Teacher ratings of children's problem and competence behaviors: Normative and parametric characteristics

Teacher-rated adjustment differences among young elementary school children from (a) a recent sample and a 1974 cohort, and (b) urban/suburban, male/female, and grade-level subgroups were examined. A problem behavior checklist (Classroom Adjustment Rating Scale) and a school competence measure (Health Resources Inventory) for 974 children from 5 urban and 5 suburban schools were completed by 101 first- to fourth-grade teachers. Children from the more current cohort were rated as significantly more maladjusted than those from the earlier sample on 8 of 10 adjustment variables. In the recent sample, girls and suburban children evidenced a greater number of school competencies and fewer problem behaviors than boys and urban children, respectively. The implications of these findings for the future use of the teacher rating scales are discussed.     

Gay women,men, and families in rural settings: Toward the development of helping communities

The urban biases of empirical research on gay men, women, and families have resulted in minimal knowledge about gay people in rural settings. The diversity of lives of rural gay women and men and the variety of patterns of meeting the challenges of rural living are described. Processes of help-seeking and help-giving are discussed and the need for a helping community of family, friends, and caring others is affirmed. Collaboration between rural gay people and rural community psychologists is suggested to promote the development of helping communities for gay people and thereby initiate a process of change in rural settings.     

What learning-disabled readers fail to retrieve on verbal dichotic tests: A problem of encoding,retrieval, or storage?

Three theoretical models were assessed as a framework for capturing learning-disabled readers' faulty word retrieval. To this end, learning-disabled and skilled readers were compared on verbal dichotic listening tasks for free recall and cued recall of word lists organized by semantic, phonemic, and structural features. The results indicated that disabled readers were comparable on free recall but were inferior to skilled readers on cued recall. No ability group differences were found for categorical and noncategorical recall intrusions during the cued recall phase. Cued recall performance was further analyzed for individual differences in memory trace structure (via the Tulving & Watkins, 1975, reduction method), ear asymmetry, and the allocation of attention to word features prior to cuing. Results indicated that during the cued recall phase, disabled readers' memory traces were inferior in structure to those of skilled readers, even though the two ability groups produced comparable symmetrical recall patterns for the ear presentations. Further, disabled readers had lower selective attention scores for the interhemispheric processing of information prior to cuing than did skilled readers. Taken together, the results suggest that, prior to cued recall, disabled readers suffer from attentional difficulties during interhemispheric processing, which in turn influences the structural formation of their memory trace.This research was supported by a grant from the U.S. Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services. Special appreciation is given to Greelley District IV schools for providing subjects, to Missy Reda and Stephanie Contros for the data collection, and to two anonymous reviewers for their critical comments on a draft of this article.     

Modification of Type A behavior through aerobic exercise

This psychophysiological evaluation of an aerobic exercise program examined specifically whether aerobic training modified Pattern A for those individuals at behavioral risk for developing coronary heart disease, i.e., young Type A individuals. At pretest and posttest of this secondary prevention study, Type A and Type B subjects were assessed in three conditions: aerobic exercise program, nonaerobic activity (Aikido, a martial art) control, and notreatment control. After 10 weeks, Type A but not Type B subjects exhibited lower Pattern A behavior in the aerobic program than in control conditions. Average workout pulse rates and differentially reliable increases in aerobic capacity indicated that aerobic training was indeed aerobic, whereas aikido activity was not. Even though selected nonaerobic factors, such as locus of control and group participation, did not mediate the Pattern A decrease for Type A's when comparing aikido and aerobic conditions, changes in aerobic capacity may have been the mediator. Generalizability of the results and implications for theoretical development and clinical intervention are discussed.     

Alcoholism: A conflict of models

Adherents to the traditional model of alcoholism explain alcoholic behavior as a consequence of alcoholism. Alcoholism is identified as an unseen, unmeasured entity inherent in alcoholics. This concept parallels the thinking of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton, who believed in an unseen, unmeasurable creator behind the physical world. These traditional approaches contrast with the emergent model of alcoholism and twentieth-century scientific thought. Emergent scientific model adherents explain alcoholic behavior without resort to unseen factors. Since the traditional and emergent scientific models begin with different assumptions, model adherents experience communication difficulties. Future developments with determine which model will dominate the field of alcohol studies and treatment.     

Spiritual issues in mental health care

Religious and spiritual issues in mental health are explored in the context of four conceptual models: the medical, the nursing, the humanistic, and the pastoral. This is done by looking at each model in terms of content, diagnostic focus, language and treatment goals, and primary qualities in the health provider.The models are illustrated by case studies gathered from a multidisciplinary setting. The discovery that each model can incorporate the religious and spiritual dimension in mental health care, but that each model does this in distinctive ways, is a key point.     

Rules versus cognitive structure as bases for children's performances on probability problems

The present study compared two hypotheses about children's solutions to Piaget and Inhelder's (1975) two-set alternative choice probability problems. The first was that children follow rules that specify a temporally ordered sequence of tests and decisions (Siegler, 1981). One prediction of rules is that children who know strategies that combine variables within sets (e.g., ratio or subtraction strategies) will only use them on problems that require such strategies (conflict problems), whereas lower level (nonconflict) problems will be solved by directly comparing the values of variables between sets. The second hypothesis was that once children develop knowledge of within-set solutions to probability problems, they apply them to both conflict and nonconflict problems. The results supported the latter hypothesis. The majority of children who solved conflict problems using within-set strategies explained at least one nonconflict problem by referring to within-set combinations. Results were discussed in terms of their implications for cognitive development and for instruction.     

Observers’ sensitivity to dynamic anomalies in collisions

The present study examined observers’ ability to discriminate canonical and dynamically anomalous collisions that were presented in either frictionless or frictional systems. Whereas previous research has provided qualitative demonstrations that dynamic information can be extracted from visual events, the current study provides a parametric assessment of observers’ sensitivity to dynamic invariants. Our findings indicate that observers are competent when viewing both familiar, terrestrial (frictional) systems and unfamiliar but computationally simpler, 0-G (frictionless) systems. Thus, our sensitivity to these dynamic invariants in visual events is robust in natural systems whose dynamic properties differ from those of the environment in which we evolved and developed.     

Students' attitudes toward university health services

This study measured students' attitudes toward a university's student health services (SHS) and identified factors that were related to their attitudes. A questionnaire surveying students' attitudes was administered to a sample of 150 students at the Oxford Campus of the University of Mississippi. Analysis of the data revealed that students' attitudes had a statistically significant correlation with the following variables: perceived medical care cost, amount of health information/education received during medical encounters, time spent in the waiting room of the SHS, sex of the student, and income of the student. There was no significant relationship between attitude and age.