Radical hope in revolting times: Proposing a culturally relevant psychological framework

Growing research supports the link between individual expressions of hope and psychological well‐being. In this paper, we draw on psychological theories of hope, racial and ethnic studies, and the literature on radical healing to propose a framework of radical hope. Although the proposed multidimensional framework integrates cultural practices of People of Color in the United States, it is flexible enough to be adapted to other contexts. The paper begins by providing a brief review of the literature that conceptualizes the concept of hope in the field of psychology as a prelude to comparing the concept to the interdisciplinary notion of radical hope. Based on this body of work, we then introduce a culturally relevant psychological framework of radical hope, which includes the components of collective memory as well as faith and agency. Both components require an orientation to one of four directions including individual orientation, collective orientation, past orientation, and future orientation. The framework also consists of pathways individuals can follow to experience radical hope including (a) understanding the history of oppression along with the actions of resistance taken to transform these conditions, (b) embracing ancestral pride, (c) envisioning equitable possibilities, and (d) creating meaning and purpose in life by adopting an orientation to social justice. We conclude with a proposed research agenda for radical hope.     

Teaching students with autism spectrum disorder to tolerate haircutting

We describe intervention with 2 adolescent male students who had autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and resisted haircutting performed by care providers at a residential school. The students were exposed to a graduated hierarchy of steps including the presence of hair clippers, and increased duration of hair clippers against their scalp and hair. Edible reinforcement was presented contingent on completion of a step without interfering behavior. Both students learned to tolerate all of the steps in the graduated hierarchy and a full haircut with maintenance at 2-, 4-, and 6-month follow-up. The study supports previous tolerance-training research with children and youth who have intellectual and developmental disabilities and resist personal care and hygiene routines.     

Psychological Model for Presymptomatic Test Interviews: Lessons Learned from Huntington Disease

This paper reflects on experience gained from presymptomatic testing for Huntington disease. An approach is presented which considers the role of the clinician and aims of the interview. Irrespective of the disease being tested for, it is suggested that the psychological aim of presymptomatic testing is to foster emotional insight and understanding that will help clients in their decision-making process about testing and their subsequent adjustment to the result. Based on these aims the process of presymptomatic testing, counseling is considered in terms of clarification, consideration, education, and reflection, followed by decision making. Practical approaches are discussed and illustrated with clinical examples.     

The Structure of Coping in AIDS Caregivers: A Factor Analytically Derived Measure1

We report on the development of a new coping inventory. Findings demonstrate factorial invariance for 3 factors across 3 groups of caregivers. From a 19‐item summative inventory, we derived a 3‐factor model including direct problem management. positive outlook, and reality‐based coping. The model, inclusive of 9 items. appears to have consistent factor structure across groups. Results offer evidence that the 3‐factor structure is robust and may be generalized across other groups of caregivers. The model provides an acceptable fit with coping concepts of direct problem management, cognitive, and perceptual management of meaning. Findings suggest that caregivers are similar in these 3 dimensions of coping; that domain‐specific caregiving experiences are responsible for selection of coping efforts comprising these coping dimensions.     

Stress Reduction for Family Caregivers in Chronic Mental Illness: Implications of a Work Stress Management Perspective

In several studies involving a total of 291 family caregivers for schizophrenia sufferers, the stressors that arise from caregiving were identified. Also identified were the outcomes for caregivers, which often include psychological distress. Caregivers develop various stress-reduction techniques, but this article explores the utility of applying the principles of work stress management to caregiver well-being. An organizational psychology perspective suggests that a comprehensive focus must include not only how individuals can learn to manage the emotional demands of their work, but also how the work of caregiving can be made less stressful for them. Suggestions from a work stress management perspective highlight the possible contributions of worker participation in policy formulation and a collaborative relationship between family and professional caregivers. Potentially fruitful research directions are noted.     

Mapping Students' Perceptions of Interesting Class Lessons

Students' perspectives about their experiences as students are potentially valuable resources for teachers and researchers. In this study middle-school students were asked, ‘What are the features of interesting class lessons?’ Students' responses were allocated to categories of similar semantic meaning and representative statements were selected from each category. The students then sorted and ranked the representative statements, generating numerical data suitable for cluster anal-ysis and multidimensional scaling. The cluster analysis generated three main clusters: (a) teachers, (b) individual learning, and (c) social learning. Each main cluster contained smaller clusters that indicated students' concern with issues such as the personal qualities of teachers and self-efficacy. The multidimensional scaling analysis generated a perceptual map that was interpreted to contain two dimensions: (d) student-teacher and (e) individual-social learning. The structure of the perceptual map stimulates questions about the connections that students might make between students' learning and teachers' teaching strategies, as well as students' understandings about the learning opportunities provided by social learning activities.     

Three last letters identify most female first names

The last spelled letter often indicates the sex of first names. Most female names end with the last letter a, e, or i. Female names are distinctive and therefore easy to identify because of the small number of predominantly female endings. Most male names end with one of 19 last letters. Two last letters, h and y, occur with similar frequency for both sexes. The cultural tradition of higher status for men contributes to the avoidance of predominantly female last letters for male names. A female name with a predominantly male last letter therefore occurs more often than a male name with a predominantly female last letter. The findings were obtained from the 500 most frequent first names given to males and females in Pennsylvania in 1990.     

When-questions: A study of how children linguistically encode temporal information

Sixty children between the ages of 4 and 7 years and 10 adults were presented with a series of stories illustrated by five pictures in a comic strip format. Each story was follwed by either a when-, why-, or control question. With respect to the when-questions, some of the stories involved causally related events while others did not. An analysis of the responses supported the hypotheses that causal relationships play an important role in the development of the ability to encode temporal relationships in response to when-questions.This research was supported by PSCBHE Grant No. 6-62123 from the City University of New York to the second author. The authors greatly appreciate the assistance of the directors, teachers, and children of the Chatsworth Avenue Elementary School, the Larchmont Avenue Church Nursery School, the Larchmont Temple Nursery School, and the Little School in Larchmont, New York. We would also like to thank Dr. Louis Hsu for his advice concerning     

Evidence for an anaphoric mechanism within syntactic processing: Some reference relations defy semantic and pragmatic constraints

In three experiments, we examined an interaction between the pronounthey and syntactic analysis. Experiment 1 demonstrates thatthey can slow reading times tois when this verb is visually presented immediately after a sentence fragment ending with an ambiguous expression such asflying kites. This effect seems to involve a coreference assignment linkingthey and the ambiguous expression that influences the syntactic analysis of the latter. Experiments 2 and 3 show that this effect can operate even when coreference betweenthey and the ambiguous expression is implausible. These results support a modular theory of comprehension that includes structurally oriented reference processes with access to some, but not all, of the listener’s knowledge relevant to coreference.