Women's bar‐related victimization: Refining and testing a conceptual model

A model of bar victimization is proposed that explores the relationships among a woman's exposure to the bar environment (i.e., frequency of going to bars), her intoxication in that setting (i.e., usual number of drinks), and such individual difference factors as her previous history of victimization (childhood sexual abuse, lifetime violence, and previous partner abuse) and personality characteristics (depression, social anxiety, sensation seeking, and hostility). Earlier findings from work in this area suggest that exposure to the bar environment increases a woman's risk for more severe aggression. The data being used to test the proposed model are from a survey of 198 women bar drinkers in western New York State. These women described bar‐related victimization that ranged from verbal aggression (e.g., threats) through severe physical and sexual violence (e.g., assault and rape). Younger age, history of victimization, greater negative affect, and more frequent drinking in bars were predictive of more severe bar‐related victimization during the past year. These findings are discussed in terms of women's risk for victimization in bars and needed areas of future research. Aggr. Behav. 25:349–364, 1999. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

The effects of divided attention on auditory priming

Traditional theorizing stresses the importance of attentional state during encoding for later memory, based primarily on research with explicit memory. Recent research has begun to investigate the role of attention in implicit memory but has focused almost exclusively on priming in the visual modality. The present experiments examined the effect of divided attention on auditory implicit memory, using auditory perceptual identification, word-stem completion and word-fragment completion. Participants heard study words under full attention conditions or while simultaneously carrying out a distractor task (the divided attention condition). In Experiment 1, a distractor task with low response frequency failed to disrupt later auditory priming (but diminished explicit memory as assessed with auditory recognition). In Experiment 2, a distractor task with greater response frequency disrupted priming on all three of the auditory priming tasks as well as the explicit test. These results imply that although auditory priming is less reliant on attention than explicit memory, it is still greatly affected by at least some divided-attention manipulations. These results are consistent with research using visual priming tasks and have relevance for hypotheses regarding attention and auditory priming.     

Expectation of a final cumulative test enhances long-term retention

In the present study, subjects studied lists of words across four experimental conditions: whether (or not) subjects received initial testing for these lists and whether (or not) they were made aware of an upcoming final free-recall test. Initial testing enhanced final-test performance; however, subjects benefited more from initial testing when they also knew they would need to remember the information for a later test. The data suggest that holding an expectation of the final test encouraged the continued processing of study materials following an initial test, affecting the accessibility of these materials at the time of final recall. The results clearly illustrate how an expectation of a cumulative test might influence long-term retention, which may have important implications for educational practice.     

Dimensions of behavior of toddlers entering early intervention: child and family correlates

This study examined the nature and correlates of the behavioral characteristics of a nationally representative sample of 1612 toddlers 18-31 months of age entering Part C early intervention services in the U.S. Factor analysis of 15 items describing child behavior collected as part of an extensive telephone interview of parents yielded four dimensions of behavior: difficult behaviors, lack of persistence, distractible, and withdrawn. Demographic and personal characteristics of the child and family were found to be related to the four behavioral dimensions. Parent reports of behavior of toddlers with fair or poor health or those with communication difficulties were less positive for all behavioral dimensions, suggesting the development of toddler behavioral characteristics is influencing or being influenced by other facets of development.     

Willingness to use microbicides varies by race/ethnicity, experience with prevention products, and partner type.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate women's willingness to use vaginal microbicides to reduce/prevent HIV infection, using measures grounded in the individual, behavioral, and social contexts of sex. DESIGN: A cross-sectional study that enrolled a sample (N = 531) of 18-55 year old Latina, African-American, and White women in the U.S. between October, 2004, and July, 2005. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Willingness to use microbicides and individual- and context-related variables (e.g., demographics, relationship status). RESULTS: Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported a one-dimensional, 8-item scale, with high internal consistency (alpha = .91). Subgroup analyses within the Latina (n = 166), African- American (n = 193), and White sub-samples (n = 172) also supported a unidimensional scale with strong internal validity and high reliability. Race/ethnicity as a contextual factor, a woman's history of using prevention products, and the nature of the sexual partnership were predictive of willingness to use microbicides (R = .41). That is, women with greater frequencies of condom use, a history of spermicide use, and non-main sexual partners had higher predicted Willingness to Use Microbicides scale scores, while White women had lower predicted scores. CONCLUSION: The Willingness to Use Microbicides scale serves as the first psychometrically validated measure of factors related to microbicide acceptability. Developing and implementing psychometrically validated and contextualized microbicide acceptability measures, in an effort to understand microbicide users and circumstances of use, is crucial to both clinical trials and future intervention studies.     

Teaching spontaneous responses to young children with autism

Using a multiple probe design across responses, we demonstrated the effectiveness of intensive intervention in establishing spontaneous verbal responses to 2 3-year-old children with autism with generalization to novel settings involving novel persons. Intervention involved discrete-trial instruction (i.e., repeated instructional opportunities presented in close proximity to high rates of reinforcement), specific prompts, and error correction. Spontaneous responses were defined as specific verbal utterances (e.g., the child says "bless you") following discriminative stimuli that did not involve explicit vocal directives (e.g., adult sneeze). The development of effective interventions to address the social-communicative needs of very young children with autism is discussed.     

A Lifespan Model of Interference Resolution and Inhibitory Control: Risk for Depression and Changes with Illness Progression

Neuropsychology Review - The cognitive processes involved in inhibitory control accuracy (IC) and interference resolution speed (IR) or broadly – inhibition – are discussed in this...     

Increasing Low-Responding Students’ Participation in Class Discussion

Students in six sections of a large undergraduate class were asked to record their class comments on notecards in all course units. Additionally, in some units, they received points toward their course grade based on their reported comments in class discussion. The study was conducted over a two-semester period, with slight variation in both the recording and crediting procedures across the two semesters. The primary goal of the study was to determine the effects of two credit and self-recording arrangements on initially low-responding students’ subsequent participation in class discussion (first semester n = 49, second semester n = 45). A higher percentage of low-responding students reported participating in class discussion when credit was given for participation than when no credit was awarded. Nonetheless, 39% of the initially low-responding students the first semester and 38% of the initially low-responding students the second semester did not participate in class discussion in any phase of the study.     

Preschoolers continue to trust a more accurate informant 1 week after exposure to accuracy information

To determine whether children retain a preference for a previously accurate informant only in the short term or for long‐term use, 3‐ and 4‐year‐old children were tested in two experiments. In both experiments, children were given accuracy information about two informants and were subsequently tested for their selective trust in the two informants (Experiment 1: immediately, 1 day and 1 week later; Experiment 2: immediately, 4 days and 1 week later). Both age groups preferred to trust the accurate informant not only immediately after receiving accuracy information but also at subsequent time‐points. Children who were immediately able to explicitly identify the accurate informant were significantly more likely to seek and accept information from her 1 week later. However, even when they had not been asked to explicitly identify the accurate informant both age groups still maintained their preference for her. Thus, by 3 years of age, children spontaneously choose a previously accurate informant up to 1 week after exposure to information regarding her accuracy.