Self-guided behavioral skills training: A public health approach to promoting nurturing care environments

The World Health Organization identified the promotion of “Nurturing Care Environments” as a global health priority. Responsive caregiving, 1 of 5 domains describing nurturing care, is critical for healthy child development. Relatively little research has evaluated population-level interventions aimed to increase responsive caregiving during the first 1,000 days of an infant's life. In this pilot study, we evaluated an intervention designed for population-level dissemination that targeted responsive caregiving. The self-guided behavioral skills training aimed to teach mothers to imitate infant vocalizations. The intervention was delivered within an on-line asynchronous training. All 3 mothers increased vocal imitative behavior following training without receiving coaching or behavior-specific feedback from an implementer. The results offer a preliminary proof of concept with implications for population-level intervention design and evaluation.     

Hostility and distraction have differential influences on cardiovascular recovery from anger recall in women.

This study investigated the relation of dispositional hostility to cardiovascular reactivity during an anger-recall task and of hostility and distraction to posttask recovery in 80 healthy women (ages 18-30). Half were randomly assigned to distraction during recovery. Hostility predicted slower systolic blood pressure and preejection period during recovery. Distraction was related to faster cardiac recovery, higher high-frequency (HF) power, lower low-frequency (LF) power and LF:HF ratios, and lower state anger and rumination during recovery. These results indicate deleterious influences of hostility on cardiovascular recovery but not during anger recall. The findings also show beneficial effects of distraction in expediting cardiovascular recovery, possibly through reducing rumination and anger.     

Racial discrimination and racial socialization as predictors of African American adolescents' racial identity development using latent transition analysis

The present study examined perceptions of racial discrimination and racial socialization on racial identity development among 566 African American adolescents over 3 years. Latent class analyses were used to estimate identity statuses (Diffuse, Foreclosed, Moratorium, and Achieved). The probabilities of transitioning from one stage to another were examined with latent transition analyses to determine the likelihood of youth progressing, regressing, or remaining constant. Racial socialization and perceptions of racial discrimination were examined as covariates to assess the association with changes in racial identity status. The results indicated that perceptions of racial discrimination were not linked to any changes in racial identity. Youth who reported higher levels of racial socialization were less likely to be in Diffuse or Foreclosed compared with the Achieved group.     

Adolescents and sex: A structural theory of premarital sex in the United States

This article shows that the rising rate of premarital sex during this century can be accounted for by changes in American social structure. The gap between puberty and marriage has increased, allowing more time for sex to occur. The pervasiveness of sex in the media and at home provides young people with role models who teach about sex. The social antonomy of the young has increased, allowing more opportunity for sex. Medical advances and legal changes have made sex safe. Egalitarian sex role norms have eliminated the double standard, which means that sex need not be withheld during courtship. And the norm of premarital sexual abstinance has declined. It is argued that most of these changes reflect progress and that rising rates of premarital sex are unintended by products.     

Representations of scene layout can consist of independent, functional pieces

A scene prime can induce a mental representation of layout that is functional in the sense that it facilitates the processing of depth relations in a subsequent same-scene target. Five experiments indicated that the representation can consist of separate and independent functional regions. In each experiment, primes with as many as four unrelated regions facilitated spatial processing within each region. The prime representations were functional despite structural discontinuity at region borders. The results indicate a limitation in the importance of structural constraint in representations of scene layout. However, when structural disruption occurred within regions that were perceived (Experiment 5), spatial processing was slowed. The results suggest that scene representation is more top down than is scene perception; the effects of structural disruption were overcome within representations, but not within perception.     

Responding to persons with mental illnesses: police perspectives on specialized and traditional practices

Persons with mental illnesses increasingly come into contact with police in the community due to changes in local and national policies and police responsibility for maintaining order. Recently, specialized intervention strategies have been advanced to ensure that persons with mental illnesses are not inappropriately arrested and moved into the criminal justice system. This study builds on previous research undertaken on police perceptions of dealing with persons with mental illnesses in the community and effectiveness of response (see Borum et al., 1998). A subsample of 182 officers from the Newark, NJ, Police Department was surveyed and added to a sample of 452 officers from three agencies with specialized responses to persons with mental illnesses. The authors conclude that, despite a non-specialized response to this population, the actual and perceived effectiveness of Newark's strategy is similar to (and in some cases better than) that which is observed in the agencies with specialized response programs. Implications for implementing specialized responses for persons with mental illnesses are discussed.