Accounting for self-selected drinking goals in the assessment of treatment outcome

Many treatment outcome studies are abstinence-based and rely on achieved abstinence as an indicator of success, making the implicit assumption that participants have an abstinence goal. However, it is often the case that participants self-select controlled drinking goals, even in the context of an abstinence-based treatment. The current study explored the use of an outcome variable, percent weeks meeting goal (PWMG), which takes into account individual goal choice at baseline. The sample consisted of 57 women who participated in a cognitive-behavioral therapy treatment for alcohol dependence and were followed for 18 months after baseline. Twenty-two (39%) women self-selected controlled drinking goals, and 35 (61%) self-selected an abstinence goal at baseline. A repeated measures analysis of variance with PWMG as the dependent variable revealed that both goal groups were equally successful in meeting their goals during the 6-month treatment period. After treatment, participants with a goal of abstinence had more PWMG than did participants with a self-selected controlled drinking goal, but the difference was significant at a trend level. The two goal groups did not differ in outcome when the authors compared them using more traditional measures of outcome, percent days abstinent and percent heavy drinking days.     

Men's media use, sexual cognitions, and sexual risk behavior: testing a mediational model

Efforts to link media use to adolescents' sexual initiation have produced somewhat inconsistent results, perhaps as a result of the limited framing of the question. This study sought to expand current approaches by sampling college students instead of high school students, by investigating a range of sexual behaviors and media formats, and by testing a model that featured sexual cognitions as mediators. We tested our model with a sample of 796 heterosexual, male college students who reported on their regular consumption of 4 media (prime-time TV programs, music videos, movies, and men's magazines); their attitudes toward abstinence, the male sexual role, and nonrelational sex; their perceptions of peer sexual behavior; and several aspects of their sexual behavior (e.g., number of sexual partners). Findings revealed strong support for our mediated model, with exposure to men's magazines and movies contributing most strongly to their sexual cognitions, and with men's cognitions, in turn, contributing heavily to their sexual behavior. Some direct connections from media use to sexual behavior also emerged. Together, the findings provide insight into both potential mechanisms for and new approaches to addressing this issue.     

Awareness of the Tuskegee syphilis study: impact on offenders' decisions to decline research participation

Ethnic and racial minorities are often under-represented in research. There is considerable speculation that Blacks, in particular, are discouraged from research participation because of researcher improprieties in the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) Syphilis Study at Tuskegee (aka the Tuskegee Syphilis Study [TSS]), a 40-year (1932–1972) study in which investigators withheld medical treatment from African-American men infected with syphilis. We debriefed 281 offenders who declined participation in a research study to assess the extent to which knowledge of the TSS impacted their decisions not to enroll. Relatively few (44/281; 15.6%) reported awareness of the TSS. Half (n = 22) of these “aware” individuals could cite factually accurate information about the TSS, and only four individuals indicated that awareness of TSS had “somewhat” influenced their decision to not participate. Findings suggest that the legacy of the TSS played a relatively minor role in these offenders' decisions to decline research participation. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Relation Between Outcomes on a Continuous Performance Test and ADHD Symptoms Over Time

This study examined the relationship between the developmental trajectories of neuropsychological functioning and ADHD symptomatology in a longitudinal sample of children ages 9 to 14. Participants and measures were derived from the Multimodal Treatment Study for ADHD including 534MTA participants and 254 normal controls. Despite improvement over time, MTA participants continued to receive higher ratings of ADHD symptomatology and exhibit greater difficulties across the majority of neuropsychological outcomes. No relations were found between improvements in neuropsychological functioning and ADHD symptomatology over time. Findings provide support for the persistence of neuropsychological functioning and ADHD symptomatology. Findings did not support the hypothesized relation between improvements in frontally-mediated neuropsychological functioning and ADHD symptomatology possibly due to the brief 1-year lag and limited assessment battery. Findings are discussed in relation to neuropsychological development including recommendations for future research.     

The Demise of the First Secularization: The Church of Gogol and the Church of Belinsky

The article presents Gogol as marking the end of a century-long phase of secularism in Russian culture, from Peter the Great to Pushkin, and as the first writer to represent the cultural phenomenon of the ‘New Middle Ages’ and renewed religious zeal, first described by Berdyaev; further, it highlights some commonalities between Gogol and Belinsky and takes Belinsky as a leading instance of ‘religious atheism’. The article goes on to consider Russian culture’s need for neutral ‘middle ground’ between its multiple and extreme polarities and, in this context, highlights Sergej Averintsev’s plea for an orientation towards Aristotelianism. These are the opening two sections of a longer paper delivered at a conference on ‘Russian Culture at the Crossroads. Art and Society’ at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas,’ 24–25 November 1997. The title of the full paper is: ‘Russian Culture at the Crossroads: Secularization, Demonism and the Transition from a Binary to a Ternary Model.’     

Substantive thoughts about substantive thoughts: a reply to Galin

In his commentary, David Galin raises several important issues that deserve to be addressed. In this response, I do three things. First, I briefly discuss the relation between the present work and the metaphoric theories of thought developed by cognitive lin- guists such as Lakoff and Johnson (1998). Second, I address some of the confusions that seem to have arisen about my use of the terms "substantive thought" and "nucleus." Third, I briefly discuss some of the directions that Galin suggests for further research.