Moderation and Mediation of HIV-Prevention Interventions: Relationship Status,Intentions, and Condom Use Among College Students1

This study examined the effects of 2 HIV prevention interventions on condom use and mediators of condom use. College students were randomly assigned to a control condition or an intervention (communication skills or technical skills). Those who received either intervention had greater condom use self-efficacy, more positive condom use attitudes, and stronger intentions to use condoms than did controls. Furthermore, 3-month follow-up data revealed that students in either intervention who were not in a steady dating relationship reported more consistent condom use than did those in the control condition, whereas students who were in either intervention and in a relationship reported somewhat less consistent condom use than did those in the control condition. Analyses suggested that effects of the interventions on condom use were mediated by increased intentions to use condoms.     

ASSESSMENT AND TREATMENT OF DESTRUCTIVE BEHAVIOR MAINTAINED BY STEREOTYPIC OBJECT MANIPULATION

In the current investigation, 2 participants with mental retardation displayed property destruction and stereotypy, and both responses involved the same materials (e.g., breaking and tapping plastic objects). Three experiments were conducted (a) to indirectly assess the functions of these two responses, (b) to determine their relation to one another, and (c) to develop a treatment to reduce the more serious behavior, property destruction. In Experiment 1, previously destroyed materials were either present or absent, and their presence reduced property destruction but not stereotypy. In Experiment 2, matched toys (ones that produced sensory stimulation similar to stereotypy) were either present or absent, or were replaced by unmatched toys (for 1 participant). Matched toys produced large reductions and unmatched toys produced small reductions in property destruction and stereotypy. In Experiment 3, attempts to pick up undestroyed objects were either blocked or not blocked while matched toys were continuously available. Response blocking reduced property destruction (and attempts), prevented stereotypy, and increased manipulation of matched toys. These results suggest that the two aberrant responses formed a chain (e.g., breaking and then tapping the object), which was maintained by the sensory consequences (e.g., auditory stimulation) of the terminal response, and that previously destroyed material or matched toys made the initial response (property destruction) unnecessary.     

Treatment of traumagenic beliefs among sexually abused girls and their mothers: An evaluation study

The objective of this study was to evaluate and compare the efficacy of two short-term individual therapy interventions for sexually abused girls and their nonoffending female caretakers. Thirty-two girls, ages 8 to 13, and their caretakers from primarily low-income, African-American families were randomly assigned to a theoretically based, structured experimental treatment program or to a relatively unstructured comparison intervention. Measures of child outcome were completed before and after the treatment program by each parent and child, and by a clinician blind to treatment condition. Pre- and postmeasures of maternal outcome were completed by the caretaker and a clinician not involved in the treatment. Both treatment programs yielded decreases in children's posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms and traumagenic beliefs reflecting self-blame and powerlessness, and increases in children's overall psychosocial functioning. The experimental intervention was more effective than the comparison program in increasing abuse-related caretaker support of the child and in decreasing caretaker self-blame and expectations of undue negative impact of the abuse on the child. Clinical impfications of these findings include the development of interventions targeting sexually abused children's traumagenic beliefs and nonoffending parents' support of their victimized children.This research was supported by the Emory Medical Care Foundation and the Children's Trust Fund of Georgia. Preliminary findings were presented at the Society for Research in Child Development, New Orleans, March 1993.The authors thank the clinic families, volunteer therapists, and project staff members whose work together made this research possible. Core project staff members other than the authors include Milonne Ambroise, Mary Lynn Dell, Sherry Dey, Beth Dreelin, Jenny Gould, Katherine January, Suzann Lawry, Marie Simmons, and Lisseth Rojas.     

Cultural specificity of support sources,correlates and contexts: Three studies of African-American and Caucasian youth

Levels and correlates of parental support, peer support, partner support, and/or spiritual support among African American and Caucasian youth were examined in three contexts: adolescent pregnancy (Study 1), first year of college (Study 2), and adolescence and young adulthood (ages 15–29; Study 3). Partially consistent with a cultural specificity perspective, in different contexts different support sources were higher in level and/or more strongly related to adjustment for one ethnic group than the other. Among pregnant adolescents, levels of spiritual support were higher for African Americans than Caucasians; additionally, peer support was positively related to well-being only for African Americans whereas partner support was positively related to well-being only for Caucasians. Among college freshmen, family support was more strongly related to institutional and goal commitment for African Americans than Caucasians; conversely, peer support was more strongly related to institutional and goal commitment among Caucasians. Among 15 to 29-year-olds, levels of parental support and spiritual support were higher among African Americans than Caucasians; additionally, spiritual support was positively related to self-esteem for African Americans but not for Caucasians. Implications and limitations of the research are discussed. The third study was supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grant RO1 MH40963. We thank Monica Greene, Shea Lyda, Wendy Stevenson, and the many undergraduate students who contributed to the three research projects. We also acknowledge the very thoughtful and helpful comments of the anonymous reviewers and the editor, Edison Trickett.     

