A Protocol for Reducing Juvenile Recidivism Through Relapse Prevention

The connection between alcohol and other drug use and juvenile criminal activities is well established. The source of this connection and specific interventions with juvenile offenders involved in alcohol and drug use are unclear. This article reviews existing literature pertinent to this subject and presents an adolescent-specific relapse prevention protocol. This protocol provides readers with a structure for assisting substance abusing juvenile offenders.     

Partners and Fellow Patients: Two Sources of Emotional Support for Women with Breast Cancer

This study examined the helping process that occurred when 26 breast cancer patients (the disclosers) talked about their illness-related concerns with their partner and, in a separate conversation, with a fellow patient (the volunteer helpers). The conversations were rated by trained observers and by the disclosers in terms of several process and outcome variables. From the observers' perspective, the volunteer helpers were more helpful, empathic, and supportive, less critical, and used more self-disclosure than the partners. Disclosers did not differentiate between the two types of helper, and gave generally high ratings to both conversations. Strengths and weaknesses of each type of helper were identified. Findings are discussed in relation to the literature on formal and informal helping, and implications for training nonprofessional helpers are suggested.     

Psy-BaDo

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

The start-stop procedure: Estimation

In four experiments investigating human timing, subjects produced estimates of sample durations by bracketing their endpoints. On each trial, subjects reproduced a sample duration by pressing a button before the estimated sample duration elapsed (start time) and releasing it after the estimated duration elapsed (stop time). From these responses, middle time (start + stop/2) and spread time (stop — start) were calculated, representing the point of subjective equality and the difference limen, respectively. In all experiments, subjects produced middle times that varied directly with sample duration. In Experiment 2, middle times lengthened when feedback was withheld. Consistent with Weber timing, spread times, as well as the standard deviation of middle times, varied directly with middle time (Experiments 1, 3, and 4). On the basis of an internal clock model of timing (Gibbon & Church, 1990), the data permitted inferences regarding memory processes and response threshold. Correlations between start and stop times and between start and spread times agreed with earlier findings in animals suggesting that the variance of temporal estimates across trials is based in part upon the selection of a single temporal memory sample from a reference memory store and upon one or two threshold samples for initiating and terminating each estimate within a trial.     

The Relations of Dispositional Regulation and Emotionality to Elders' Empathy-Related Responding and Affect While Volunteering

Researchers recently have proposed that various empathy-related reactions are differentially related to individual differences in emotional intensity and regulation. This idea was tested with a sample of elderly hospital volunteers. As predicted, dispositional sympathy was associated with high levels of both dispositional regulation and negative emotional intensity. Personal distress was linked with low regulation and high negative emotional intensity, and cognitive perspective taking was associated with high regulation. Perspective taking moderated the relation of emotional intensity to sympathy and personal distress. In addition, elders' negative affect when volunteering at a hospital was correlated with low regulation and high personal distress. In contrast, positive affect was correlated with high levels of regulation and dispositional sympathy. The results demonstrate that findings pertaining to vicarious emotional responding are generalizable to nonstudent populations engaged in planned, sustained helping behavior.     

The Presence of Psychiatric Disorders in HIV-Infected Women

Many women of low socioeconomic status who have contracted HIV qualify for individual, dual, and multiple psychiatric diagnoses that predate their knowledge of their HIV infection. Two case studies of HIV-infected women are presented. Psychoactive substance use disorders are the most common Axis I diagnoses, followed by depression. The most frequently diagnosed Axis II disorders are borderline and antisocial personality disorders. These women reported histories that often included alcohol and other drug use, childhood sexual abuse, violent interpersonal relationships, depression, and learning disabilities. Earlier intervention addressing these problems might have prevented the onset of psychiatric disorders as well as high-risk behaviors that lead to HIV infection.     

Fictional women physicians in the nineteenth century: The struggle for self-identity

By the late nineteenth century, there were large numbers of women physicians in the United States. Three Realist novels of the time, Dr. Breen's Practice, by William Dean Howells, Dr. Zay, by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps and A Country Doctor, by Sarah Orne Jewett, feature women doctors as protagonists. The issues in these novels mirrored current issues in medicine and society. By contrasting the lives of these fictional women doctors to their historical counterparts, it is seen that, while the novels are good attempts to be truthful treatments of women physicians' struggles, in certain areas they do not accurately address the concerns of women physicians.     

Spatial Repetition Blindness Is Modulated by Selective Attention to Color or Shape

Subjects reported either the colors or shapes of two simultaneous masked letters. Our first study found that they were less accurate when the reported features were identical ("repetition blindness," or RB), while repetition along the unreported dimension had no effect. Three follow-up studies confirmed that when the same dimension was judged (overtly or covertly) for both stimuli, performance was only affected by repetition along that dimension. However, when different dimensions were judged for the two stimuli, performance was affected by repetition on both dimensions. These findings support new conclusions about both RB and visual attention. First, RB depends critically on visual attention, rather than simply on the stimulus presented or the overt response required. Second, while attention can be restricted to a single visual dimension, this is efficient only when the same dimension is selected for both objects. Selecting the color of one object and the shape of another simultaneous object results in both dimensions being accessed for both objects.     

Ethical Intentions and the Theories of Reasoned Action and Planned Behavior1

This study compares the explanatory power of Fishbein and Ajzen's (1991) theory of reasoned action, Ajzen's (1975) theory of planned behavior, and a modified version of the theory of planned behavior, which includes a measure of moral obligation, to predict insurance agents' e]thical intentions toward their clients. Two hundred and forty-five insurance agents in the U.S. were sent surveys, and with 59% of them responding, results suggest that the modified version of the theory of planned behavior best explains agents' e]thical intentions. Theoretical considerations and suggestions for future research, highlighting the perceived behavioral control and moral obligation constructs, are provided.