Children coping with uncontrollable stressors

Many of the negative events in children's lives cannot be controlled by them. Three strategies that children can be taught for coping adaptively with many uncontrollable events are presented: (a) reconstruing the event in more positive ways, (b) using positive imagery to dampen fear and frustration, and (c) developing reasonable proximal goals. How these strategies may be used in working with children living in poverty is discussed.     

Girls Not Boys Show Gender-Connotation Encoding from Print

The present study examines gender differences in children's encoding of gender-connotation from words. The release from proactive interference method was used to measure gender-connotation encoding. Forty-eight third-grade children attending a public elementary school serving a predominantly White middle-socioeconomic-status community participated and were presented with stimulus words in print. The design of the study can be characterized as a two (gender) by two (condition: control vs. experimental) by four (trials) factorial. Results revealed reliable proactive interference buildup and release for gender-connotation for girls, but not for boys. This new finding, taken together with extant research, demonstrates that while both boys and girls have the ability to encode gender-connotation from aurally presented words, the spontaneous activation of gender-connotation attributes with print is not guaranteed for boys.     

Abby L. Wilkerson. Diagnosis: Difference: The Moral Authority of Medicine

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics -     

Brief Report: Power and Attitudes in Relationships (PAIR) Among a Sample of Low-Income,African-American Women: Implications for HIV/AIDS Prevention

This study describes a scale that was designed to measure low-income urban, heterosexual women's perception of Power and Attitudes in Relationships (PAIR). Although frequently mentioned in the literature as an important aspect of women's risk for HIV, there are few described scales which measure such attitudes among this population. PAIR was based in part on Connell's (1987) Theory of gender and power. PAIR was found to be reliable (alpha = 0.79) among a Baltimore cross-sectional sample of inner-city women (n = 417), half of whom were HIV-negative and half were HIV-positive. Our findings suggest that PAIR is reliable among both HIV-infected and HIV-uninfected inner-city women. The scale can be a useful tool in understanding the interpersonal context of women's risk of HIV.     

Ambiguity Intolerance and Support for Valuing-Diversity Interventions

This study examined the effect of ambiguity intolerance on attitudes toward corporate diversity programs. It was found that, holding constant demographic backgrounds of age, gender, work experience, managerial position, and majority-minority status, ambiguity intolerance was negatively related to support for diversity programs. The study also replicated previous findings that women and racial minority members support diversity programs more than do men and racial majority members. This study demonstrates the importance of including personality variables in diversity research.     

Fetishism and Hysteria: The Economies of Feminism Ex Uterod

Laurie Foos's feminist novel Ex Utero is a comic exploration of the value of the uterus. Simultaneously recursive and resistant, Foos's novel reenacts, with a difference, two confining essentialisms: hysteria, a female disorder, and fetishism, whether understood as the psychosexual response to female lack, or as capitalism's motor, the displacement of desire onto commodities. The essay explores how, if we think of the womb neither as individual possession or commodified object, we can create a new space of possibility for women at the end of the millennium.     

Parent–Child Interaction Therapy with Toddlers in a community-based setting: Improvements in parenting behavior,emotional availability,child behavior,and attachment

Parent–Child Interaction Therapy with Toddlers (PCIT-T) is a new attachment-based parenting intervention designed to meet the needs of children aged 12–24 months presenting with challenging behaviors. This study examined outcomes of the first phase of PCIT-T, Child Directed Interaction–Toddler (CDI-T), 4-months post treatment. Participants were 56 toddlers (Child Mage = 19.13 months) referred to receive CDI-T over an 8-week period at an Australian community-based child behavior treatment clinic for treatment of difficult toddler behaviors. Participants completed questionnaires and observational measures at baseline (Time 1), post-treatment (Time 2), and 4-month follow-up (Time 3). At both Time 2 and Time 3, there were statistically significant increases in observed positive parenting skills and emotional availability and decreases in negative parenting behaviors and child noncompliance. There were also significant improvements in parent-reported child externalizing and internalizing behaviors, parental stress, and maternal depression. There was a pattern of a shift away from attachment insecurity and attachment disorganization. Results suggest that the CDI-T phase of PCIT-T is a promising intervention for toddlers presenting with behavioral issues. Future studies should be conducted to assess efficacy in other settings, using larger samples and utilizing randomized controlled designs.