Outcomes of teen parenting programs in New Mexico

Although teen pregnancy rates in the U.S. have recently declined, the need for programs for pregnant and parenting teens remains. This report presents information from 53 programs that served pregnant and parenting teens in New Mexico between 1997 and 2000. Data on 3,194 teens, including their characteristics, the services they received, and several key outcomes, are examined. These data indicate that the programs were successful in promoting educational attainment as well as gains in employment. Prevalence of late prenatal care and low birth weight babies was lower than statewide averages, and the rate of repeat pregnancy was lower than that reported by many other programs. How these programs achieved these results is discussed.     

Verbal learning across the lifespan: an analysis of the components of the learning curve

Previous studies on the acquisition process of verbal material, conducted separately on child and adult populations, reveal that the lifespan is characterized by an inverted-U performance curve with similar achievements at its two poles. To clarify the acquisition mechanism across the entire lifespan, the learning curve for the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test was reproduced for participants aged 8–91. The study utilized typical trial summary scores and a more refined analysis of trial-by-trial single-word recalls, including omissions (missed words that were previously recalled), additions (recalled words previously missed), and touched words (a count for the first recall time only, for each word during the five learning trial). A clear age effect was shown for the number of words recalled – symmetrically increases during childhood and decreases in adulthood. Similarly, increased turnover of words omitted and added characterized both incremental and decremental age differences. Measurement patterns differed for the age segments on the two sides of the lifespan, despite the similar total number of words recalled by the two sides. Acquisition pattern in children was characterized by a higher number of touched words and higher turnover than for adult groups. In contrast, older adults achieved fewer touched words and lower turnover than the child groups. This study shows that it is possible to reach the same quantitative results via different cognitive processes. The results are interpreted in terms of specific mechanisms of maturational characteristics.     

Mapping the Hierarchical Structure of Coping: Unifying Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives

Consumer researchers have become increasingly interested in the study of coping. This research contributes to this emerging paradigm by investigating structural theories of coping using a hierarchical modeling approach to better understand the basic dimensional properties of this multifaceted construct. This research makes gains along several fronts. First, the authors empirically examine a new lower order theory of coping based on a comprehensive synthesis of the literature, reconciling nomenclatural and conceptual redundancies found in the structure of coping literature. Analyses across 2 studies using different methods offer support for a 2‐dimensional higher order model of coping. Finally, a third study using an experimental approach validates these findings by showing unique effects relating an approach‐avoidance based higher order model to theoretically predicted emotional antecedents. By examining the mapping of lower order coping strategies onto several higher order coping theories, this research addresses the extant disjuncture between coping theory and measurement found in the literature and offers reconciliation between these 2 perspectives. The findings suggest the need for future coping research to focus on other 2‐dimensional theories beyond problem‐focused versus emotion‐focused coping. The findings build on the synergies among the many coping perspectives, and the implications of a better understanding of coping's hierarchical structure for consumer researchers is discussed.     

Teachers’ autonomy support,autonomy suppression and conditional negative regard as predictors of optimal learning experience among high-achieving Bedouin students

The study is based on self-determination theory and focuses on the motivation of high-achieving Bedouin students who belong to a hierarchical-collectivist society. The study focuses on the question: What are the relations between teachers’ autonomy support and control and an optimal learning experience among students? The study is unique in its population and in the distinction it draws between two types of teachers’ control: autonomy suppression (explicit control), and conditional negative regard, a phenomenon examined for the first time in teachers (implicit psychological control). The study population consisted of 144 students from seven high schools (74% girls) who completed questionnaires at two time-points. Structural equation modeling analysis indicated that perceived need satisfaction was positively predicted by teachers’ autonomy support, and negatively predicted by teachers’ conditional negative regard, while perception of a teacher as autonomy suppressive contributed directly and negatively to autonomous motivation. In turn psychological need satisfaction positively predicted autonomous motivation in learning that in turn predicted positive emotions and engagement in learning. The hypothesized mediation model has a good fit with the data. The findings have implications concerning the optimal conditions for learning among Bedouin students in general and high-achieving students in particular, and concerning the importance of autonomy-supportive teaching and refraining from control, explicit and implicit alike.     

Characterization of Memory Impairment Following Closed-Head Injury in Children Using the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AVLT)

Memory impairment following closed-head injury (CHI) in children is well documented. Characterization of the memory deficits of children with CHI could contribute to the prediction of academic performance and rehabilitation of these children. Twenty-five children who sustained closed-head injury and 25 matched controls were administered the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AVLT). The advantage of this memory test is that a number of memory components are measured simultaneously, thus enabling us to study the relations between different aspects of memory within the same patient sample. The findings indicate that the Rey AVLT is a good test for characterization of impaired verbal memory in children following CHI. Transformation of scores derived from the Rey AVLT to Z-scores enables us to determine the relative effect of CHI in children on different memory scores. Raw scores were more vulnerable than relational ones, derived as the difference between two raw scores (e.g., learning, Trial 5?1), to closed-head injury in children, and scores reflecting word span were the least vulnerable. The results are discussed in terms of the possible contribution of the frontal lobes, which are frequently affected in closed-head injuries, to memory performance.     

