A randomized controlled trial of a coping group intervention for adults with HIV who are AIDS bereaved: longitudinal effects on grief.

The authors sought to study the longitudinal effects of a cognitive-behavioral group intervention for coping with AIDS bereavement among a diverse sample of adults who were HIV positive. Participants (N = 267) were randomly assigned to receive the 12-week intervention or individual therapy upon request. Measures were administered at baseline, postintervention, and 4-, 8-, and 12-month follow-ups. Longitudinal data were analyzed with linear mixed models to examine change in grief by condition across the study period and the effect of the intervention on grief through its interaction with psychiatric distress. The authors used the Grief Reaction Index to assess grief and the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised to assess global psychiatric distress. Participants in both conditions reported decreases in grief severity. However, among those with higher levels of psychiatric distress, participants in the group intervention had significantly lower grief severity scores compared with participants in the individual therapy condition. The long-term effectiveness of this AIDS-bereavement intervention for psychiatrically distressed people with HIV/AIDS supports the need for tailored interventions among those at risk for complicated grief responses.     

ASSESSMENT OF SELF-INJURIOUS BEHAVIOR MAINTAINED BY ACCESS TO SELF-RESTRAINT MATERIALS

This study replicates and extends prior research showing that access to self-restraint materials can reinforce self-injurious behavior (SIB). A functional analysis was conducted showing that SIB occurred at differentially high rates when access to restraint materials (a leather jacket) was made contingent on the behavior. In addition, an alone condition during the functional analysis showed that SIB did not occur in the absence of restraint materials. Finally, a treatment analysis showed that functional communication training was effective using an alternative reinforcer.     

Units of counting: Developmental changes

Insofar as counting is directed toward a definite quantification goal, only items that qualify as valid instances of what is being quantified should be included in the count. Thus, the choice of what to treat as a unit to be counted depends upon one's quantification goals. The present research examined developmental changes in the way children define units for counting. In the first experiment, children were shown arrays of toy animals and asked to count either the number of families or the number of individuals within a family. In the second and third experiments, the stimuli were objects that came apart into two pieces. Children were shown arrays composed of some intact objects and some objects that were separated into their parts, and they were asked either to count the number of wholes or the number of pieces in the entire array. Virtually all the counts children generated were based on some type of common unit, even if it was only defined by physical discreteness. However, marked age differences emerged in children's adaptation of their counting units to what they were asked to count.     

Observer Influences on Fathers and Mothers: An Experimental Manipulation of the Structure and Function of Parent – Infant Conversation

From studies over the past 20 years four contrasting hypotheses can be made about the nature of parent–infant communication: (1) mothers and fathers display similar skills to their infants and do not exert a differential influence on their development; (2) fathers are less sympathetic to their infants' level of development and therefore inadvertently stretch the child's development more than mothers; (3) both parents differentially socialize their sons' and daughters' early communicative skills; (4) any apparent differences between parents reflect their expectations about being observed. To examine these hypotheses together, this experiment records the communication of 10 mother–infant and 10 father–infant dyads in two conditions: when an observer was present or absent. The analysis revealed two patterns. Firstly, in keeping with most research on parent–child communication, mothers and fathers both simplified their speech to their infants in similar ways. Secondly, both the structure and function of parental communication showed differences between the two conditions and many of these differences were moderated by interactions between condition and sex of parent or child. The data thus provide more support for the first and fourth hypotheses cited above. It is suggested that analyses of parent–infant interaction should move away from simple assumptions about parental ‘influences’ upon children's development to consider the subtleties of different parental styles in different settings.     

CARIN theory reanalysis reanalyzed: a comment on Maguire, Devereux, Costello, and Cater (2007)

P. Maguire, B. Devereux, F. Costello, and A. Cater discussed the Gagné and Shoben (1997) CARIN theory of conceptual combination and, after presenting a sample drawn from the British National Corpus and comparing the two corpora, concluded that the Gagné and Shoben corpus is too small and unrepresentative. They then discussed the mathematical model presented by Gagné and Shoben and claimed that the model does not incorporate relational competition. In this article, the authors present critical aspects of the mathematical model not considered by Maguire et al. and show that the mathematical instantiation of CARIN presented by Gagn and Shoben is, in fact, very sensitive to the number of strong competing relations. The authors then present some new comparisons between the corpora, showing that they correspond surprisingly well.     

Under-represented college students and extracurricular involvement: the effects of various student organizations on academic performance

Several studies indicate that students who are involved in extracurricular activities during college are more academically successful than are those who are not; however, most studies do not distinguish between different types of activities nor do they adequately consider the unique experiences of under-represented college students. Drawing on Ogbu’s theory of oppositional culture and Tinto’s theory of educational departure, I examine the effect of involvement in six different types of student organizations, as well as involvement in a co-ethnic student organization, on the academic performance of African American and Latino college students attending 27 different selective colleges. I find that student organizations differentially affect academic performance, depending on the type of organization and the race and gender of the students.

