THE STORIES WE TELL: THE LIVES AND FRIENDSHIP OF TWO OLDER BLACK LESBIANS

Research addressing the lives and friendships of older Black lesbians is virtually nonexistent. Using narrative analysis, we chronicle the lives of two older Black lesbians (73 and 85 years of age) through the lens of positive marginality. The concept of positive marginality asserts that living both inside and outside of the mainstream produces strengths rather than helplessness ( Mayo, 1982 ). We use four conceptual frames of reference to explore positive marginality: critical watching and reframing of life experiences on the margins, wise conversion of obstacles into opportunities, the subversion of social institutions, and the creation of safe spaces for people on the margin. From these two women's stories, we show how each, through lives of activism and seduction, created positive environments that defied traditional categories. We discuss how race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and aging affected their lives and how their friendship was an anchor for each. We offer their stories as a point of entry to future inquiry concerning older Black lesbians.     

Social Relations and Cyberbullying: The Influence of Individual and Structural Attributes on Victimization and Perpetration via the Internet

Current research indicates that an alarming number of students are affected by cyberbullying. However, most of the empirical research has focused on psychological explanations of the phenomenon. In an explorative survey study based on the reconstruction of 2 complete school networks (N_P = 408), we expand the explanation strategies of cyberbullying to higher levels of social abstraction. Using statistical and structural analysis, and visual inspection of network environments, we compare explanations on individual and structural levels. In line with previous research, the findings support traditional explanations via sociodemographic and personality factors. However, the findings also reveal network positioning to be a comparably strong predictor for cyberbullying. Therefore, we argue that without taking structural factors into account, individual explanations will remain insufficient.     

Differential reinforcement of alternative behavior increases resistance to extinction: clinical demonstration, animal modeling, and clinical test of one solution

Basic research with pigeons on behavioral momentum suggests that differential reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA) can increase the resistance of target behavior to change. This finding suggests that clinical applications of DRA may inadvertently increase the persistence of target behavior even as it decreases its frequency. We conducted three coordinated experiments to test whether DRA has persistence-strengthening effects on clinically significant target behavior and then tested the effectiveness of a possible solution to this problem in both a nonhuman and clinical study. Experiment 1 compared resistance to extinction following baseline rates of reinforcement versus higher DRA rates of reinforcement in a clinical study. Resistance to extinction was substantially greater following DRA. Experiment 2 tested a rat model of a possible solution to this problem. Training an alternative response in a context without reinforcement of the target response circumvented the persistence-strengthening effects of DRA. Experiment 3 translated the rat model into a novel clinical application of DRA. Training an alternative response with DRA in a separate context resulted in lower resistance to extinction than employing DRA in the context correlated with reinforcement of target behavior. The value of coordinated bidirectional translational research is discussed.     

Neighborhoods as a Developmental Context: A Multilevel Analysis of Neighborhood Effects on Head Start Families and Children

Neighborhoods have been recognized in theory and research as an important context for child development. This study used data from the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) and Census 2000 to assess the underlying factor structure and impact of neighborhood factors on child cognitive and behavioral outcomes, including the critical family and social factors that may mediate and/or moderate these relationships. Factor analyses found five factors described Head Start neighborhoods. After controlling for family and child factors, multilevel analyses found significant direct effects of neighborhood factors on Head Start children’s cognitive and behavioral outcomes. There were no mediation effects found for family or social variables between neighborhood factors and child outcomes. A large number of moderation effects were found although there was not a clear pattern to the results. Future research, policy, and practice implications are discussed.     

Examining lateralized semantic access using pictures

A divided visual field (DVF) experiment examined the semantic processing strategies employed by the cerebral hemispheres to determine if strategies observed with written word stimuli generalize to other media for communicating semantic information. We employed picture stimuli and vary the degree of semantic relatedness between the picture pairs. Participants made an on-line semantic relatedness judgment in response to sequentially presented pictures. We found that when pictures are presented to the right hemisphere responses are generally more accurate than the left hemisphere for semantic relatedness judgments for picture pairs. Furthermore, consistent with earlier DVF studies employing words, we conclude that the RH is better at accessing or maintaining access to information that has a weak or more remote semantic relationship. We also found evidence of faster access for pictures presented to the LH in the strongly-related condition. Overall, these results are consistent with earlier DVF word studies that argue that the cerebral hemispheres each play an important and separable role during semantic retrieval.     

The Starting Early Starting Smart Integrated Services Model: Improving Access to Behavioral Health Services in the Pediatric Health Care Setting for At-Risk Families with Young Children

We evaluated the Starting Early Starting Smart (SESS) national initiative to integrate behavioral health services (parenting, mental health, and drug treatment) into the pediatric health care setting for families with young children. Data are presented from five pediatric care (PC) sites, drawing from families at risk due to demographic and behavioral health factors, with infants less than 12 months of age (n = 612). Families were randomly assigned to either the SESS program or a standard care Comparison group. We utilized longitudinal analyses to estimate differences in utilization rates for parenting, mental health, and drug treatment over 6 follow-up time points (3, 6, 9, 12, 15 and 18 months). Our findings indicate that SESS caregiver participants were 4.6 times (p < 0.001; CI = 3.33–6.26) more likely to receive parenting services, 2.1 times (p < 0.001; CI = 1.48–2.86) more likely to receive outpatient mental health treatment, and 1.8 times (p = 0.025; CI = 1.08–3.14) more likely to receive drug treatment than Comparison group participants. Our results demonstrate the success of the SESS program in coordinating and improving access to behavioral health services for high-risk caregivers within the pediatric health care setting and highlight the importance of continuing to focus public health policy on the behavioral health care needs of families with young children.