School-Based Intervention for Social Skills in Children from Divorced Families

Divorce is an increasingly prevalent occurrence in society that has the potential to result in many adverse short- and long-term consequences for children and their parents. Social skills, such as those with peers, are one of the problems that may emerge for children of divorce. Despite this growing problem, there is a paucity of research available to effectively address the social skills needed to build and maintain positive peer interactions and subsequent relationships in students whose parents are no longer married. It was hypothesized that a social skills training program would be effective in remediating social skill deficits related to building relationships with peers in students from divorced families. The purpose of this study was to employ COPE, a school-based social skills program, to examine the effect on social skills in elementary students whose parents are divorced. Results of the social skills intervention indicated that the treatment was effective for most participants, but generalization of the COPE program had mixed results.     

FOOD NEGLECT AND INFANT DEVELOPMENT

The impact of food insecurity on child development in the general U.S. population is well‐established, yet little is known about the harm of food neglect relative to other types of maltreatment. Due to the harmful physiological impact of inadequate nutrients and the social impact of food‐related stress, it was hypothesized that food neglect would be more likely to impair infant cognitive and language development than physical abuse, sexual abuse, and other forms of neglect. Families of infants (N = 1,951) investigated by Child Protective Services were studied using the second cohort of the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well‐Being (NSCAW II; NSCAW Research Group, 2002). Results from multivariable logistic regression models that controlled for likely confounding variables showed that the odds of impairment in cognition and language were significantly greater when food neglect was the most serious form of maltreatment. Considering that both food insecurity and child neglect are associated with poverty and parental mental health problems, it will be important for child welfare and mental health professionals to work collaboratively to better the health of these vulnerable children.     

Attack-target attributes and pigeon aggression: Accessibility,vocalization, and body movements

Characteristics of the attack-target in laboratory tests appear to greatly influence the tendency for aggression to be initiated, maintained, and stopped. To address this question, accessibility, target movement, and vocalization among pigeon conspecifics were investigated in two different aggression tests: 1) paired aggression (PA); and 2) schedule-induced aggression (SI). In the PA test, dominant and subordinate roles formed quickly, and soon aggression episodes started to decline. In part, the subordinate's yielding behavior appeared to discourage attack. The significance of the target bird's behavior on attack frequency was borne out by the finding in the SI test that pigeons attacked a shielded, live, active target more often than a passive one. Furthermore, using a specially constructed stuffed pigeon in the SI test, results indicated that programmed, combined aggressive vocalization and body movement evoked most attacks with the VT schedule, vocalization alone evoked the next highest number of attacks, body movement alone the third most, and combined silence and immobility the least attacks. These findings provide a basis for explaining some past reported results associated with target features and a means for selecting other target features for future study.     

Articulatory-laryngeal interaction in stutterers and normal speakers: Effects of a bite-block on rapid voice initiation

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of restricting jaw movement with a bite-block on the voice reaction times (VRT) of adult stutterers and normal speakers. Ten stutterers and ten normal speakers initiated the sound // as rapidly as possible in response to 1 KHz cues in a nonbite-block and bite-block condition. In the nonbite-block condition all responses were initiated from a mandibular “closed” position. In the bite-block condition the jaw was fixed in a position approximating average jaw displacement for production of // in a VRT task. Results showed the group mean VRTs for the stutterers were significantly longer than for the normal speakers in both experimental conditions. Group mean VRTs were also significantly faster in the bite-block than the nonbite-block condition for both groups. Investigation of individual subject data, however, revealed that unlike the normal speakers, a subgroup of stutterers exhibited atypically long reaction times and an increase in VRTs with the jaw fixed. The possible role of neurophysiological interactions between articulatory and laryngeal behavior in stuttering is discussed.     

Cross's Nigrescence Model: From Theory to Scale to Theory

This article describes the theoretical and empirical evolution of the revised Cross nigrescence identity model (W. E. Cross, 1991) in the context of developing a new multidimensional measure, the Cross Racial Identity Scale (Vandiver et al., 2000). The research resulted in an expanded nigrescence model (W. E. Cross & B. J. Vandiver, 2001), and preliminary factor analytic strategies support the existence of 6 subscales. Este artículo describe la evolución teoretica y empirica de el modelo indentidad de nigrescence creado y revisado por W. E. Cross (1991) en el contexto de la creación de una nueva escala miltidimensional, la Escala de Identidad Racial Cross (B. J. Vandiver et al., 2000). La investigación resultó en un modelo de nigrescence extendido (W. E. Cross & B. J. Vandiver, 2001), y las estrategias factor analíticas preliminarias sustentan la existencia de 6 sub‐escalas.     

Nigrescence Theory: Current Status and Challenges for the Future

This article raises a number of critical questions for scale development and theorizing in the field of Black racial identity. In particular, the authors suggest that research on Black racial identity would benefit from longitudinal studies and the examination of the existence of overarching racial identity constructs. Este artículo plantea varias preguntas críticas sobre el desarrollo de escalas y teorías en el campo de la Identidad Racial Negra. En lo particular, los autores sugieren que investigaciones basadas en la Identidad Racial Negra se beneficiarian con estudios longitudinales y la examinación de la existencia de conceptos expansivos sobre la identidad racial.