve this goal, we propose that students be trained in conceptual and experimental analysis of behavior, the application of behavioral principles and the administration of behavioral programs. This training should include class work, but it should emphasize the immersion of students in a variety of environments in which they are required to use behavior analytic strategies. Third, we provide an example of a hypothetical graduate program that involves the proposed training. Finally, an evaluation plan is suggested for determining whether a training program is in fact producing students who are generalized problem-solvers. At each step, we justify our point of view from a perspective that combines principles from behavior analysis and educational systems design.     

Physical self-efficacy and actualization

In his theorizing about self-actualization, Maslow speculated that physical ability and physical self-confidence were two aspects of cooperative dominance which were associated positively with actualization. These aspects of dominance bear close resemblance to the Perceived Physical Ability (PPA) and the Physical Self-Presentation Confidence (PSPC) dimensions of the Physical Self-Efficacy (PSE) Inventory. Accordingly, the PPA and PSPC scores of undergraduate men and women were correlated with their scores on the Personal Orientation Inventory (POI), a popular measure of actualization, to test Maslow's hypotheses. The results showed that, contrary to Maslow's claims, PPA is not a positive correlate of self-actualization. However, strong support was found for Maslow's contention that high-PSPC individuals are more likely to be actualizing than low-PSPC people. Also, Maslow's hypothesis that actualizers are high in global sensation seeking (SS) was tested. The data indicated that only male actualizers were high in various aspects of SS, but female actualizers were not. Multiple regression analyses revealed further that both SS and PSPC are primary contributors to POI for men, but only PSPC contributes significantly to POI for women. Discussion focused on the reasons why research findings showing that increases in physical fitness lead to increases in self-esteem cannot be used to support the view that physical fitness and actualization are linked positively.     

Death by 1000 ‘true fans’: Do marketing laws apply to music listening?

The advice to musicians and marketers is to focus on what they love: a truism for practitioners is to find 1000 ‘true fans’ and make $100 from each of them (Kelly, 2008. 1000 True fans. The Technium). If this advice is correct, we should see musicians with loyal user bases engaging more with their favourite artists and less with other music, suggesting a narrow targeting strategy would suffice. On the other hand, the established marketing laws indicate that the listeners of very different genres should overlap more than conventional wisdom would suggest, supporting the need for a much broader approach to targeting potential audiences. Given these conflicting views, musicians need to know if they should market to their existing listeners, the listeners of music similar to theirs (i.e., the same genre), or if they should try to reach a much wider audience. We turn to established choice patterns from the marketing literature to address these questions in the music context. This study examines 84,000,000 observations of music listening from 27,000 unique global users between 2013 and 2014 and survey data from 2019 containing music listening from over 1000 representative respondents in the United States. The results show that listening follows the Duplication of Purchase law for genres, artists, albums, and songs, at an annual, 6-months, 3-months, 1-month, and 1-week period, with no indication of partitioned music listening. The implication is that musicians should try to reach all potential listeners, regardless of what they already listen to. These findings contribute to the theoretical knowledge about duplication analyses of various durations, extend the contexts of choice behaviour that exhibit this pattern, and managerially, to knowledge about the extent of potential audiences and ‘share of ear’ competition.     

Outflow and inflow in movement duplication

Following prolonged exposure to two vertical grating patterns differing in spatial frequency—one pattern illuminated in green light alternated with the other pattern illuminated in red light—human observers will sometimes report seeing desaturated complementary colors when presented with a neutrally illuminated test field consisting of adjacent halves of the two adapting gratings. The number of such color reports increases as the difference between the spatial frequencies of the adapting gratings increases. This frequency-specific chromatic aftereffect is similar to that obtained with orientation-specific color adaptation and may be mediated by neural “channels,” sensitive to both color and frequency input, which are similar to units known to exist in the visual systems of lower organisms.     

Functional equivalence between same-different classifications and judged similarity of Markov patterns

This experiment represented an initial at tempt at comparing same-different classifications and similarity judgments of Markov histoforms sampled from three different schema families. A measure of individual stimulus variability was more strongfy related to classification responses than to judged similarity. Dichotomous responses, derived from the similarity data by imposing threshold criteria, were found to be highly similor to real classification responses when the threshold values were estimated directly from the latter; little correspondence, however, was obtained using optimal classification criteria. The results support the notion that somewhat different features are used in making classification responses and similarity judgments, and indicate the need for developing more sensitive tasks involving controlled scanning of pattem information.     

A Plexiglas helmet and catheter protection assembly for chronic intravenous administration of drugs in small primates

A restraint and catheter-protection system consisting of a Plexiglas helmet and a nylon-tubing protector line has been developed to permit the long-term study of drug self-administration in monkeys. Frequent observations of monkeys in the system over a period exceeding a year have shown that the technique satisfies the requirements for long-term study of drug administration through an indwelling catheter and avoids several recurring problems inherent in other protection systems. Additional applications of the helmet and protector line are discussed.