Psychoticism and signalled versus unsignalled reaction time

Considering the findings that schizophrenics have been found to show relatively slow reaction times (RTs), and often do not benefit from ordinarily helpful information (e.g. a warning signal), the present study investigated the relationship between these variables and psychoticism (P). One hundred and three male Ss were administered a questionnaire which provides a measure of P. In addition, all Ss were tested on an RT task under unsignalled (i.e. no warning signal) and signalled conditions. The results showed that the expected improvement in reaction speed with a warning signal was of a lesser magnitude for those high on P. Furthermore, the difference was due to the faster RTs for high P scorers in the unsignalled condition. The data suggest that high P scorers are like schizophrenics in that they show less benefit from a warning signal, but are dissimilar in terms of reaction speed in an unsignalled task.     

Career change and congruence of personality type: An examination of DOT-derived work environment designations

Holland's theory of congruence of work environments was examined by analyzing the career redirection of 62 men of managerial and professional level who changed occupations between the ages of 33 and 54. Three-letter personality codes for each subject were obtained by administering the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory. Dictionary of Occupational Titles codes for first and second occupation were obtained and then translated into Holland codes. These were compared to the personality code for each man to determine whether the first or second job was more congruent. It was found that 26 men changed to careers more congruent with their personality, 25 to careers less congruent, and 11 made no change. The results of the study do not lend support to Holland's theory, probably because of the imprecision of DOT categories for research purposes. The need for a more reliable means for coding work environments is discussed.     

Depth of processing: When the principle of congruity fails

Two factors, level of processing (Craik & Lockhart, 1972) and congruity (Schulman, 1974), known to have large effects on the recall of experimenter-provided responses to questions, were examined in a series of five incidental learning experiments using subject-generated responses. The data show that manipulation of level of processing has the same effect on recall of subjectgenerated responses as it does on experimenter-provided responses. However, the effect of congruity is reversed for subject-generated responses. The data suggest that the difficulty of generating unrelated responses (“incongruous“ items) may account, at least in part, for the failure of the “principle of congruity“ with subject-generated responses.     

Involuntary memory and the development of retrieval skills in young children

An incidental memory paradigm was used to study involuntary encoding processes and voluntary retrieval strategies in children's memory. Preschool (mean age: 4 years, 4 months) and kindergarten (mean age: 5 years, 10 months) children sorted pictures according to their color or category membership, and then received either a recall test (Experiment 1) or a recognition test (Experiment 2). Better retention of category- than color-sorted items was observed for kindergarten children in free recall, preschool and kindergarten children in cued recall, and neither group in recognition. These results were interpreted in terms of the retrieval strategies used by children in each of the memory tasks. The importance of distinguishing between voluntary and involuntary memory processes, and between acquisition and retrieval, in studies of depth-of-processing was emphasized. Developmental differences in performance appear to derive primarily from the role of voluntary search strategies in retrieval, rather than from age differences in involuntary encoding processes.     

Perceptual invariance for stop consonants in different positions

The basis for the invariant perception of place of articulation in pre- and postvocalic stops was investigated using the selective adaptation paradigm. Experiments 1 and 2 considered the role of identical bursts, mirror-image formant transitions, and similar onset and offset spectra in the invariant perception of place of articulation in CV and VC stimuli, and Experiment 3 considered the importance of the second two cues in a VCV context. The results of these experiments suggest that, at the level of processing tapped by selective adaptation, neither identical bursts, mirror-image formant transitions, nor similar onset and offset spectra are the basis for the invariant perception of place of articulation in initial and final position. The vowel portion of an adapter was found to affect perception of the consonant portion of a stimulus, and the direction of this effect was predictable from the acoustic characteristics of the consonant and vowel. The implications of these findings for the nature of selective adaptation are discussed.