The Nature and Correlates of Psychological Adjustment in Gay Men with AIDS-Related Conditions1

This study assessed differences in the psychological adjustment of gay men who tested positive for the antibody to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Twenty-one were symptomatic for AIDS, and 27 were asymptomatic. A group of 15 gay men who tested negative for the HIV was included as a comparison group. Men in the three groups were equivalent on demographic variables. Symptomatic men reported more health problems than either asymptomatic or seronegative men. Relative to men who were symptomatic, those who were asymptomatic reported more death anxiety, less optimism, and greater severity of psychological distress, and reported more frequent use of avoidance and distancing as coping strategies. The poor psychological functioning of asymptomatic subjects was attributed to the uncertainty regarding their future health status. Generally, positive psychological well-being of symptomatic and asymptomatic men was related to the infrequent use of avoidance coping strategies and high satisfaction with perceived social support.     

Testing the concurrent and predictive relations among articulation accuracy, speech perception, and phoneme awareness

The relations among articulation accuracy, speech perception, and phoneme awareness were examined in a sample of 97 typically developing children ages 48 to 66 months. Of these 97 children, 46 were assessed twice at ages 4 and 5 years. Children completed two tasks for each of the three skills, assessing these abilities for the target phoneme /r/ and the control phoneme /m/ in the word-initial position. Concurrent analyses revealed that phoneme-specific relations existed among articulation, awareness, and perception. Articulation accuracy of /r/ predicted speech perception and phoneme awareness for /r/ after controlling for age, vocabulary, letter-word knowledge, and speech perception or phoneme awareness for the control phoneme /m/. The longitudinal analyses confirmed the pattern of relations. The findings are consistent with a model whereby children's articulation accuracy affects preexisting differences in phonological representations and, consequently, affects how children perceive, discriminate, and manipulate speech sounds.     

Perceived discrimination and substance use in African American parents and their children: a panel study

The relation between perceived racial discrimination and substance use was examined in a panel of 684 African American families, using the prototype-willingness model of adolescent health risk (F. X. Gibbons, M. Gerrard, & D. Lane, 2003). Discrimination was concurrently and prospectively related to use in the parents and the children (mean age=10.5 years at Wave 1). The discrimination-->use relation in the parents was mediated by distress (anxiety and depression). Among the children, the relation was mediated by distress as well as their risk cognitions (favorability of their risk images and their willingness to use) and the extent to which they reported affiliating with friends who were using substances. Each of these relations with discrimination was positive. In contrast, effective parenting was associated with less willingness and intention to use. Theoretical and applied implications of the results are discussed.     

Child and mother variables in the development of stuttering among high-risk children: A longitudinal study

In this prospective study, 26 of the 93 preschool children with a parental history of stuttering who began to stutter were compared at preonset and 1 year later with those of a matched group of 26 children who continued to be seen as nonstutterers. These two groups of at-risk children were compared in terms of the development of their articulatory and language skills and in terms of the communicative style and speaking behaviors of their mothers. At preonset, the children who started to stutter demonstrated a faster articulatory rate than those who remained fluent. One year later, however, this difference was no longer statistically significant. The two groups of children did not differ in their linguistic skills at either of these time periods. Moreover, the communicative style and speaking behaviors of the mothers of the children who later began to stutter did not differ from that of the mothers of children who did not either prior to or after the onset of stuttering. This suggests that these variables did not contribute to the onset of stuttering or to its course.     

A FORTRAN program for lag sequential analysis of contingency and cyclicity in behavioral interaction data

One method for identifying contingency relationships in a sequence of observed behaviors studies occurrences of matching behaviors at successive event or time steps from a criterion event. This paper briefly summarizes the method and presents a computer program for generating lag conditional probabilities and associated measures for assessing statistical significance.