Self-help and child abuse: Victims,victimizers, and the development of self-control

Study of child abusers reveals that many victimizers were once victims and that the behaviors underlying the perspectives of victims and victimizers are related. Three groups of abusing parents using directed self-help were studied at Parents Anonymous by participant observation methodology for two and-a-half years. Four of the 52 participating parents read and commented on a draft of the research. Their violence appeared to be an attempt to gain a sense of control or to deal with the frustration of not feeling in control. Suggestions are made for developing social services that enhance individuals' sense of control.Paper presented at the Groves Conference on Marriage and the Family, London, England, July, 1986.     

An "Epidemic" Model of Adolescent Cigarette Smoking

The prevalence of regular smoking increases rapidly during adolescence. We applied modeling methods from the study of epidemic infectious disease to smoking behavior. Our "epidemic" models dealt with the process of transition among four states: nonsmoker (susceptible), trier (exposed), regular smoker (infected), and ex-smoker (recovered). The best fitting model was one in which the transition from nonsmoker to trier was a social contagion process where nonsmokers contacted either triers or regular smokers. All other transitions were treated as constant rate processes in which a constant proportion of eligible individuals made the transition in a given year. The recursive equation model embodying these assumptions was able to predict accurately the proportion of adolescents in each state in Grades 6–11. Our results support a "stage" model of smoking, suggesting that different psychological and physiological processes are involved in the initiation of smoking than in developing a habit of regular smoking. A possible sex difference was found in the non-contact transition between trier and smoker states, with the transition being more probable in females than in males.     

Effects of communication apprehension,familiarity of partner,and topic on selected “women's language” features

In keeping with Lakoff's (1975) notion that the use of women's language (WL) conveys uncertainty on the part of the speaker, the influence of communication apprehension, familiarity of partner, and topic on the use of selected WL forms was investigated. In dyadic conversation with a female friend or stranger, 71 female university students, who had completed the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension—Long, discussed a familiar or an unfamiliar topic. Multiple-regression analyses revealed that (1) communication apprehension was positively related to the use of question intonation, (2) familiarity of topic and partner were negatively related to the use of hedges, and (3) familiarity of topic was positively related to the use of intensifiers. There were no intercorrelations of the linguistic forms. These results challenge the notion that WL forms actually cohere to form a kind of language and suggest that the influence of social and psychological variables on the use of WL is much more complex and multifaceted than Lakoff believed.This article is based on portions of an Honour's thesis completed by the second author, and was presented at the Annual Convention of the Canadian Psychological Association held in Ottawa, Ontario, June 1990.     

An intergenerational analysis of expectations for women's career and family roles

This study examined the career and family role expectations and attitudes of women university students and both of their parents. Data collected from 292 families revealed that most daughters and their parents were traditional in their attitudes toward mothering, held somewhat egalitarian attitudes toward marital roles, and generally expected daughters to experience little frustration regarding future career and family roles. Differences and similarities among daughters, mothers, and fathers as well as between intact and dissolved families of various SES were examined. Implications of findings and suggestions for future research were discussed.This research was supported by grants from the University of Rhode Island Council on Research and from the College of Human Science and Services. Portions of this paper were presented at the National Council on Family Relations annual meeting, New Orleans, Lousiana, November, 1989 and at the Eastern Sociological Society annual meeting, Providence, Rhode Island, April, 1991. The authors thank Mary Ellen Reilly for her encouragement and assistance.     

Components of analogical reasoning in a mildly head injured population

This study sought to investigate the effects of mild head injury on a particular type of cognitive ability, verbal analogical reasoning. The performance of 19 individuals with head injuries was compared to a group of 30 control subjects matched for age, education, and gender on 100 verbal analogies. Solution times and error rates were modeled. Unstandardized regression weights for individual subjects were correlated with subjects’ performance on a number of standardized ability tests. Results showed that compared to the control subjects, the head injured subjects: (a) were significantly slower to solve the analogies, and were particularly slow to perform certain processes: encoding/inference and comparison; (b) tended to show greater variability in performance; and (c) had data that had a poorer componential model fit. The data suggest that analogical reasoning is affected by a head injury, and that certain information processes may be responsible for performance deficits.     

