Menopause Symptoms and Attitudes of African American Women: Closing the Knowledge Gap and Expanding Opportunities for Counseling

Menopause, a normal midlife transition for women, remains poorly understood, especially for minority women. A total of 226 African American midlife women completed the Menopause Symptoms List (J. M. Perz, 1997); Menopause Attitude Scale (C. Bowles, 1986); Attitudes Toward Menopause checklist (B. L. Neugarten, V. Wood, R. J. Kraines, & B. Loomes, 1963); and instruments to elicit information about health status, stressful life events, social support, and demographics. The results reveal strengths as well as areas of concern for African American women in responding to normative midlife changes. Implications for counselors are explored.     

Transnationalism as a motif in family stories

Family stories have long been recognized as a vehicle for assessing components of a family's emotional and social life, including the degree to which an immigrant family has been willing to assimilate. Transnationalism, defined as living in one or more cultures and maintaining connections to both, is now increasingly common. A qualitative study of family stories in the family of those who appear completely "American" suggests that an affiliation with one's home country is nevertheless detectable in the stories via motifs such as (1) positively connotated home remedies, (2) continuing denigration of home country "enemies," (3) extensive knowledge of the home country history and politics, (4) praise of endogamy and negative assessment of exogamy, (5) superiority of home country to America, and (6) beauty of home country. Furthermore, an awareness of which model--assimilationist or transnational--governs a family's experience may help clarify a clinician's understanding of a family's strengths, vulnerabilities, and mode of framing their cultural experiences.     

The prosodic property of lexical stress affects eye movements during silent reading

The present study examined lexical stress in the context of silent reading by measuring eye movements. We asked whether lexical stress registers in the eye movement record and, if so, why. The study also tested the implicit prosody hypothesis, or the idea that readers construct a prosodic contour during silent reading. Participants read high and low frequency target words with one or two stressed syllables embedded in sentences. Lexical stress affected eye movements, such that words with two stressed syllables took longer to read and received more fixations than words with one stressed syllable. Findings offer empirical support for the implicit prosody hypothesis and suggest that stress assignment may be the completing phase of lexical access, at least in terms of eye movement control.     

Violent cultural factors and serial homicide by males

Explaining the phenomenon of male serial homicide has usually been approached from a psychiatric perspective. However, recent integrative theory suggests that cultural factors may play a role in shaping the psychology of young males with particular psychiatric and possibly neurological vulnerabilities in such ways as to facilitate converting the motivation to kill into actual behavior. Present results indicated that 34-45% of the interstate variation in rates of serial killer activity could be accounted for by three dimensions of local culture. Higher rates of male serial killer activity were associated with a local state culture supportive of game hunting and military training and a local culture supportive of punitive violence. The findings must be viewed with caution since societal variables are complex and the results are based on correlations which cannot be causally interpreted without more direct evidence of validity.     

Socioeconomic variation in attitudes to eating and weight in female adolescents.

This study was stimulated by J. Sobal and A. J. Stunkard's (1989) theory that differences in deliberate weight control could underlie the socioeconomic gradient in adult weight. Female adolescents (N=1,248) completed measures of socioeconomic status, social norms for weight, weight ideals, attitudes to weight, and weight control behaviors. Higher socioeconomic status adolescents had greater awareness of the social ideals of slimness and had more family and friends who were trying to lose weight. They also defined a lower body mass index as "fat" and were more likely to have used healthy weight control methods. The results support the idea that socioeconomic differences in weight-related attitudes and behaviors may mediate the development of a gradient in weight.     

The affective consequences of visual attention in preview search

Comparisons of emotional evaluations of abstract stimuli just seen in a two-object visual search task show that prior distractors are devalued, as compared with prior targets or novel items, perhaps as a consequence of persistent attentional inhibition (Raymond, Fenske, & Tavassoli, 2003). To further explore such attention-emotion effects, we measured search response time in a preview search task and emotional evaluations of colorful, complex images just seen therein. On preview trials, the distractors appeared 1,000 msec before the remaining items. On no-preview trials, all the items were presented simultaneously. A single distractor was then rated for its emotional tone. Previewed distractors were consistently devalued, as compared with nonpreviewed distractors, despite longer exposure and being associated with an easier task. This effect was observed only in the participants demonstrating improved search efficiency with preview, but not in others, indicating that the attentional mechanisms underlying the preview benefit have persistent affective consequences in visual search.     

Culture, trauma, and wellness: a comparison of heterosexual and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and two-spirit native americans

In a community-based sample of urban American Indian and Alaska Native adults, 25 lesbian, gay, bisexual, and two-spirit participants were compared with 154 heterosexual participants with respect to sociodemographic characteristics, Native, cultural participation, trauma, physical and mental health, and substance use. Compared with their heterosexual counterparts, two-spirit participants reported higher rates of childhood physical abuse and more historical trauma in their families, higher levels of psychological symptoms, and more mental health service utilization. Two-spirit participants reported differences in patterns of alcohol use and were more likely to have used illicit drugs other than marijuana. Discussion and recommendations for health promotion interventions and future research are presented in consideration of an "indigenist" health model and the multiple minority status of two-spirit people.     

The role of joint attention in the development of infants' play with objects

Year-old infants' play was scored within and outside joint attention with mother and when alone for four levels of maturity: stereotypical, inappropriate relational, appropriate relational, functional. Maternal sensitivity within joint attention was rated on two measures: following infants' interests and scaffolding infants' activities. Infants' play was more advanced with mother than when alone. With mother, infants had more functional and appropriate relational play within joint attention and more stereotypical play outside joint attention, indicating more advanced play within joint attention and more immature play outside joint attention. Functional play within joint attention, but not outside joint attention, correlated with functional play when alone. Mothers' ability to scaffold infants' activities within joint attention may be particularly facilitative to infants' advanced play.     

Verbal cues facilitate memory retrieval during infancy

In three experiments, 18-month-olds were tested in a deferred imitation paradigm. Some infants received verbal information during the demonstration and at the time of the test (full narration), and some did not (empty narration). When tested after a 4-week delay, infants given full narration exhibited superior retention relative to infants given empty narration (Experiment 1). This retention advantage appears to be due to the effects of verbal cues at the time of memory retrieval. There was no effect of verbal cues that were presented only at the time of original encoding (Experiment 2A). Furthermore, infants who received verbal cues only at the time of retrieval exhibited superior retention relative to infants who received verbal cues only at the time of original encoding (Experiment 2B). These findings demonstrate that verbal cues can enhance memory retrieval by participants who are not yet fluent speakers themselves.