Evaluating the Impact of a National AIDS Prevention Radio Campaign in St. Vincent and the Grenadines1

Based on extensive formative research in the three Eastern Caribbean countries of St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Grenada (Fishbein, Middlestadt, & Trafimow, 1993; Fishbein, Trafimow, et al., 1993), a three-nation, mass media, condom use campaign was developed. In order to assess the impact of the campaign, a follow-up survey was conducted in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. This paper examines the effectiveness of the campaign by comparing responses on this survey by respondents who were or were not exposed to the campaign. A statistically significant impact of exposure to the campaign was obtained, indicating that a well-designed, empirically based, mass media campaign can be an effective tool in the battle to prevent the spread of AIDS.     

Enhancing possible selves in Mexican American students

This project assessed the modifiability of possible selves in young Mexican American children. Three intervention conditions were compared in a pre- and posttest design: child-only intervention, parent and child intervention, and a no-intervention control. Following eight intervention sessions, children in the two intervention groups showed significant gains in understanding the characteristics associated with becoming a good student and in recognizing the value of education in bringing about future occupational goals. Children in the intervention conditions also reported greater interest in becoming a physician, judge, or pilot — occupations they had directly experienced during training. The parent intervention phase contributed little to augmenting the positive results attributable to the child intervention component.This research was conducted under the auspices of NIH Grant HD-24003. We wish to thank Maritza Robles and the staff of the Bilingual program of the South Bend, IN, Corporation for their support.     

Interference in pitch memory as a function of ear or input

An experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of spatial separation on interference effects in pitch memory. Subjects compared the pitches of two tones that were separated by a sequence of eight interpolated tones. It was found that error rates were lower in sequences where the test and interpolated tones were presented to different ears, compared with sequences where they were presented to the same ear; however, this effect of spatial separation was not large. It is concluded that differences in spatial location can enable the focussing of attention away from the irrelevant tones and so reduce their disruptive effect, but that this occurs only to a limited extent.     

A case report of pathological rule-governed syllable intrusion

A detailed analysis of a unique speech disturbance, marked by the frequent appearance in the speech stream of a meaningless intrusive syllable, is presented. Following a lengthy thoracic surgery, an American English speaking patient began to speak with non-English prosodic patterns, which evolved to a conspicuous intrusion in his speech of the syllable /sis/. This syllable and its variants were attached to words in a manner which conformed to the regular phonological rules in English (for formation of plural, possessive, and third person singular morphemes). The distribution and frequency of the intrusive syllable are described, and possible explanations for the abnormal occurrence of this particular syllable are discussed.