Media use and political commitment: The 1992 U.S. presidential election

This study explores the relationship between media use and political commitment. Undergraduate participants answered an extensive political background questionnaire, which included measures of media use, perceived importance of information sources regarding the 1992 presidential election, and various political behaviors as an index of political commitment. Correlational analyses revealed that those who are more politically committed tend to select a variety of media sources regarding a presidential candidate. This study also investigated how informational and commitment variables were related to attitudes towards the major presidential candidates. Results observed for people expressing positive attitudes toward Perot are discussed in terms of the modern day “third party voter.”     

Cognitive processing therapy for chronic PTSD from childhood sexual abuse: A case study

This paper describes a case of chronic Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), as described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV, 4th edn; American Psychiatric Association, 1994). The client has a long history of childhood sexual abuse (CSA), as well as repeated sexual victimization as an adult and addiction issues. She presented with significant avoidance symptoms, including a highly restricted range of affect and distinct feelings of detachment from others. These symptoms had been greatly reduced by the end of the 17-week therapy including both individual and group modalities. The paper elaborates on theoretical issues, the Cognitive Processing Therapy model (Resick & Schnicke, 1993) as it was adapted for use with survivors of childhood sexual abuse, the various phases of the therapeutic process, and specific examples of therapeutic change with this particularly complicated case.     

Disputing clients' irrational beliefs

This paper describes and illustrates a conceptual framework developed to assist novice REBT therapists with enlarging their disputational repertoire. First, four disputational strategies are described and illustrated. Then four disputational styles of presenting the strategies to the client are also described and illustrated. Then the disputational strategies and the disputational styles are combined within a conceptual framework to assist the developing REBT therapist in generating a variety of disputes for a single IB. Finally, the conceptual framework is applied to the IB of the case of Karen from Dryden and Digiuseppe'sPrimer on Rational Emotive Therapy to yield thirty-two separate disputes (sixteen disputes for the premise of the IB, and sixteen disputes for the derivative) of the IB.     

Teaching peer reinforcement and grocery words: An investigation of observational learning and instructive feedback

A multiple probe across behaviors design, replicated across participants, assessed the effectiveness of constant time delay in teaching appropriate peer reinforcement and grocery words to 3 elementary students with moderate intellectual disabilities. Additionally, pretests and posttests assessed the acquisition of the participants' observational learning (acquisition of peers' grocery words) and instructive feedback (related information supplied by the teacher in the consequent event). Results indicate that the participants learned (a) how to appropriately reinforce peers, (b) to read their grocery words, (c) some of the targeted stimuli of their peers, and (d) much of the instructive feedback that was associated with each of the grocery words. Maintenance data indicate that the participants maintained their target grocery words at high levels of accuracy.     

Chronic sorrow: A content analysis of parental differences

Sixty-eight mothers and 64 fathers of children with a neural tube defect responded to a questionnaire about chronic sorrow. Mothers reported a mood state change in very intense category from more pessimistic at time of diagnosis to more optimistic at current time. Fathers, although indicating a mood change in the very intense category to more optimistic, also had more pessimistic responses. Parental similarities and differences were also reported in both times and events that triggered the sorrow response. Categories across times and events were primarily related to health care, school/development concerns and social significance. Clinical and research implications of these findings are discussed.     

Homicide by juvenile girls

We investigated offense characteristics for a national sample of 38,749 homicide arrestees identified in the FBI Supplemental Homicide Reports for 1984 and 1993. Analyses indicated little change from 1984 to 1993 in the circumstances of homicides committed by adolescent girls; however, there were consistent offense differences between girls and boys, and between girls and women. Homicides by adolescent girls were more likely than those committed by boys to involve interpersonal conflict rather than a criminal motive such as robbery. Girls were more likely than boys to use a knife rather than a firearm and their victims were more likely to be under the age of 13 years. Compared to women (18 years or older), girls were more likely to act with an accomplice and their victims were more likely to be female and between 13 and 20 years of age. Results were inconsistent with a stereotypic masculinization theory of the increase in female violence, but provide indirect support for the importance of domestic stress and relational conflict experienced by adolescent girls. Overall, this study supports the need for differentiated study of violence by juvenile girls, and for preventive interventions which target domestic and interpersonal stress.     

The impact of confederate responsivity on social skills assessment

The current investigation examined the degree to which judges' ratings of skill, anxiety, and attractiveness are influenced by the responsivity of the confederate. High-, medium-, and low-skilled subject-pool groupings, as well as self-referred clinical groups, were exposed to either a moderately or a minimally responsive confederate. Results indicated that subjects were rated as more skillful when interacting with a moderately responsive confederate than when interacting with a minimally responsive confederate. Further, there was a groups × condition interaction for anxiety ratings such that both the high- and the medium-skilled groups appeared more anxious under the minimal condition, whereas the low-skilled and self-referred groups did not. Self-referred subjects received significantly lower attractiveness ratings than did the high- or medium-skilled groups. Implications of these results and future directions for research are discussed.This research is based on a M.S. thesis carried out by the first author under direction of the second author.     

Mid-career change in academia: The decision to become an administrator

This study explored the reasons why professors would leave their teaching/ research occupations to begin new careers as administrators. Valence-Instrumentality-Expectancy theory of occupational preference and choice was used as a framework to examine mid-career change among professors and department chairmen at a major university. Data showed that professors' intentions to change careers and become administrators could be explained by the theory. Analyses of job characteristics demonstrated that professors who want a mid-career change are primarily attracted by the power and formal authority vested in the administrative position, while professors who prefer to remain in their career paths do so because of the autonomy it offers.     

The effects of graphemic,phonetic, and semantic relationships on access to lexical structures

The question of whether or not lexical information is accessed directly from a visual code or by a process of phonetic mediation was investigated in three lexical decision experiments. Phonetic similarity influenced decisions about visually presented words only when they were to be discriminated from orthographically regular nonwords. When consonant strings or random letter strings were used as nonwords, phonetic similarity effects were absent, and graphemic similarity exerted a powerful effect while evidence of semantic priming was found. This pattern was interpreted as evidence of direct lexical access, which is probably the normal processing mode for skilled readers. Phonetic coding, when it occurs, may be a storage strategy rather than a part of the addressing chain for lexical structures.