An Exploratory Study of HIV+ Adolescents’ Spirituality: Will You Pray with Me?

The aims of the study were (1) to determine whether adolescents find it acceptable to have physicians explore their spiritual beliefs as part of their medical care, (2) to characterize the role of spirituality and religious beliefs in adolescents with and without HIV, and (3) to examine associations between spirituality/religion and quality of life. Adolescents receiving their medical care at an urban Adolescent Health Clinic completed a study-specific questionnaire about spiritual inquiry by their physician, the Brief Multidimensional Measurement of Religiousness/Spirituality, and the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory 4.0. Chi-squared analysis, Fischer’s exact test, and t tests were used to assess associations. A total of 45 participants enrolled: 19 HIV+ (53% vertical transmission) and 26 HIV?; mean age 17.2 years; 80% African American. Four out of 45 (9%) had ever been asked by their doctor about their spiritual/religious beliefs, and only 8 (18%) had ever shared these beliefs with their healthcare provider. Most teens wanted their provider to ask them about their spiritual beliefs during some visits, especially when dealing with death/dying or chronic illness (67%). Those with HIV were more likely to endorse wanting their doctors to pray with them (42% vs. 15%), feeling “God’s presence” (Mean = 3.95 vs. 2.83), being “part of a larger force” (Mean = 2.58 vs. 1.69), and feeling “God had abandoned them” (Mean = 1.63 vs. 1.15). There are certain circumstances in which healthcare providers should include a spiritual history with teenage patients. Few differences emerged in the teens studied with and without HIV.     

Prospective Examination of Self‐Regulatory Efficacy in Predicting Walking for Active Transportation: A Social Cognitive Theory Approach

Walking for transportation is associated with health benefits. Minimal theory‐based research has examined social cognitive and environmental predictors. This study examined social cognitions (self‐regulatory efficacy to plan/schedule and overcome barriers; distance and travel time cognitions) and an environmental factor (proximity) as predictors of walking for transportation. Participants (n = 105) were university students, faculty, and staff, living within a walkable distance to campus. Social cognitions and proximity measures were completed at baseline, followed by walking for transportation to/from the campus over 2 weeks. A hierarchical multiple regression analysis predicted walking (R²_adjusted = .55; p < .05). Self‐regulatory efficacy to plan/schedule and overcome barriers were independent predictors (p's < .01). Findings supported theoretical contentions that self‐regulatory efficacy predicts walking for transportation.     

Logics for Epistemic Programs

We construct logical languages which allow one to represent a variety of possible types of changes affecting the information states of agents in a multi-agent setting. We formalize these changes by defining a notion of epistemic program. The languages are two-sorted sets that contain not only sentences but also actions or programs. This is as in dynamic logic, and indeed our languages are not significantly more complicated than dynamic logics. But the semantics is more complicated. In general, the semantics of an epistemic program is what we call aprogram model. This is a Kripke model of ‘actions’,representing the agents' uncertainty about the current action in a similar way that Kripke models of ‘states’ are commonly used in epistemic logic to represent the agents' uncertainty about the current state of the system. Program models induce changes affecting agents' information, which we represent as changes of the state model, called epistemic updates. Formally, an update consists of two operations: the first is called the update map, and it takes every state model to another state model, called the updated model; the second gives, for each input state model, a transition relation between the states of that model and the states of the updated model. Each variety of epistemic actions, such as public announcements or completely private announcements to groups, gives what we call an action signature, and then each family of action signatures gives a logical language. The construction of these languages is the main topic of this paper. We also mention the systems that capture the valid sentences of our logics. But we defer to a separate paper the completeness proof. The basic operation used in the semantics is called the update product. A version of this was introduced in Baltag et al. (1998), and the presentation here improves on the earlier one. The update product is used to obtain from any program model the corresponding epistemic update, thus allowing us to compute changes of information or belief. This point is of interest independently of our logical languages. We illustrate the update product and our logical languages with many examples throughout the paper.     

