Mother Knows Best? Mother and Child Report of Behavioral Difficulties of Children of HIV-Infected Mothers

Children of HIV-infected mothers have more psychosocial adjustment difficulties than do those of noninfected mothers. In this study, child psychosocial adjustment in children of HIV-infected women is examined across the three stages of HIV-infected: asymptomatic, symptomatic and AIDS. Participants were 99 HIV-infected women and 148 noninfected women. Children were not identified as being HIV infected. Mother and child reports of behavioral difficulties are compared, and competing hypotheses about mother report of child behavior difficulties are tested. Results indicate an ascending linear trend for child report of internalizing and externalizing difficulties from the noninfected stage through increasingly severe stages of HIV-infection. According to mother report, child externalizing and internalizing difficulties are nonlinear, as mothers report an increase through the infected symptomatic stage, then a decrease in the AIDS stage. Implications for assessment, prevention and intervention in families with maternal HIV infection are discussed.     

Multicultural Counseling Competencies as Tools to Address Oppression and Racism

The Multicultural Counseling Competencies (Arredondo et al., 1996; Sue, Arredondo, & McDavis, 1992) provide developmental and evaluative guidelines for enhancing counselor education and practice. A reason for the articulation of the competencies was the need to address racism and other forms of interpersonal and institutional oppression in the profession. The Dimensions of Personal Identity Model is discussed as a reference point to recognize various personal criteria that are often the focal point of discriminatory behavior. Specific competencies and explanatory statements provide checkpoints that address racism and other forms of oppression that are part of the human experience, but more particularly so for people of color in the United States.     

Jacques Derrida and Gianni Vattimo (eds.), Religion. Trans. by David Webb and others

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -     

Reflective judgment: Concepts of justification and their relationship to age and education

This paper describes a seven-stage model of post-adolescent reasoning styles, the most advanced of which is called “Reflective Judgment.” The model outlines a sequence of increasingly complex methods of justification of beliefs. This model demonstrates how people's conceptions of the nature of knowledge, the nature of reality, and their concepts of justification change over age/educational levels. Sixty subjects from three age/educational levels (high school, college, and graduate school) were administered the Reflective Judgment Interview. In addition, subjects were tested on four other factors hypothesized to affect reflective judgment scores. Two were competing theoretical constructs: verbal ability (using Terman's Concept Mastery Test) and Piagetian formal operations (chemicals and pendulum tasks); and two were potentially confounding factors: socio-economic status (using Hollingshead's two-factor index) and verbal fluency (number of words spoken during the interview). Highly significant differences (p < .001) were found on reflective judgment level between the three age/educational groups, and could not be statistically accounted for by scores earned on measures of the other four factors. Whereas verbal ability was found to be closely related to reflective judgment level, the differences between groups on reflective judgment could not be solely attributed to this factor.     

FORBIDDEN OR FORGIVEN?

This article describes a conceptual framework with which to study rape cross-societally. The model considers the powerful effects of social norms in condoning certain types of rape. It also distinguishes clearly between rape and sex by making the absence of female choice the fundamental factor in defining rape. Using this conceptual model as a guide, rape is examined in a random sample of 35 world societies. Rape is not a forbidden behavior; this research demonstrates the masking effects of social norms that tend to institutionalize rape within various social customs or rituals. The concept of a rape-free culture was not supported; rape was found in all the sample societies once the definition of rape was broadened to include socially condoned rapes. The presence of both normative (condoned) and nonnormative (uncondoned) rapes in a majority of the societies studied illustrates that rape is regulated rather than prohibited. Implications for defining and studying rape in the United States are discussed.