AIDS and condom-related knowledge,beliefs, and behaviors in Mexican migrant laborers

A survey of 87 Mexican migrants (55 males and 32 females) who have lived and worked in the US since 1982 assessed AIDS and condom-related knowledge, beliefs, and sexual practices. Although respondents were highly knowledgeable about major modes of HIV transmission, one-third to one-half believed that HIV could be contracted from mosquito bites, public bathrooms, kissing, and the HIV test. Only 15% knew someone with AIDS. Ever-use of condoms was reported by 70.9% of men and 41.9% of women. Of the 68 subjects who had been sexually active in the year preceding the survey, 20 reported two or more partners. Among sexually active respondents, 16.2% always used condoms with their primary partner, while 43.0% used condoms consistently with occasional partners. 48.9% of men and 57.1% of women never used condoms with their primary partner; with casual partners, these rates were 30.8% and 44.4%, respectively. Worry about contracting AIDS, self-rated on a scale from 1 (very often) to 4 (never), averaged 2.84, with higher worry scores among those 18-31 years of age and with multiple partners. Respondents did not anticipate negative consequences of condom use (e.g., reduced sexual pleasure), but females expressed concern that carrying condoms would cause them to be viewed as promiscuous.     

The relationship between induced emotional arousal and amnesia

An experiment was conducted to test a hypothesis emanating from a similarity in data pattern between studies on amnesia and studies on the effects of arousal on memory. The hypothesis was that arousal and amnesia might be related, or more precisely, that amnesia induced in the laboratory might be mediated by high levels of arousal. Subjects in this experiment were presented with a thematic, short story in pictorial form. One version of the story consisted of a traumatic, arousal-inducing event placed between neutral events. A second version of the story contained the same neutral events in the beginning and the end, but also a neutral event in the middle. Palmar skin conductance, heart rate, and subjective self-ratings were used to determine that the manipulation made had caused different degrees of emotional arousal for the two groups of subjects presented with the different versions of the story. The methods used to determine memory performance were recall and recognition. The data obtained indicate that amnesia induced in the laboratory is mediated by emotional arousal in terms of concepts of attention and reconstruction.     

Unique System of Care Issues and Challenges in Serving Children Under Age 3 and their Families

This article addresses the primary modifications necessary for system change to better meet the mental health needs of children under the age of three. The role of risk and resiliency factors in the young child, family and community and the necessity for a comprehensive community infant-family mental health system with a focus on the whole family are addressed. Barriers to care within early childhood systems of care are examined, including stigma, community referral and collaboration, diagnostic concerns during infancy, issues around family engagement, empowerment and partnership, funding of comprehensive and well coordinated infant-family services, workforce capacity and evaluation. Recommendations for implementation of system changes at the community and federal levels are proposed.     

Predictors of responses to stress among families coping with poverty-related stress

This study tested how poverty-related stress (PRS), psychological distress, and responses to stress predicted future effortful coping and involuntary stress responses one year later. In addition, we explored age, sex, ethnicity, and parental influences on responses to stress over time. Hierarchical linear modeling analyses conducted with 98 low-income families (300 family members: 136 adults, 82 school-aged children, 82 adolescents) revealed that primary control coping, secondary control coping, disengagement, involuntary engagement, and involuntary disengagement each significantly predicted future use of that response. Primary and secondary control coping also predicted less maladaptive future responses to stress, while involuntary responses to stress undermined the development of adaptive responding. Age, sex, and interactions among PRS and prior coping were also found to predict certain responses to stress. In addition, child subgroup analyses demonstrate the importance of parental modeling of coping and involuntary stress responses, and warmth/nurturance and monitoring practices. Results are discussed with regard to the implications for preventive interventions with families in poverty.     

Conflictual Moralities,Ethical Torture: Revisiting the Problem of “Dirty Hands”

The problem of “dirty hands” has become an important term, indeed one of the most important terms of reference, in contemporary academic scholarship on the issue of torture. The aim of this essay is to offer a better understanding of this problem. Firstly, it is argued that the problem of “dirty hands” can play neither within rule-utilitarianism nor within absolutism. Still, however, the problem of “dirty hands” represents an acute, seemingly irresolvable, conflict within morality, with the moral agent understood, following Nagel, as necessarily holding mixed, absolutist-consequentialist moral intuitions, pulling in opposite directions. Secondly, a distinction is drawn between real situations of “dirty hands,” and other conflictual scenarios, which are commonly, but unjustifiably placed under the metaphorical title of “dirty hands.” Finally, it is suggested - utilizing Nagel’s own ideas, as developed in his later work, and Sen’s notion of evaluator relativity—that the moral “blind alley” manifested in the problem of “dirty hands” may not be totally blind after all, at least from the situated agent’s own internal point of view (as opposed to that of an external observer trying to put herself in the agent’s position by way of moral simulation). Thus, contrary to Walzer’s approach, it is possible for a person (politician) acting in a situation of “dirty hands,” not to believe herself to be guilty, but still be a moral person.     

Kant's conception of pedagogy

Confronted with the thoroughgoing marketisation of education, scholars have revisited the nature of pedagogy. The work of Immanuel Kant is a resource for critiquing the channelling of the transformation of self and society into rapacious consumerism. Kant's exploration of the connection between inner freedom and political freedom has been recast as pedagogy of the oppressed. Countering the dismissal of the Enlightenment as an accomplice of colonialism and imperialism, Kantian pedagogy is enlisted in the struggle against the forces undermining the very structure of liberal democracy and humanity on a global scale. This essay points to the limitations of this revindication on the grounds that it leaves undisturbed the formative complicities at work in the current crisis, complicities all too familiar to those who teach and learn.