Transnationalism as a motif in family stories

Family stories have long been recognized as a vehicle for assessing components of a family's emotional and social life, including the degree to which an immigrant family has been willing to assimilate. Transnationalism, defined as living in one or more cultures and maintaining connections to both, is now increasingly common. A qualitative study of family stories in the family of those who appear completely "American" suggests that an affiliation with one's home country is nevertheless detectable in the stories via motifs such as (1) positively connotated home remedies, (2) continuing denigration of home country "enemies," (3) extensive knowledge of the home country history and politics, (4) praise of endogamy and negative assessment of exogamy, (5) superiority of home country to America, and (6) beauty of home country. Furthermore, an awareness of which model--assimilationist or transnational--governs a family's experience may help clarify a clinician's understanding of a family's strengths, vulnerabilities, and mode of framing their cultural experiences.     

Risky decision making across three arenas of choice: are younger and older adults differently susceptible to framing effects?

In the present study, the authors investigated the effects of framing of options on risky decision making in groups of younger adults (M = 23.8 years, n = 192) and older adults (M = 69.1 years, n = 192). The participants were assigned to one of three scenarios varying in the goods at stake (human lives, paintings, money). The authors observed a majority preference in favor of the risky options after negative, but not positive framing. They also found, as they had predicted, that the type of framing effect varied across scenarios, with a bidirectional framing effect for the life-death scenario and unidirectional (risk averse) framing effects when public property (paintings) or personal property (money) were at stake. It is important to note that these choice preference patterns were highly similar across the age groups, which reinforced the conclusion that younger and older adults are equally susceptible to framing effects.     

Validity and reliability of the general well-being schedule with northern plains American Indians diagnosed with type 2 diabetes mellitus

The General Well-being Schedule is a brief indicator of subjective feelings of psychological well-being and distress. It is easy to administer, reliable, and valid, although its validity with American Indians has not been established. This study then assessed reliability, validity, and factor structure for a sample of 88 diabetic American Indians, who sought care for diabetes at an Indian Health Service hospital. Cronbach alpha was .89. A factor analysis indicated four dimensions. Adequate concurrent and divergent validity were noted in association with scores on the Beck Depression Inventory-Second Edition, the depression scale on the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised, and Family-Adaptation, Partnership, Growth, Affection, & Resolve. These results suggest that the General Well-being Schedule is a reliable and valid measure of general well-being for this population of American Indians.     

Talker continuity and the use of rate information during phonetic perception

Research has shown that speaking rate provides an important context for the perception of certain acoustic properties of speech. For example, syllable duration, which varies as a function of speaking rate, has been shown to influence the perception of voice onset time (VOT) for syllableinitial stop consonants. The purpose of the present experiments was to examine the influence of syllable duration when the initial portion of the syllable was produced by one talker and the remainder of the syllable was produced by a different talker. A short-duration and a long-duration /bi/-/pi/ continuum were synthesized with pitch and formant values appropriate to a female talker. When presented to listeners for identification, these stimuli demonstrated the typical effect of syllable duration on the voicing boundary: a shorter VOT boundary for the short stimuli than for the long stimuli. An /i/ vowel, synthesized with pitch and formant values appropriate to a male talker, was added to the end of each of the short tokens, producing a new hybrid continuum. Although the overall syllable duration of the hybrid stimuli equaled the original long stimuli, they produced a VOT boundary similar to that for the short stimuli. In a second experiment, two new /i/ vowels were synthesized. One had a pitch appropriate to a female talker with formant values appropriate to a male talker; the other had a pitch appropriate to a male talker and formants appropriate to a female talker. These vowels were used to create two new hybrid continua. In a third experiment, new hybrid continua were created by using more extreme male formant values. The results of both experiments demonstrated that the hybrid tokens with a change in pitch acted like the short stimuli, whereas the tokens with a change in formants acted like the long stimuli. A fourth experiment demonstrated that listeners could hear a change in talker with both sets of hybrid tokens. These results indicate that continuity of pitch but not formant structure appears to be the critical factor in the calculation of speaking rate within a syllable.     

