POWER AND INFLUENCE STRATEGIES IN VIOLENT AND NONVIOLENT MARRIAGES

How important is the use of physical violence in determining the balance of power within marriage? Do women in violent marriages make more use of indirect strategies in attempting to persuade their husbands than do women in nonviolent marriages? Is marital satisfaction related to influence styles? These questions are investigated by looking at decision making in couples and how this is related to the forms of influence strategies used by wives and husbands in violent and nonviolent marriages. Data from in-depth structured interviews with 137 self-identified battered wives and 137 comparison wives, some of whom were also found to have experienced violence from their husbands, are used to answer these questions. Results indicated that women with violent husbands used more influence strategies overall, although these women had less overall power in terms of decision making than did women with nonviolent husbands. The relationship of influence strategies to decision making was different for women with violent husbands than for those whose husbands were not violent. As expected, the use of coercive strategies related negatively to marital happiness, whereas positive strategies were positively predictive. Violence and other negative strategies should be included in future research on influence strategies in close relationships, and a positive-negative dimension should be included as a way of categorizing influence strategies.     

Circular interpretation of regression coefficients

The interpretation of the effect of predictors in projected normal regression models is not straight-forward. The main aim of this paper is to make this interpretation easier such that these models can be employed more readily by social scientific researchers. We introduce three new measures: the slope at the inflection point (b_c), average slope (AS) and slope at mean (SAM) that help us assess the marginal effect of a predictor in a Bayesian projected normal regression model. The SAM or AS are preferably used in situations where the data for a specific predictor do not lie close to the inflection point of a circular regression curve. In this case b_c is an unstable and extrapolated effect. In addition, we outline how the projected normal regression model allows us to distinguish between an effect on the mean and spread of a circular outcome variable. We call these types of effects location and accuracy effects, respectively. The performance of the three new measures and of the methods to distinguish between location and accuracy effects is investigated in a simulation study. We conclude that the new measures and methods to distinguish between accuracy and location effects work well in situations with a clear location effect. In situations where the location effect is not clearly distinguishable from an accuracy effect not all measures work equally well and we recommend the use of the SAM.     

An Evaluation of Interventions to Facilitate Algebra Problem Solving

Three participants were trained on 6 target algebra skills and subsequently received a series of 5 instructional interventions (cumulative practice, tiered feedback, feedback plus solution sequence instruction, review practice, and transfer training) in a multiple baseline across skills design. The effects of the interventions on the performance of 5 problem-solving tasks that required novel combinations of 2 or more of the target skills were evaluated. Results showed that cumulative practice of the skills and a combination of feedback with solution sequence instruction led to limited performance increases on some of the problem-solving tasks, with one task meeting the mastery criterion following the solution sequence intervention. The introduction of the transfer training resulted in more consistent improvements across tasks such that participants achieved the performance criterion on all remaining problem-solving tasks during a final baseline condition. The findings suggest that a structured intervention designed to transfer stimulus control from previously established discriminative stimuli to more complex, novel stimuli can facilitate problem solving without extensive direct instruction on the higher-level skills. This research was funded in part by a contract with the Florida Department of Children and Families. The content and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the Department of Children and Families. We thank Tim Vollmer for suggestions made throughout this study and for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. We also thank Linda Meckler for her assistance with data collection. Kristin H. Mayfield, now at iLearn, Inc., Marietta, GA, USA.     

Perceptual visual grouping under inattention: electrophysiological functional imaging

Two types of perceptual visual grouping, differing in complexity of shape formation, were examined under inattention. Fourteen participants performed a similarity judgment task concerning two successive briefly presented central targets surrounded by task-irrelevant simple and complex grouping patterns. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 22 scalp electrodes and source current density estimations were conducted for the net response to the task-irrelevant background patterns, using low-resolution electromagnetic tomography (LORETA). Although participants’ subjective reports indicated that neither type of organization induced awareness, electrophysiological results showed they both evoked significant activation in occipital, parieto-temporal and frontal brain areas. Behavioral results demonstrated that only grouping of the simple pattern arose under inattention. In contrast to the complex pattern, the processing of the simple pattern was associated with an initially longer latency and higher activation beginning at 130 ms. These results support the distinction of grouping patterns differing in complexity of shape formation.     

A Deposit Contract Method to Deliver Abstinence Reinforcement for Cigarette Smoking

Eight smokers were randomly assigned to a deposit contract ($50.00) or to a no-deposit group. Using a reversal design, participants could recoup their deposit (deposit group) or earn vouchers (no-deposit group) for smoking reductions and abstinence (breath carbon monoxide [CO] ≤ 4 parts per million) during treatment phases. Treatment was delivered via a novel Internet-based method to monitor smoking status. Although equivalent decreases in breath CO and abstinence were observed during treatment in both groups, $178.50 in vouchers were distributed to participants in the no-deposit group, whereas a small surplus remained in the deposit group. A deposit contract method may represent a cost-effective model to deliver abstinence reinforcement for cigarette smoking.