Brief Counseling With Hispanic American College Students

Sixteen Hispanic American college students met with a Puerto Rican counselor for 2 brief counseling sessions. Brief counseling was a viable and effective approach in helping the students reach their goals. Types of student concerns about and student perceptions of brief counseling were also examined.     

Using behavior contracts to improve behavior of children and adolescents in multiple settings

Research has shown that behavior contracts, a form of contingency management, can promote a wide range of behavior changes for individuals in varied populations; however, relatively few studies have been conducted in nonacademic settings. In the context of two service projects, we evaluated the extent to which behavior contracts improved problem behavior for 11 children and adolescents in residential treatment facilities and foster homes using nonconcurrent multiple baseline across participants’ designs with three or more tiers and supplemental statistical analysis for each tier. Practitioners in each setting implemented individualized behavior contracts for 5 to 59 weeks. Results show that behavior improved substantially for six participants but was relatively unchanged for the other five participants. We discuss the limitations of this clinically driven study, as well as clinical implications of our mixed findings.     

The Impact of Face Skin Tone vs. Face Symmetry on Perceived Facial Attractiveness

The purpose of this study was to assess and compare the relative contribution of skin tone and symmetry on judgment of attractiveness regarding female faces. Two hundred and fifteen Mozambican adults were presented with a set of faces, and instructed to rate their degree of attractiveness along a continuous scale. Chi-square, factorial weight analyses and ANOVA were used to analyze the data. Face skin tone had a significant impact on the participants' attractiveness judgment of target faces. However, the target face skin tone contribution to the participants' attractiveness judgment (5% of the total variance) was much weaker than the contribution of the target face symmetry (85% of the total variance). These results imply that skin bleaching, common among Black people across sub-Saharan African countries, is not only dangerous to the health of those who practice it, but it is unlikely to make them appear much more attractive.     

The Diffusion of Youth-Led Participatory Research in Urban Schools: The Role of the Prevention Support System in Implementation and Sustainability

This article discusses the dissemination of a process of youth-led participatory research in urban secondary schools within the Interactive Systems Framework for Dissemination and Implementation (ISF) developed in collaboration with the CDC and its university partners (Wandersman et al. American Journal of Community Psychology, 41(3-4) 2008). The focus here is on the development of the Prevention Support System with respect to general and innovation-specific capacity building. The specific process under study involves youth-led needs assessment and research to inform the planning of prevention programs and policies to address students' health and developmental needs. The article first briefly describes the youth-led research process, its potential benefits, and a case example in two urban secondary schools. It then describes challenges and responses in providing support for the diffusion of this model in 6 secondary schools. The settings are urban public schools with a majority of students of color from diverse ethnic groups: Asian-American, Latino, and African-American. This project constitutes a collaborative partnership with a university school of public health and community-based organizations (CBOs) to build capacity for long-term, sustainable implementation of this innovative process within the local school system. The perspectives of the university-based researcher and the CBO partners on the development and effectiveness of the Prevention Support System are presented.     

Paul Tillich's Realistic Stance Toward the Vital Trends of Nature

Many scientists have argued forcefully for the pointlessness of nature, something that challenges any doctrine of Creation. However, apparent design and comprehensibility are also to be found in nature; it is ambivalent. This trait is nowhere more evident than in the natural inclinations that lead to concupiscence and the "seven deadly sins" in human beings. These inclinations are dealt with as pertaining to the "pre-fallen" condition of nature and human beings. As a framework to make sense of the goodness of creation in this context, Paul Tillich's notion of the "vital trends of nature" is called to the fore. Being at the intersection of a philosophy of religion and a philosophy of nature, this notion hints at the goodness of Creation in fragment and anticipation.     

Rats take correct novel routes and shortcuts in an enclosed maze

In 3 experiments, rats were allowed to travel selected routes along the internal alleys of a cross-maze that led from one distinctive end box to another. The maze and procedures used were designed to control the rats' ability to use intrinsic and extrinsic cues to their location in the maze; thus, only the internal geometry of the maze could be learned and used to travel between one end box and another. After an initial exploration phase, rats were given novel routes and shortcut tests that involved peripheral alleys not before traveled. Rats chose the correct novel path or shortcut significantly above chance on some tests in Experiments 1 and 2 and significantly better than a control group in Experiment 3. The findings suggest that rats were able to compute novel routes and shortcuts within the maze on the basis of limited experience with the internal geometry of the maze.     

Adaptation and validation of the Spanish version of the Sport Anxiety Scale SAS-2 for young athletes

The aim of this study is to design a Spanish version of the Sport Anxiety Scale (SAS-2). The questionnaire, originally developed by the Washington University research group in sport psychology to evaluate anxiety in young athletes, was translated and adapted following the APA protocol and its psychometric properties were assessed through internal consistency analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and validity evidence. The Spanish version of the Sport Anxiety Scale has revealed good internal consistency indexes in each subscale and its factor structure has faithfully replicated the one obtained in the original measure. Results indicate that the adapted version of the questionnaire is an adequate and valid measure for the assessment of anxiety in young athletes.