PERCEIVING PERVASIVE DISCRIMINATION OVER TIME: IMPLICATIONS FOR COPING

This study provides evidence that the effects of perceived pervasive discrimination may be dynamic over time. It was expected that participants who perceived discrimination to be highly pervasive would initially be more likely to engage in inactive coping strategies than those who perceived low pervasiveness; however, those who continued to perceive high pervasiveness over time were expected ultimately to engage in more active strategies than those perceiving low pervasiveness. Using a 28-day diary, women and ethnic minorities described their daily experiences of discrimination and indicated their appraisals of its pervasiveness as well as their coping strategies. Results showed that participants who initially perceived low pervasiveness reported more active coping and religion use as well as less behavioral disengagement than those initially perceiving high pervasiveness. However, this pattern was reversed by the end of the study. Implications for integrating time into the assessment of coping with discrimination are discussed.     

Intensive follow-up does not decrease the risk of repeat suicide attempts.

We carried out a randomized controlled trial to determine whether an intensive intervention after a suicide attempt could decrease by half the risk of a repeat attempt in the following two years. After initial assessment and randomization, experimental subjects attended 18 therapy appointments over one year, including one home visit, and measures to improve attendance. Control subjects received the usual care. Of 63 experimental subjects, 35% made a repeat attempt, and so did 30% of 63 control subjects. The study had a 99% power to detect the desired decrease of risk (30% to 15%). Clearly, the intervention did not achieve its objective.     

Work-Related Stress and Coping Strategies of Professional Women

Using data from interviews with professional women on their work-related stress and coping processes, the author identified those who were good and poor at coping.     

Inverting the modality effect in serial recall

Differences in recall ability between immediate serial recall of auditorily and visually presented verbal material have traditionally been considered restricted to the end of to-be-recalled lists, the recency section of the serial position curve (e.g., Crowder & Morton, 1969). Later studies showed that--under certain circumstances--differences in recall between the two modalities can be observed across the whole of the list (Frankish, 1985). However in all these studies the advantage observed is for recall of material presented in the auditorily modality. Six separate conditions across four experiments demonstrate that a visual advantage can be obtained with serial recall if participants are required to recall the list in two distinct sections using serial recall. Judged on a list-wide basis, the visual advantage is of equivalent size to the auditory advantage of the classical modality effect. The results demonstrate that differences in representation of auditory and visual verbal material in short-term memory persist beyond lexical and phonological categorization and are problematic for current theories of the modality effect.