Exploring Conflict Culture in the Family: Consistency and Continuity of Conflict During Family Meal Discourse

Conflict discourse in the context of everyday activities of families during mealtimes was examined with a view to determining consistency and continuity on two occasions one year apart. In particular, the use of authority, the part played by each member of the family, and the ways in which conflicts were terminated was addressed. Data derived from Jewish families was considered not only to enable comparisons to be made with data derived from the broader community, but to illuminate the issues pertinent to the exploration of conflict within the family. It was observed over a period of time that there was a continuity of conflict culture within each family. Additionally it was found that generally, family conflict interactions terminated in standoffs rather than resorting to full blown conflicts and the outcome was, on the whole, favourable to all parties, with conversations continuing to be pursued without further conflict. In some instances termination of the episode was through an external agent, rather than a family member. The key part that family members play in deflecting conflict, especially the part played by mothers and siblings was noted. The extension of existing conflict coding schema to account for different types of authority moves, so as to discriminate between authority based on status and that which invokes an idea of shared responsibility or a common code of conduct is recommended. A further extension of the coding schema to account for paralinguistic aspects of communication is suggested.     

The role of disgust and fear in blood and injection-related fainting symptoms: A structural equation model

Structural equation models were used to examine the relationship of blood, injection, and injury (BII) fears, disgust sensitivity, and trait anxiety to having experienced fainting-related symptoms in 722 university students. The latent variable representing BII fears was highly positively related to faint symptoms whereas that relating to disgust experiences was inversely related to fainting. A second disgust sensitivity variable was not directly related to fainting. Trait anxiety added nothing directly to the model, although it was related to BII latent variable. Additional analyses included a gender-related cross-validation which showed that models developed on one gender group did not fit well when applied to the other gender group. Blood drawings were the most common faint eliciting situations and were found to be reportedly more likely to elicit faint symptoms than were injections.     

Interventions with families: preparing the way for teaching parenting skills

The purpose of this paper is twofold. Firstly, to consider an ecological model of the system network of any one family, and the idea of intervention as education, prevention and support. A community approach of primary prevention, secondary prevention and administrative action is outlined. Secondly, briefly to consider whether the study of dysfunctional families and intervention with referred families has provided us with guidelines for necessary parenting skills for functioning family living; assumptions about whether such skills can be taught; and, at what stage of the family life cycle, in what context and by whom such enabling teaching takes place.     

Sex bias and language

Recent research has suggested that in certain contexts male terms may fail to be gender neutral (Moulton, Robinson, & Elias, 1978). Stricker (1977) has proposed that even explicitly generic terms such as adult and person may not be gender neutral. The conclusions of the highly controversial and influential Broverman, Vogel, Broverman, Clarkson, and Rosenkrantz (1970) study were based directly on the assumption that adult is a gender-neutral term. The present study consisted of a modified replication of the Broverman et al. study followed by an addendum that asked subjects in the gender-neutral condition to indicate whether they had thought of a neutral, male, or female stimulus person. As predicted, subjects did not tend to think of a neutral stimulus person. The implications of this finding for sex-role stereotype research as well as for guidlines for nonsexist language are discussed.This article is based on a master's thesis completed at Southern Illinois University by the first author.     

Action models—learning by doing

The aim of this workshop was to demonstrate experientially how action models can be used: to highlight particular themes; to study ongoing interactional patterns of the family system; to allow patterns of behaviour and communication to emerge along with the consequences of that pattern; to focus on the process rather than the content; to find the strengths and resources of the family; and to offer the opportunity of practising new skills and to gain insight through experience. Action techniques are specific acts or actions the therapist engages in to implement a strategy. Action is a deliberate intervention which will provide material shared with the family and therapist. Five different experiential exercises were demonstrated for use in family therapy training or in family therapy sessions.     

The Risks of Revolution: Ethical Dilemmas in 3D Printing from a US Perspective

Additive manufacturing has spread widely over the past decade, especially with the availability of home 3D printers. In the future, many items may be manufactured at home, which raises two ethical issues. First, there are questions of safety. Our current safety regulations depend on centralized manufacturing assumptions; they will be difficult to enforce on this new model of manufacturing. Using current US law as an example, I argue that consumers are not capable of fully assessing all relevant risks and thus continue to require protection; any regulation will likely apply to plans, however, not physical objects. Second, there are intellectual property issues. In combination with a 3D scanner, it is now possible to scan items and print copies; many items are not protected from this by current intellectual property laws. I argue that these laws are ethically sufficient. Patent exists to protect what is innovative; the rest is properly not protected. Intellectual property rests on the notion of creativity, but what counts as creative changes with the rise of new technologies.