Diagnosing true virtue? Remote scenarios,warranted virtue attributions,and virtuous medical practice

Immanuel Kant argues in the Foundations that remote scenarios are diagnostic of genuine virtue. When agents commonly thought to have a particular virtue fail to exhibit that virtue in an extreme situation, he argues, they do not truly have the virtue at all, and our propensities to fail in such ways indicate that true virtue might never have existed. Kant’s suggestion that failure to show, say, courage in extraordinary circumstances necessarily silences one’s claim to have genuine courage seems to rely on an implausibly demanding standard for warranted virtue attributions. In contrast to this approach, some philosophers—such as Robert Adams and John Doris—have argued for probabilistic accounts of warranted virtue attributions. But despite the initial plausibility of such accounts, I argue that a sole reliance on probabilistic approaches is inadequate, as they are insufficiently sensitive to considerations of credit and fault, which emerge when agents have developed various insurance strategies and protective capacities against their responding poorly to particular eventualities. I also argue that medical graduates should develop the sorts of virtuous dispositions necessary to protect patient welfare against various countervailing influences (even where such influences might be encountered only rarely), and that repeated failures to uphold the proper goals of medicine in emergency scenarios might indeed be diagnostic of whether an individual practitioner does have the relevant medical virtue. In closing, I consider the dispositions involved in friendship. I seek to develop a principled way of determining when remote scenarios can be illuminating of genuine friendship and genuine virtue.     

Autoshaping in the rat: Effects of omission on the form of the response

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the effect of an omission contingency on behavior related to and characterizing autoshaped lever contacts in the rat. In Experiment I an omission contingency imposed on autoshaped lever contacts forceful enough to produce a press (.078N) resulted in a significant decrease in lever presses, but had no effect on frequency of lever touches (contacts of insufficient force to produce a press) or rate of food tray entry during lever presentation. In contrast, rats which received a similar number of lever-food pairings, but whose behavior had no programmed consequences (yoked control subjects), showed an increase in lever press rate, a significant decrease in rate of food tray entry, and no change in rate of lever-touches. In Experiment II, the effect of a similar omission contingency on the topography of lever contact responses was investigated. Prior to omission training subjects contacted the lever primarily by pawing it. Following omission training this behavior was suppressed, with a subsequent increase in lever contacts characterized as nosing. Yoked control subjects showed no significant changes in lever contact topography. The results indicate that (1) an omission contingency does not simply eliminate wholesale those topographies which incur the contingency but produces subtle adaptive changes in lever contact topography; and (2) the nature of the autoshaped response in the rat does not appear to be rigid enough to depend solely upon the nature of the unconditioned stimulus or the conditioned stimulus, but can also be determined by the relationships existing between the animal's behavior and these stimuli.     

Neuropsychological Measures in the Arab World: A Systematic Review

Although Arabic is one of the most widely used languages in the world, little is known on the availability of standardized neuropsychological tests in Arabic. We review the literature published before 2016, using the keywords Arab*, cogniti*, and neuropsycholo*, as well as keywords for each Arab country. PubMed, PsycINFO, Education Source, Academic Search Complete, Education Resources Information Center, Shamaa, and Arabpsynet databases were searched, in addition to a selected number of Arabic medical and educational journals. After excluding case reports, studies conducted on Arab groups residing outside the Arab world or Israel, and studies that employed intelligence scales or cognitive screens without standardization, 384 studies were eventually reviewed. Tests with most extensive use, adaptation, validation and norming were identified. The Raven Matrices, with its variants, was the most normed cognitive test for Arab individuals (normed in 16 countries). The rate of neuropsychology publications from the Arab countries combined, per year, was less than half of that of each American journal (top 10 journals pertaining to cognition). Nonetheless, the rate in Arab countries has increased after 2010. Publications were mostly from Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but the ratio of test adaptation-to-publication was the largest in Jordan and Lebanon. Approximately half of these publications did not employ cognitive tests that were developed, translated, adapted, or standardized according to international guidelines of psychological measurement. We provide recommendations on improving clinical neuropsychology to better serve Arab patients.     

Alfred Schutz and Economics as a Social Science

Over the years, a number of interpreters with an interest in economics have given some attention the work of Alfred Schutz. As intimated in this literature, the orientation of his delimited thought on economics stemmed from contacts with the Austrian school during his Vienna years. Probably because of this connection, there exists among these interpreters an inclination uncritically to align Schutz with the Austrians' thought. What will be argued in this paper is that in adopting such an uncritical position, each of these readings fails adequately to situate Schutz's critique of economic analyses within the framework of his own social theory. It will become apparent that his treatment of economics turned out to be a mixture of defence and critique, and that his interpretation of the subject and the intellectual status he ascribed to it were considerably more ambivalent and ambiguous than has been noticed. In particular, Schutz expressed significant reservations about the highly circumscribed and artificial depictions of the world of human action that some economists espoused, especially within the confines of marginalist theory. When arraigned against the phenomenology of the life-world that he had developed, and against the "postulates" around which he had constructed his social theory, much of extant economics did not meet the requirements of a properly grounded social science.