Exploring the mental health of Mexican migrant farm workers in the Midwest: psychosocial predictors of psychological distress and suggestions for prevention and treatment

The purposes of the present study were threefold: (a) to assess the prevalence levels of anxiety and depression in a sample of Mexican migrant farm workers in the midwestern United States; (b) to explore the relationships among acculturative stress, anxiety, and depression; and (c) to examine the variables that best predict anxiety and depression. The overall sample revealed elevated levels of anxiety and depression. Migrant farm workers with heightened levels of acculturative stress were more likely to report high levels of anxiety and depression. Family dysfunction, ineffective social support, low self-esteem, lack of agreement with the decision to migrate, high education levels, high levels of acculturative stress, and high levels of anxiety were significantly associated with high depression levels. The overall findings suggest that migrant farm workers who experience elevated levels of acculturative stress may be at risk for experiencing high levels of anxiety and depression. The findings highlight the importance of establishing prevention and treatment services for migrant farm workers that aim to increase levels of emotional support, self-esteem, and coping skills.     

Theory development should begin (but not end) with good empirical fits: a comment on Roberts and Pashler (2000)

S. Roberts and H. Pashler (2000) argued against using goodness of fit as evidence to support theories. The authors agree with their suggestions for how to go beyond good fits but disagree with their starting point. In this comment, the authors argue that good fits are part and parcel of theory development, that they are part and parcel of the processes suggested by S. Roberts and H. Pashler, and that they must be the starting point (though far from the ending point) in theoretical development. The authors discuss historical examples of scientific theory development, recent examples of psychological theory development, and development of a particular theory (social contagion theory; J. L. Rodgers & D. C. Rowe, 1993) that S. Roberts and H. Pashler criticized.     

The Cross-Modal Coordination of Interpersonal Timing: Six-Week-Olds Infants' Gaze with Adults' Vocal Behavior

The purpose of this study was to examine the hypothesis that 6-week-old infants are capable of coordinated interpersonal timing within social interactions. Coordinated interpersonal timing refers to changes in the timing of one individual's behavior as a function of the timing of another individual's behavior. Each of 45, first-born 6-week-old infants interacted with his or her mother and a stranger for a total of 14 minutes. The interactions were videotaped and coded for the gaze behavior of the infants and the vocal behavior of the mothers and strangers. Time-series regression analyses were used to assess the extent to which the timing of each of the infants' gazes was coordinated with the timing of the adults' vocal behavior. The results revealed that (a) coordinated timing occurs between infants and their mothers and between infants and strangers as early as when infants are 6 weeks old, and (b) strangers coordinated the timing of their pauses with the infants to a greater extent than did mothers. The findings are discussed in terms of the role of temporal sensitivity in social interaction.     

The nature of regularity and irregularity: evidence from Hebrew nominal inflection

Most evidence for the role of regular inflection as a default operation comes from languages that confound the morphological properties of regular and irregular forms with their phonological characteristics. For instance, regular plurals tend to faithfully preserve the base's phonology (e.g., rat-rats), whereas irregular nouns tend to alter it (e.g., mouse-mice). The distinction between regular and irregular inflection may thus be an epiphenomenon of phonological faithfulness. In Hebrew noun inflection, however, morphological regularity and phonological faithfulness can be distinguished: Nouns whose stems change in the plural may take either a regular or an irregular suffix, and nouns whose stems are preserved in the plural may take either a regular or an irregular suffix. We use this dissociation to examine two hallmarks of default inflection: its lack of dependence on analogies from similar regular nouns, and its application to nonroots such as names. We show that these hallmarks of regularity may be found whether or not the plural form preserves the stem faithfully: People apply the regular suffix to novel nouns that do not resemble existing nouns and to names that sound like irregular nouns, regardless of whether the stem is ordinarily preserved in the plural of that family of nouns. Moreover, when they pluralize names (e.g., the Barak-Barakim), they do not apply the stem changes that are found in their homophonous nouns (e.g., barak-brakim lightning), replicating an effect found in English and German. These findings show that the distinction between regular and irregular phenomena cannot be reduced to differences in the kinds of phonological changes associated with those phenomena in English. Instead, regularity and irregularity must be distinguished in terms of the kinds of mental computations that effect them: symbolic operations versus memorized idiosyncrasies. A corollary is that complex words are not generally dichotomizable as regular or irregular different aspects of a word may be regular or irregular depending on whether they violate the rule for that aspect and hence must be stored in memory.     

Intraadministration associations: conditional hyperalgesia elicited by morphine onset cues

There is evidence that exteroceptive cues associated with drug administration elicit conditional compensatory responding (e.g., hyperalgesia in organisms with a history of morphine administration). Recently it has become apparent that, within each administration, interoceptive early-drug onset cues (DOCs) may become associated with the later, larger drug effect (intraadministration associations). The present experiments evaluated DOC-elicited conditional hyperalgesia in rats intravenously infused with morphine. The results indicated that DOC-elicited hyperalgesia contributes to tolerance to the analgesic effect of morphine, and such DOC-elicited hyperalgesia is an associative phenomenon, rather than a sensitized response to the opiate. The findings suggest that associative analyses of tolerance should acknowledge the conditional responding elicited by DOCs, and extinction-based addiction treatments should incorporate extinction of DOC-elicited conditional responding.     

Cruise ships and kayaks: welfare and rehabilitation approaches for women with disabilities in poverty

Women with disabilities have low employment rates and about one-third live in poverty. They represent half of the population using either services of the vocational rehabilitation (VR) system or the welfare system, and many use both. Although both systems have made gains in improving their employment status, neither comprehensively addresses the needs of this population. Welfare policy has encouraged state level innovation and moved large numbers of people into employment in as little as five years. State welfare agencies offer a range of services specifically addressing the needs of families with children. VR agencies have decades of specific experience assisting people with disabilities gain employment. Welfare reform has been the cruise ship moving large numbers of people across an ocean. VR agencies have been the kayak builders designing specialized small craft to move specific people along tributaries. What can they learn from each other? Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Police Officer Performance Under Stress: A Pilot Study on the Effects of Visuo-Motor Behavior Rehearsal

This study examined the effectiveness ofvisuo-motor behavior rehearsal(VMBR) as a method of reducing acute stress and improving police officer performance. Fifty-four recruits were randomly assigned to a treatment and a nontreatment condition prior to undergoing a highly stressful, critical event training scenario involving live fire. A manipulation check showed that participants who received VMBR displayed significantly lower scores on the cognitive state anxiety subscale of the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2; somatic state anxiety and self-confidence were unaffected by the VMBR treatment. Most importantly, participants in the VMBR training condition displayed better performance on the critical event scenario, including significantly more assailant hits. The findings are discussed with respect to the four-stage model of stress and human performance of Salas and colleagues.     

Psychosocial predictors of anxiety among immigrant Mexican migrant farmworkers: implications for prevention and treatment

This study examined predictors of anxiety symptomatology among immigrant Mexican migrant farmworkers in the Midwest. Its purposes were to assess the prevalence of anxiety symptoms, to examine the relationship between acculturative stress and anxiety, and to determine the variables that best predict anxiety. Heightened levels were found for overall anxiety and in the cognitive, affective, and physiological expressions of anxiety. Elevated acculturative stress, low self-esteem, ineffective social support, lack of control and choice in living a migrant farmworker lifestyle, low religiosity, and high education were significantly related to high anxiety. Findings suggest that migrant farmworkers who experience elevated acculturative stress are susceptible to the development of anxiety-related disorders and highlight the importance of establishing prevention and treatment services for migrant farmworkers.