Women Court-Ordered for Domestic Violence: Improvements in Depression

A quasi-experimental design was employed to compare depression at intake and completion of a sample of primarily Latina women court-ordered to a batterer intervention program. Data were derived from the intake assessments of 112 women over 24 months. Overwhelmingly, women reported being abused by their current and former partners. Approximately 58% of the women in this sample were depressed at intake. When culturally competent, gender-appropriate treatment is given to court-ordered women, depression symptomatology may decrease to levels of normal functioning. Further research is needed to understand court-ordered women as well as how to meet their unique needs.     

Establishing a Link Between Attention Deficit Disorder/Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Childhood Physical Abuse

Attention deficit disorder and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorders (ADD/ADHD) are found in approximately 5% to 10% of school-aged children. This study examined whether childhood physical abuse was associated with ADD/ADHD. Data were derived from a population-based sample of 13,054 adults from the 2005 Canadian Community Health Survey. We used logistical regression analysis in 2 models, both of which had ADD/ADHD as the criterion variable. There were 7 times higher odds of ADD/ADHD among those who reported they had been abused after controlling for several potential mediating factors, including age, race, gender, and 3 other types of adverse childhood experiences (parental divorce, parental addictions, and long-term parental unemployment) in comparison to those who were not abused. The results of this analysis show a strong link between childhood abuse and ADD/ADHD, an association that requires further study.     

“Getting to Know”: Exploring How Urban African American Women Conceptualize Safer and Risky Sexual Behaviors

The surge in the rate of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) cases continues to be most prevalent for African American women between the ages of 18 and 29, with heterosexual transmission remaining the primary cause of HIV spread for this population. The high rates of HIV/AIDS among African American women continue to emphasize the need for understanding how members of this population conceptualize sexual safety and risk. A qualitative research study using grounded theory methods was conducted to explore how African American women define safer and risky sexual behaviors. Interviews were conducted with 14 African American women between the ages of 18 and 29. The study findings suggest that African American women’s definitions of safer and risky sexual behaviors, while in a consensual sexual relationship, are consistently influenced by sex partner type. The information garnered from this study can help inform the development of HIV prevention strategies, health education, counseling and reproductive health services that support African American women’s wellness.     

Identification and goal choice of managerial candidates–organizational and individual perspectives

Abstract

Goal-setting theory and organizational culture research both emphasize that correspondence of individual and organizational goals is important, especially for executives and managerial candidates. The formerly dominating perspective of a passive individual eager to adopt organizational goals has recently been contrasted by a perspective of an active individual trying to pursue his/her own personal work goals in the organization. In a longitudinal study, 904 German academic managerial candidates were surveyed in order to investigate the causes of their identification with organizational goals, their expectations of advancement and their choice of personal work goals. The influence of organizational characteristics, i.e. number of employees, sector, and organizational culture, as well as the influence of individual job orientations were examined. Results show, that on the one hand organizational culture influenced managerial candidates' identification with organizational goals and their expectations of advancement, but had hardly any impact on their personal work goals. On the other hand, job orientations of managerial candidates affect both their identification with the organization and their personal work goals beyond organizational characteristics. Implications for selection and development of managerial candidates are discussed.     

The role of psychological climate in facilitating employee adjustment during organizational change

The current research tested a theoretical model of employee adjustment during organizational change based on Lazarus and Folkman's () cognitive-phenomenological framework. The model hypothesized that psychological climate variables would act as coping resources and predict improved adjustment during change. Two variations of this model were tested using survey data from two different organizational samples: 779 public hospital employees and 877 public sector employees. Confirmatory factor analyses and structural equation analyses were conducted in order to evaluate the models. Results showed that employees whose perceptions of the organization and environment in which they were working (that is, psychological climate) were more positive, were more likely to appraise change favourably and report better adjustment in terms of higher job satisfaction, psychological well-being, and organizational commitment, and lower absenteeism and turnover intentions.     

Selective and faithful imitation at 12 and 15 months

Research on imitation in infancy has primarily focused on what and when infants imitate. More recently, however, the question why infants imitate has received renewed attention, partly motivated by the finding that infants sometimes selectively imitate the actions of others and sometimes faithfully imitate, or overimitate, the actions of others. The present study evaluates the hypothesis that this varying imitative behavior is related to infants' social traits. To do so, we assessed faithful and selective imitation longitudinally at 12 and 15 months, and extraversion at 15 months. At both ages, selective imitation was dependent on the causal structure of the act. From 12 to 15 months, selective imitation decreased while faithful imitation increased. Furthermore, infants high in extraversion were more faithful imitators than infants low in extraversion. These results demonstrate that the onset of faithful imitation is earlier than previously thought, but later than the onset of selective imitation. The observed relation between extraversion and faithful imitation supports the hypothesis that faithful imitation is driven by the social motivations of the infant. We call this relation the King Louie Effect: like the orangutan King Louie in The Jungle Book, infants imitate faithfully due to a growing interest in the interpersonal nature of interactions. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at http://youtu.be/qlnIof1k-u8 .     

Improving Memory Knowledge,Satisfaction, and Functioning Via an Education and Intervention Program for Older Adults

Many healthy older adults are concerned about memory change and are interested in learning techniques for enhancing memory function in their everyday lives A memory education and intervention program was developed and administered to 36 community-dwelling older adults Pretest-posttest change scores showed significant improvement on measures of knowledge (ie, general facts about memory, memory strategies), metamemory (ie, satisfaction with memory, self-rated memory ability), and objective memory performance (ie, everyday prospective memory) in comparison to 24 demographically matched control participants Findings support the effectiveness of memory education and training in improving everyday functioning, particularly for older adults whose memory concerns result from inadequate knowledge about memory and aging     

Semantic Fluency Performance of Patients with Cortical and Subcortical Neurodegenerative Diseases

Previous studies using the Animals Fluency Test have shown that dementia patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), Huntington's disease (HD), or Parkinson's disease (PD) produce fewer correct words and have smaller semantic cluster sizes than controls or PD patients without dementia (PDND). Although the number of correct words generated by the patients with AD was positively correlated with mental status, cluster size, surprisingly, was not. To increase word output and increase the reliability of estimates of cluster size, semantic fluency was reexamined using the Supermarket Fluency Task. Overall, patients with HD or PD with dementia (PDD) exhibited reduced cluster sizes compared to older controls or PDND patients, but cluster sizes were only marginally reduced for patients with AD. These effects were evident only for female participants, because the cluster sizes for elderly control men were substantially smaller than those of elderly women. For the female patients with AD, cluster size was correlated with mental status, but the relationship was nonlinear. Cluster size was normal for mildly demented patients with AD, but much reduced for moderately or severely demented participants. In contrast to a previous report, in the present study the proportion of category labels generated was increased for patients with HD with dementia but not for patients with AD. This finding questions one line of evidence that semantic memory stores undergo “bottom-up” degradation in AD. Together with previous results, these findings indicate that semantic cluster size reflects efficiency of access to semantic knowledge which is similarly compromised in subcortical and cortical diseases.