"Queremos Aprender": Latino Immigrants' Call to Integrate Cultural Adaptation with Best Practice Knowledge in a Parenting Intervention

Despite the unique and challenging circumstances confronting Latino immigrant families, debate still exists as to the need to culturally adapt evidence-based interventions for dissemination with this population. Following the grounded theory approach, the current qualitative investigation utilized focus group interviews with 83 Latino immigrant parents to explore the relevance of culturally adapting an evidence-based parenting intervention to be disseminated within this population. Findings from this study indicate that Latino immigrant parents want to participate in a culturally adapted parenting intervention as long as it is culturally relevant, respectful, and responsive to their life experiences. Research results also suggest that the parenting skills participants seek to enhance are among those commonly targeted by evidence-based parenting interventions. This study contributes to the cultural adaptation/fidelity balance debate by highlighting the necessity of exploring ways to develop culturally adapted interventions characterized by high cultural relevance, as well as high fidelity to the core components that have established efficacy for evidence-based parenting interventions.     

CONTESTING THE WORLD AND THE DIVINE: BALTHASAR'S TRINITARIAN "RESPONSE" TO GIANNI VATTIMO'S SECULAR CHRISTIANITY

This essay joins the contemporary debate over the proper theological and philosophical hermeneutic for interpreting the phenomenon of secularism. The first part offers a sustained Balthasar-influenced critique of Gianni Vattimo's secular translation of Christianity. I argue that Vattimo's Heideggerian-Hegelian influenced reading of secularism as Christianity's proper telos is both philosophically and theologically problematic. Part Two of this article reads Balthasar's work as a response to the philosophical and theological underpinnings of Vattimo's thought. Balthasar would argue that it is in a more traditional, yet remarkably daring account of the Trinitarian relations that the "secular" finds both its ground and dignity.     

Approach motivation and the expansion of self in close relationships

The self‐expansion model posits that individuals are fundamentally motivated to expand their sense of self. It is proposed that approach—but not avoidance—motivation underlies self‐expansion and that approach‐motivated individuals should be especially interested in self‐expanding with a person who provides many novel resources, identities, and perspectives. In Studies 1, 2a, and 2b, correlational evidence that self‐expansion is associated with both relationship‐specific and global measures of approach motivation, but is unrelated to avoidance motivation, was found. In Study 3, experimental evidence that approach motivation increases sensitivity to self‐expansion opportunities, such that individuals high in approach motivation are especially attracted to targets who offer many expansion opportunities and unattracted to targets who offer few expansion opportunities was found. Taken together, these studies provide evidence that self‐expansion is rooted in approach motivation.     

Testing the limits of long-distance learning: learning beyond a three-segment window

Traditional flat-structured bigram and trigram models of phonotactics are useful because they capture a large number of facts about phonological processes. Additionally, these models predict that local interactions should be easier to learn than long-distance ones because long-distance dependencies are difficult to capture with these models. Long-distance phonotactic patterns have been observed by linguists in many languages, who have proposed different kinds of models, including feature-based bigram and trigram models, as well as precedence models. Contrary to flat-structured bigram and trigram models, these alternatives capture unbounded dependencies because at an abstract level of representation, the relevant elements are locally dependent, even if they are not adjacent at the observable level. Using an artificial grammar learning paradigm, we provide additional support for these alternative models of phonotactics. Participants in two experiments were exposed to a long-distance consonant-harmony pattern in which the first consonant of a five-syllable word was [s] or [∫] ("sh") and triggered a suffix that was either [-su] or [-∫u] depending on the sibilant quality of this first consonant. Participants learned this pattern, despite the large distance between the trigger and the target, suggesting that when participants learn long-distance phonological patterns, that pattern is learned without specific reference to distance.     

Accuracy of perceptual and acoustic methods for the detection of inspiratory loci in spontaneous speech

The present study investigates the accuracy of perceptually and acoustically determined inspiratory loci in spontaneous speech for the purpose of identifying breath groups. Sixteen participants were asked to talk about simple topics in daily life at a comfortable speaking rate and loudness while connected to a pneumotach and audio microphone. The locations of inspiratory loci were determined on the basis of the aerodynamic signal, which served as a reference for loci identified perceptually and acoustically. Signal detection theory was used to evaluate the accuracy of the methods. The results showed that the greatest accuracy in pause detection was achieved (1) perceptually, on the basis of agreement between at least two of three judges, and (2) acoustically, using a pause duration threshold of 300 ms. In general, the perceptually based method was more accurate than was the acoustically based method. Inconsistencies among perceptually determined, acoustically determined, and aerodynamically determined inspiratory loci for spontaneous speech should be weighed in selecting a method of breath group determination.     

Kingdom Education

Whether known as Christian or Kingdom education, its very nature is opened for examination in this article. From the assumption that Christ is to be at the center of Christian education, it assumedly would be patterned after his life and activities on earth. A review of the Scriptures about Jesus points to an education orientation that is not well represented in extant Christian/Kingdom education. Closer alignment with Christ is recommended.     

Generalization to unfamiliar talkers in artificial language learning

While there is evidence that talker-specific details are encoded in the phonetics of the lexicon (Kraljic, Samuel, & Brennan, Psychological Science 19(4):332–228, 2008; Logan, Lively, & Pisoni, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 89(2):874-886, 1991) and in sentence processing (Nygaard & Pisoni, Perception & Psychophysics, 60(3):355–376, 1998), it is unclear whether categorical linguistic patterns are also represented in terms of talker-specific details. The present study provides evidence that adult learners form talker-independent representations for productive linguistic patterns. Participants were able to generalize a novel linguistic pattern to unfamiliar talkers. Learners were exposed to spoken words that conformed to a pattern in which vowels of a word agreed in place of articulation, referred to as vowel harmony. All items were presented in the voice of one single talker. Participants were tested on items that included both the familiar talker and an unfamiliar talker. Participants generalized the pattern to novel talkers when the talkers spoke with a familiar accent (Experiment 1), as well as with an unfamiliar accent (Experiment 2). Learners showed a small advantage for talker familiarity when the words were familiar, but not when the words were novel. These results are consistent with a theory of language processing in which the lexicon stores fine-grained, talker-specific phonetic details, but productive linguistic processes are subject to abstract, talker-independent representations.     

The role of additional information in the compliance,satisfaction, psychological,and emotion responses of non-surgical patients with low back pain: An exploratory investigation

Abstract

Noncompliance and the psychological and emotional states of patients with low back pain are major concerns for health professionals. The current study evaluated whether amount of information available to patients enhanced compliance to a medical regimen and whether it reduced negative emotions in patients with low back pain. Forty-five orthopaedic non-surgical patients with low back pain were randomly assigned to one of three information presentation conditions: 1) Standard, 2) Pre-examination, and 3) Post-examination. Patients were also separated by compensation and noncompensation within each information group. Patients completed questionnaires at their initial visit and at their follow-up which evaluated their: levels of compliance to a prescribed treatment program, psychological, and emotional states. Results indicated that some patients benefitted from receiving additional information as the Pre-examination and Post-examination groups demonstrated superior comprehension and recall as well as higher levels of compliance to a physical therapy program. In addition, compensation patients complained of more negative psychological and emotional behaviors in comparison to noncompensation patients. Implications of the research and future research considerations were discussed.