The Relationship of Drug Use to Suicide Ideation and Attempts Among African American,Hispanic, and White Non-Hispanic Male Adolescents

This study presents self-report cross-sectional and longitudinal data on associations between drug use, suicide ideation, and attempts in a multiethnic sample of seventh- and eighth-grade male adolescents attending school in the greater Miami, Florida, area. African Americans had the highest prevalence of 6-month ideation (20.5%), and Haitians had the highest attempts (11.4%). For the total sample, tranquilizers had the highest odds ratio for ideation (3.4), and PCP for attempts (6.2). Psychoactive drug-use was consistently related to attempts among Hispanics, white non-Hispanics, and African Americans. Acculturation strains interacted with cocaine and crack to predict suicide attempts among Hispanic respondents.     

Chewing gum while studying: Effects on alertness and test performance

Recent research has demonstrated chewing gum can enhance various cognitive processes associated with learning, but most studies have used cognitive functioning tasks (e.g., selective attention and working memory) as outcomes. Across two experiments, we investigated effects of chewing gum on self‐reports of alertness and test performance following study of realistic educational materials. In Experiment 1 (n = 40), adult participants who chewed gum while studying a 20‐min physiology lesson outperformed a nonchewing condition on subsequent terminology and comprehension tests, but did not report higher levels of postlesson alertness as hypothesised. In Experiment 2 (n = 39), adult participants who chewed gum while studying a 9‐min lesson on a mental mathematics strategy outperformed a nonchewing condition on a subsequent problem‐solving test, whereas also reporting higher levels of postlesson alertness. The results provide initial support for chewing gum while studying realistic educational materials across a range of topics and study durations.     

Racial Mistrust and Deviant Behaviors Among Ethnically Diverse Black Adolescent Boys1

While it has been suggested that mistrust of the dominant White society may be an important protective factor for some members of racial minorities, the question of whether mistrust may also be related to nonnormative behaviors among minority members has not been explored. Using survey data from Miami, Florida, this study empirically tests this hypothesis among a sample of African American, Haitian, and other Caribbean island Black adolescent boys. Bivariate analyses suggest a strong relationship between racial mistrust and conventional forms of delinquency for all three ethnic groups. These findings also held in multivariate analyses in which six traditional predictors of deviance were statistically controlled. The authors conclude that racial mistrust adds a new dimension to empirical prediction models. In addition, they conclude that issues associated with racial mistrust should be considered when developing and implementing prevention strategies.     

Biclustering Models for Two-Mode Ordinal Data

The work in this paper introduces finite mixture models that can be used to simultaneously cluster the rows and columns of two-mode ordinal categorical response data, such as those resulting from Likert scale responses. We use the popular proportional odds parameterisation and propose models which provide insights into major patterns in the data. Model-fitting is performed using the EM algorithm, and a fuzzy allocation of rows and columns to corresponding clusters is obtained. The clustering ability of the models is evaluated in a simulation study and demonstrated using two real data sets.     

The psychometric properties of the Greek version of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory in cancer patients receiving palliative care

Objectives: To validate the Greek version of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) in a sample of cancer patients. Design: The scale was administered twice, with a 3-day interval, to 99 eligible patients with cancer. Together with the Greek version of STAI scale, the patients also completed the anxiety subscale from the Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale (HAD). Observations: Factor analysis yielded a three-factor solution, explaining 47.143% of the variance. Cronbach α for three scales was between 0.729 and 0.852. Inter-scale correlations were moderate-to-high and ranged from 0.282 to 0.563 (p < 0.0005, p < 0.005). The assessment of the relationships among the Greek STAI scales and HAD-Anxiety showed statistically significant correlations between them (r ranged between 0.428 and 0.596, p < 0.0005). The test/retest reliability of scale (Pearson's ‘r’), showed that the coefficient agreement ranged between 0.85 and 0.90 (p < 0.0005). Univariate analysis revealed significant correlations between female gender, metastasis, performance status, chemotherapy, mild opioids and low education level with increased anxiety. Conclusions: These results support that the Greek version of STAI is an instrument with satisfactory psychometric properties, and is a valid research tool for Greek cancer patients.     

The Motive of Society: Aristotle on Civic Friendship, Justice, and Concord

My aim in this paper is to demonstrate the relevance of the Aristotelian notion of civic friendship to contemporary political discussion by arguing that it can function as a social good. Contrary to some dominant interpretations of the ancient conception of friendship according to which it can only be understood as an obligatory reciprocity, I argue that friendship between fellow citizens is important because it contributes to the unity of both state and community by transmitting feelings of intimacy and solidarity. In that sense, it can be understood as an important relationship predicated on affection and generosity, virtues lacking from both contemporary politics and society that seem to be merely dominated by Post-Enlightenment ideals. For Aristotle, friendship is important for society because it generates concord, articulating thus a basis for social unity and political agreement.     

Mapping Ethical Consumer Behavior: Integrating the Empirical Research and Identifying Future Directions

The concept of “ethical consumer behavior” has gained significant attention among practitioners and academic researchers, generating increasing but disjointed knowledge on the topic. By analyzing the empirical research on ethical consumer behavior, this article provides researchers with a map to guide future research. In total, we review 80 studies. The main contributions of the article include the identification of the main trends in the ethical consumer literature and the conceptualization of ethical consumer behavior. In addition, several areas for future research are proposed and discussed.     

Implicit training of nonnative speech stimuli

Learning nonnative speech contrasts in adulthood has proven difficult. Standard training methods have achieved moderate effects using explicit instructions and performance feedback. In this study, the authors question preexisting assumptions by demonstrating a superiority of implicit training procedures. They trained 3 groups of Greek adults on a difficult Hindi contrast (a) explicitly, with feedback (Experiment 1), or (b) implicitly, unaware of the phoneme distinctions, with (Experiment 2) or without (Experiment 3) feedback. Stimuli were natural recordings of consonant-vowel syllables with retroflex and dental unvoiced stops by a native Hindi speaker. On each trial, participants heard pairs of tokens from both categories and had to identify the retroflex sounds (explicit condition) or the sounds differing in intensity (implicit condition). Unbeknownst to participants, in the implicit conditions, target sounds were always retroflex, and distractor sounds were always dental. Post-training identification and discrimination tests showed improved performance of all groups, compared with a baseline of untrained Greek listeners. Learning was most robust for implicit training without feedback. It remains to be investigated whether implicitly trained skills can generalize to linguistically relevant phonetic categories when appropriate variability is introduced. These findings challenge traditional accounts on the role of feedback in phonetic training and highlight the importance of implicit, reward-based mechanisms.