The singles scene: Safe sex practices and attitudes among at-risk heterosexual adults

Patient uncertainty is associated with conditions with no known cause or cure, such as systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and despite its potential role in chronic illness management, it is still a poorly understood concept. This study constitutes an in-depth investigation of patient uncertainty in SLE and RA. We conducted (i) structured interviews with a sample of rheumatology health care professionals (HCPs) (n?=?8) and (ii) in-depth, semi-structured interviews with a sample of SLE (n?=?17) and RA (n?=?15) patients. Interviews were audio-taped, transcribed verbatim and analysed thematically using detailed line-by-line coding. Patient uncertainty was conceptualised in a framework of five domains: symptoms and prognosis, medical management, self-management, impact and social functioning. Even though these five domains were present in both the SLE and RA data, there were some differences at the sub-domain level. Several sources of uncertainty were put forward by the HCPs and subsequently confirmed in the patient interviews including the illness trajectory, age, gender and timing. Patients reported uncertainty relative to various aspects of their illness, its management and impact. Finally, HCPs discussed the behavioural and psychosocial impact of uncertainty, which further suggests its important role in patient management.     

Allocation of study time and recall by learning disabled and nondisabled children of different ages

Study time and recall by learning-disabled and nondisabled children of five different ages were examined in a task requiring recall of digits that were presented at the child's own rate. Recall increased with age and was significantly higher by nondisabled than disabled children, particularly at older ages. As additional digits of each sequence were presented, study time by 8-year-old disabled and nondisabled groups were relatively constant, increased in older disabled and nondisabled children, but increased more in older nondisabled children than older learning disabled children. Instructions in hierarchical grouping of digits increased recall by all groups to a similar degree, but the increase by younger children and learning disabled children was associated with longer study times. The results suggest that allocation of study time and recall are developmentally delayed in learning disabled children.     

Effects of worry on physiological and subjective reactivity to emotional stimuli in generalized anxiety disorder and nonanxious control participants

The present study examined the effect of worry versus relaxation and neutral thought activity on both physiological and subjective responding to positive and negative emotional stimuli. Thirty-eight participants with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and 35 nonanxious control participants were randomly assigned to engage in worry, relaxation, or neutral inductions prior to sequential exposure to each of four emotion-inducing film clips. The clips were designed to elicit fear, sadness, happiness, and calm emotions. Self reported negative and positive affect was assessed following each induction and exposure, and vagal activity was measured throughout. Results indicate that worry (vs. relaxation) led to reduced vagal tone for the GAD group, as well as higher negative affect levels for both groups. Additionally, prior worry resulted in less physiological and subjective responding to the fearful film clip, and reduced negative affect in response to the sad clip. This suggests that worry may facilitate avoidance of processing negative emotions by way of preventing a negative emotional contrast. Implications for the role of worry in emotion avoidance are discussed.     

Deficient response modulation and emotion processing in low-anxious Caucasian psychopathic offenders: results from a lexical decision task

The clinical and research literatures on psychopathy have identified an emotion paradox: Psychopaths display normal appraisal but impaired use of emotion cues. Using R. D. Hare's (1991) Psychopathy Checklist-Revised and the G. S. Welsh Anxiety Scale (1956), the authors identified low-anxious psychopaths and controls and examined predictions concerning their performance on a lexical-decision task. Results supported all the predictions: (a) low-anxious psychopaths appraised emotion cues as well as controls; (b) their lexical decisions were relatively unaffected by emotion cues; (c) their lexical decisions were relatively unaffected by affectively neutral word-frequency cues; and (d) their performance deficits were specific to conditions involving right-handed responses. The authors propose that deficient response modulation may underlie both the emotional and cognitive deficits associated with low-anxious psychopaths.     

Exploring Moderators of Gender Differences: Contextual Differences in Door‐Hoiding Behavior1

The simple behavior of holding a door for another person can be interpreted as gender‐neutral, helpful, or benevolently sexist. Each interpretation leads to competing hypotheses predicting no gender differences in door holding, consistent door holding by men as chivalrous helpers, and door holding by men in the gender‐salient context of dating but not in everyday interactions, respectively. Observations of 769 college‐aged, female‐male dyads found a strong pattern of male door holding in dating but not in everyday contexts. This pattern highlights social role theory's emphasis on understanding contextual moderators of apparent gender differences, changes in door‐holding behavior in everyday contexts across the past 20 years, and the benevolent sexism subtly conveyed by male dominance in door holding in dating contexts.     

Phonemes matter: the role of phoneme-level awareness in emergent Chinese readers

The importance of phonological awareness for learning to read may depend on the linguistic properties of a language. This study provides a careful examination of this language-specific theory by exploring the role of phoneme-level awareness in Mandarin Chinese, a language with an orthography that, at its surface, appears to require little phoneme-level insight. A sample of 71 monolingual Mandarin-speaking children completed a phonological elision task and a measure of single-character reading. In this sample, 4- and 5-year-old preschoolers were unable to complete phoneme-level deletions, whereas 6- to 8-year-old first graders were able to complete initial, final, and medial phoneme-level deletions. In this older group, performance on phoneme deletions was significantly related to reading ability even after controlling for syllable- and onset/rime-level awareness, vocabulary, and Pinyin knowledge. We believe that these results reopen the question of the role of phonological awareness in reading in Chinese and, more generally, the nature of the mechanisms underlying this relationship.     

A comprehensive and systematic approach to parent education

Abstract

This paper emphasizes the importance of parent education, particularly in our current rapidly changing society. The history of parent education is briefly reviewed and a new program called STEP, Systematic Training for Effective Parenting is discussed in detail.