The Chancellor's memory: Rhetoric and truth in discursive remembering

This paper explores the notion of truthfulness in research on conversational remembering. It argues that people's accounts of past events, before they can be taken as data on the cognitive workings of memory, need to be examined as contextualized and variable productions that perform pragmatic and rhetorical work; no one version can be taken as a person's real memory. The consequences of this discourse-analytical perspective are examined first through a critical discussion of Ulric Neisser's study of John Dean's testimony to the senate ‘Watergate’ committee. The issues are then explored more deeply in an analysis of reportings of a different event, in which similar (Watergate-like) issues of memory, truth and accuracy are also at issue. It is argued that: (a) all of Neisser's three kinds of memory–verbatim, gist and ‘repisodic’–involve problematical assumptions concerning their relation to some true, original event; and (b) that Dean's accounts of his memory and his displays of memory should be approached as occasioned productions oriented pragmatically to the assignment of guilt and avoidance of scapegoating. Through an analysis of newspaper reports (based on memory) of a controversial briefing given by the then British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, we then examine: (a) how discourse about what could be used as an arbiter of truth was rhetorically organized; (b) how participants' versions of events were constructed rhetorically, as parts of arguments; (c) that both sides in the dispute maintained the coherence of their positions by a form of error accounting similar to that used by Neisser with respect to Dean. It is suggested that cognitive psychologists, whether working in the laboratory or attempting to do real-world studies of everyday remembering, need to avoid simplistic notions of true original events, and can do so by addressing the rhetorical organization of participants' memory accounts.     

Integrating scientist and practitioner training in counseling psychology: Practicum is the Key

Recently, revitalized interest has been shown in the scientist-practitioner approach to training counseling and other applied psychologists. The counseling practicum is proposed as potentially the most influential and effective forum in which students can learn to integrate science and practice within the counseling psychology training sequence. A series of recommendations are presented for the more effective integratin of training in science and practice through students' clinical preparation experiences in general and the counseling practicum in particular.     

‘Healthy eating’ clinics in primary care: Programme intensity and patients' health beliefs

The primary care setting is seen by many to be at the forefront of the attempt to encourage people to follow healthier diets. Conducted in a single practice, the present study firstly considered the effectiveness of three ‘healthy eating’ clinics for patients found to have elevated cholesterol levels at screening. Through the use of a randomised trial, these patients received either basic dietay information or were invited back more frequently and requested to complete food diaries, half of which were then analysed through a computer program. At one year follow up the three programmes were found to have produced a 6.7% reduction in cholesterol levels. However, no differences were found between the three programmes. The study secondly examined a range of health belieji, based on the health belief model, as predictors of reductions in cholesterol levels. These were generally found to be poor predictors, with only the belief that one's diet is related to the chances of developing a number of major conditions and the perception of bam'ers dealing with confidence predicting these reductions. Finally, the case for incorporating self-efficacy beliefs into the healh belief model is outlined and the need for health counsellors to tailor their messages to the pre-existing beliefi and behaviours of patients is highlighted.     

Gender and Sex-Role Influences on Children''s Self-Esteem

This study examined direct and moderating influences of gender and sex-role orientations on children's general self-esteem. Moderating influences of these variables on the prediction of self-esteem were examined with respect to two sets of competence beliefs regarding school achievement: perceived capacities and perceived strategies for doing well in school. One hundred nineteen fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade children were assessed using the Perceived Competence Scale for Children (Harter, 1982), the Multidimensional Measure of Children's Perceptions of Control (Connell, 1985), and the Children's Personal Attributes Questionnaire (Hall & Halberstadt, 1980). Correlational and hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that upper elementary schoolchildren's general self-esteem is (a) marginally related to biological gender, with boys showing a slight advantage; (b) significantly related to masculinity and androgyny; and (c) predicted more strongly by perceived capacities to do schoolwork in girls than in boys, and by perceived (lack of) strategies for academic success in nontraditionally sex-typed children than in traditionally sex-typed children. Of the two nontraditionally sex-typed groups, androgynous children were found to have more positive school competence beliefs than were undifferentiated children.