Peripheral 8-OH-DPAT and scopolamine infused into the frontal cortex produce passive avoidance retention impairments in rats

The present study determined whether peripheral injections of the 5HT(1A) agonist (8-OH-DPAT), scopolamine infusions into the frontal cortex, or a combination of both drug treatments would produce impairments in rats trained on passive avoidance. Using a 2x2 design, rats were infused with either bacteriostatic water or 30 microg/1 microl of scopolamine HCl into the frontal cortex 30 min before being trained on passive avoidance. This was followed by injections (ip) of either 0.1% ascorbic acid/bacteriostatic water or 30 microg/kg of 8-OH-DPAT 15 min later. All subjects were tested for retention 72h later. At test, the initial latency to enter into the black shocked compartment and the total time spent in the white safe compartment (TTW) were recorded. Analysis of the latency data indicated that scopolamine and 8-OH-DPAT, when administered singly or in combination, produced amnesia for the task. Assessment of TTW scores, however, revealed that of the three drug-treated groups, only animals treated with 8-OH-DPAT alone tended to avoid the previously shocked black compartment and spend more time in the white safe compartment. These data indicate that either stimulating 5-HT(1A) or blocking frontal cortical muscarinic receptors at training impairs passive avoidance performance and that the deficit following the latter treatment is somewhat more extensive. Implications for the role frontal cortical muscarinic and 5HT(1A) receptors play in learning and memory are discussed.     

Person–Group Dissimilarity in Involvement in Bullying and Its Relation with Social Status

This study tested a person-group dissimilarity model for the relation between peer preference on the one hand, and bullying and victimization on the other. This model accounts for both individual and group (i.e., classroom) factors and postulates that children will be rejected by their peers when they display behaviors that deviate from the group norm. We tested the model in a sample of 2,578 early adolescents in 109 middle school classrooms. Multilevel analysis was used to account for our nested data when examining individual and group effects simultaneously in cross-level interaction terms. The results supported our hypotheses based on the dissimilarity model. Classroom norms of behavior appeared to affect the relation between involvement in bullying and peer preference, in that early adolescents who bullied were more likely to be rejected by their peers in a classroom where bullying was non-normative. In classrooms where bullying was normative, adolescents who bullied were less likely to be rejected or were even liked by their peers (i.e., positive scores on peer preference). The same was true for victimization, although victims still had low scores on peer preference even when victimization was normative. Theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed in terms of directions for future research and intervention in bullying.     

Stream segregation of narrow-band noise bursts

Normally hearing adults heard rapid alternations of a pair of band-limited noise bursts that had flat spectra (in terms of equal-loudness weighting of components) and sharp band edges. The bursts differed in center frequency (CF), but were matched on overall intensity, on bandwidth (BW) on a logfrequency scale, and (roughly) on pitch strength. Listeners judged the ease with which the sequence could be held together perceptually in a single auditory stream (vs. forming separate high and low streams). Involuntary segregation was examined as a function of the following measures of frequency separation of the alternating noise bands: (1) the closest band edges, (2) the most remote band edges, (3) the CFs of the bands on a logarithmic scale, and (4) the BWs. Segregation was best predicted from the separation of the two CFs on a log-frequency scale (very strong effect). Increasing the BWs of the two alternating bursts (the same size, in log frequency, for both bands) also led to greater segregation (very weak effect).     

Are we assessing guilt correctly? An investigation of the psychometric properties of a prominent guilt measure

The construct of trait guilt has played an important role in psychological theory across many fields of psychology (e.g., as a diagnostic criterion in clinical psychology, as an individual difference in personality psychology, and as a motivational antecedent or emotional moderator in social and organizational psychology); however, the measurement of guilt has received comparatively limited attention in the literature. Specifically, existing measures have limited factor analytic support, limited evidence of convergent validity among the measures, and although the theoretical distinction between guilt and shame is well established, there is limited empirical support for the discriminant validity of these constructs as they are currently measured. The current study investigates the psychometric properties of the most commonly used measure of guilt, the Test of Self-Conscious Affect-3 (TOSCA-3; in: Tangney, The Test of Self Conscious Affect-3. George Mason University, Fairfax, 2000), in order to (a) examine the factor structure of the measure, (b) estimate the convergent validity of the measure with other guilt assessment instruments, and (c) examine the discriminant validity of guilt and shame. Results involving a sample of 1760 participants provide support for a multitrait-multimethod model and the discriminant validity of guilt and shame. However, limited evidence of convergent validity between the TOSCA-3 and the Revised Mosher Guilt Inventory (φ?=?.21) and the Trauma-Related Guilt Inventory (φ?=?.10) suggested the TOSCA-3 is not assessing guilt in the same manner as more contextualized measures of guilt, highlighting the importance of measurement choice for guilt researchers. Implications for the measurement of trait guilt are discussed.