Factors Affecting Health-Care Allocation Decisions: A Case of Aversive Racism?

A distributive justice framework is used to examine how individuals make judgments about what is fair when making different types of health-care allocation decisions. The effects of 4 patient characteristics are assessed: (a) prognosis, (b) degree of responsibility for illness, (c) employment status, and (d) race. Results reveal that when the patient was defined as being more versus less responsible for his illness, respondents gave him a significantly lower priority score for obtaining health-care services, and they felt that he should be more responsible for paying for or soliciting funds to cover the costs of his health needs. Respondents also reacted with more negative emotion to the responsible patient and described him in more negative trait terms. Although patient's race produced no main effects, race did interact with employment status on several key variables. When the patient was described as being unemployed, the White patient compared to the Black patient was given a higher health-care priority score, he was resented less, and respondents were more willing to contribute money to pay for his health-care costs; but when the patient was described as being employed, the direction of differences between the races on these variables was reversed.     

The Development of Early Externalizing Problems Among Children from Low-Income Families: A Transformational Perspective

The present study examined pathways leading to early externalizing problems from age 1 to 31/2 in a design that took advantage of our knowledge of normative progression and normative socialization as well as findings from research on risk. A sample of 130 low-income participants was followed longitudinally from 12 to 42 months using observational measures of developmentally salient parenting and child disruptive behavior to predict early externalizing problems. Results are best accommodated by concepts such as transformation and transaction from developmental psychology. For boys, both child and parent variables predicted later externalizing. For girls and boys, the interaction between child noncompliance and maternal rejection was significant.     

Children's construction of fantasy stories: Gender differences in conflict resolution strategies

While much work has been done on sex role development in children, conflict resolution, and sex role stereotyping in literature and television, little research has investigated conflict resolution and stereotyping in the fantasies children create themselves. The present study, analyzing gender differences in children's writing of fantasy stories, found significant differences in conflict resolutions they created. Boys used more violent resolutions to solve problems, while girls used more reasoning and analysis. Stories written by both sexes were—more often than not—sex role stereotyped, with female characters in traditional occupations and passive activities.The authors wish to acknowledge the financial assistance received for this research from the Graduate School Faculty Research Grant at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.     

Changing and diverse roles of women in American Indian cultures

This article explores traditional and contemporary sex roles of Indian women. It emphasizes the renewing power of the feminine—a creative, healing balance that arises as traditional and contemporary strengths are brought together. The survival of the extended family throughout two hundred years of governmental policy attests to Indian women's resilience despite continuous role readjustment, value conflict, and economic pressure. Tribal diversity and predominantly egalitarian structural similarities are affirmed in this work through reviews of ethnographic studies addressing the roles of Indian women prior to European contact. The conventional and alternative roles of Indian women in traditional times are examined with an eye toward the spiritual source of Indian women's strength. Studies outlining the emotional and spiritual costs of contemporary Indian women living bicultural lifestyles, especially those pursuing advanced educational training, highlight the continued use of traditional Indian coping mechanisms. Finally, the current movement toward retraditionalization of roles of Indian women as caretakers and transmitters of cultural knowledge is posited as an effective means of overcoming problems and achieving Indian self-determination.We would like to thank Myra Strober and Janet Sorrel for their helpful comments concerning earlier versions of this article.     

The Development of Substitute Object Pretense: The Differential Importance of Form and Function

Substitute object pretense is one of the earliest-developing forms of pretense, and yet it changes considerably across the preschool years. By 3.5 years of age, children can pretend with substitutes that are highly dissimilar from their intended referents (Elder & Pederson, 1978), but even older children have difficulty understanding such pretense in others (Bigham & Bourchier-Sutton, 2007). The present studies had 3 aims: 1) to examine the relative influence of the form and function of substitute objects; 2) to replicate the age gap between pretense production and comprehension using a tightly controlled procedure; and 3) to investigate whether preschoolers’ comprehension of substitute object pretense is predicted by a) theory of mind (ToM), because it involves reading pretender intent, and (b) executive function (EF), because it involves inhibiting the substitute object’s identity. In Study 1, 3- to 5-year-old children performed at ceiling on a test of substitute object pretense production, whereas pretense comprehension improved considerably across this age range. Study 2 provided evidence that the function of a substitute object is more influential than its form in determining whether a child can comprehend pretense actions with the object. The results of Study 2 also provided support for the role of ToM in comprehending another’s pretense. Finally, Study 3 replicated the results regarding form, function, and ToM in a sample drawn from a different community. The effects of EF on pretense comprehension were inconsistent across conditions and studies, suggesting that EF may not play a major role in the comprehension of pretense with substitute objects.     

The Ethical Inclusion of Children With Psychotic Disorders in Research: Recommendations for an Educative,Multimodal Assent Process

This article addresses the issue of properly assenting children with psychotic disorders to participate in clinical research. Due to the protective concerns with such a vulnerable population, additional precautions are necessary to ensure that youth with psychotic disorders assent to research with an appropriate level of understanding regarding study procedures. Current literature suggests that positive/negative symptoms and minor cognitive deficits do not interfere with the ability to comprehend study-related information for adults with psychosis if the study information is presented through an educative process. Similarly, youth benefit from repeated presentation of procedures and periodic assessment of their comprehension. An integrated educative process is proposed that emphasizes the importance of an interactive consent through repetition and participant/investigator feedback.     

Daily Affect and Intimacy in Emerging Adult Couples

We investigated individual- and couple-level associations between daily intimacy and affective states (N = 2211 observations) in 20 heterosexual emerging adult couples (age 18–25 years, M = 23) who had been in a sexual relationship with one another for at least 3 weeks (M = 12 months). Individual analyses revealed that emerging adults’ feelings of intimacy varied from day to day and that there were no gender differences in daily intimacy. Affect and intimacy were positively associated within day for women, but not for men. Time-lagged individual-level analyses revealed that prior-day positive or negative affect did not predict present-day intimacy for men or women. However, prior-day intimacy positively predicted present-day positive affect in men and negatively predicted present-day negative affect in women. Time-lagged couple-level analyses revealed that men’s prior-day positive affect positively predicted their female partner’s present-day intimacy. Women’s prior-day intimacy negatively predicted their male partner’s present-day negative affect. Implications of the day-to-day associations of intimacy with positive and negative affect within emerging adult couples are discussed.