Lexical influences in audiovisual speech perception

Phoneme identification with audiovisually discrepant stimuli is influenced hy information in the visual signal (the McGurk effect). Additionally, lexical status affects identification of auditorily presented phonemes. The present study tested for lexical influences on the McGurk effect. Participants identified phonemes in audiovisually discrepant stimuli in which lexical status of the auditory component and of a visually influenced percept was independently varied. Visually influenced (McGurk) responses were more frequent when they formed a word and when the auditory signal was a nonword (Experiment 1). Lexical effects were larger for slow than for fast responses (Experiment 2), as with auditory speech, and were replicated with stimuli matched on physical properties (Experiment 3). These results are consistent with models in which lexical processing of speech is modality independent.     

Mixed-modality psychophysical scaling: Double cross-modality matching for “difficult” continua

In mixed-modality psychophysical scaling, stimuli from different modalities are presented alternately for judgment on the same scale. The usual purpose is to produce cross-modality matching functions without actually doing cross-modality matches. This paper reports the results of two experiments that extend the method to situations in which the responses, themselves crossmodality matches on an easy-to-control continuum (duration), are used to derive matching functions for two difficult-to-control continua (here loudness and brightness). Derived cross-modality matching functions are highly similar to those obtained from magnitude estimation or category judgment responses. First- and second-order sequential dependencies also closely resemble those found in data from the methods that employ numerical response scales, with one exception. For the first time in these studies of mixed-modality scaling, current responses sometimes were found to be weakly contrasted to the values of previous stimuli of different modality from the current stimulus. The various sequential dependencies found may arise from different levels of processing, with intramodal response-stimulus contrast arising from sensory differentiation, inter- and intramodality response-response assimilation from perceptual categorization processes, and intermodality response-stimulus contrast from cognitive expectancies.     

Sex differences in household labor time a comparison of rural and urban couples

A sample of 440 full-time employed couples from 11 states was examined to determine the differences between time spent on housework by husbands and wives in rural and urban areas. More time is spent in housework in rural families than in urban families because time spent in housework is greater for rural women than for urban women, while rural and urban husbands' times do not differ. Education of spouses, job status differentials, and age of the younger child do not significantly interact with rural-urban residence and sex of the spouse. However, family income does significantly influence the relationship between time spent on housework for rural and urban husbands and wives.     

Structural integration of the Affect Balance Scale and the Life Satisfaction Index A: race, sex, and age differences

In this research we examined race, sex, and age differences in the factorial structure of Liang's (1985) model of subjective well-being that integrates the Affect Balance Scale and the Life Satisfaction Index A. In particular, we viewed the covariance structure of the items as a function of several parameter matrices. We analyzed the factorial invariance by testing hypotheses involving the equivalence constraints of one or more parameter matrices with regard to the following: White and Black subsamples, men and women, and the young-old and the old-old. Data for the research came from the 1974 Harris National Council on Aging Survey, Myths and Reality of Aging in America. Analysis of covariance structures, or LISREL, was used to assess the factorial invariance. Replicated race differences were found in the factorial structure, but sex and age differences were not found. Consistent race differences were found for the second-order factor loadings for negative affect.     

A Well-Kept Secret: What Counseling Psychology Can Offer Social Psychology1

Although social psychology has increasingly influenced counseling psychology, the impact that counseling psychology has had or could have on social psychology is less well developed. This paper considers factors that have limited counseling's influence on social psychology. In addition, contributions that counseling can make to social psychology are presented. It is argued that both disciplines have evolved to investigate the behavior of “normal” individuals in social contexts. It is concluded that there is much to be gained by both specialties in a fuller and more comprehensive integration and understanding of the findings and methods of the other.     

Psychometric Aspects of Verbal Pragmatic Ratings

This study examined the psychometric aspects of a verbal pragmatic rating scale. The scale contained six pragmatic features (i.e., Conciseness, Lexical Selection, Quantity, Relevancy, Specificity, and Topic Maintenance) based on Grice's cooperative principles. Fifteen right brain-damaged (RBD), 15 left brain-damaged (LBD), and 16 healthy normal control (NC) right-handed adult participants produced narratives while recollecting emotional and nonemotional experiences. Naive raters evaluated each pragmatic feature for appropriateness on a 5-point Likert scale. When reliability was examined, the overall internal consistency of the pragmatic scale was extremely high (alpha =.96). Factor analysis was conducted to examine the theoretical relations among the six pragmatic features. Three meaningful factors involving discourse content, conceptual unity, and parsimony were identified. Findings are discussed in light of Grice's model and the construct validity of the scale.