同伴地位与青少年冒险行为的关系:一个有调节的中介模型

为探讨同伴地位影响青少年冒险行为的作用机制及条件,采用青少年冒险行为问卷、同伴提名问卷、自我控制能力问卷、同伴群体特征问卷对山东省日照市1288名初高中学生进行调查。结果发现,（1）同伴地位负向预测青少年冒险行为,该预测作用是通过交往不良同伴的中介作用实现的;（2）交往不良同伴对青少年冒险行为的预测受到个体自我控制能力的调节。对于高自我控制能力青少年,其冒险行为与交往不良同伴无关,但低自我控制能力青少年会因交往不良同伴而参与更多冒险行为。结果提示培养良好的自我素质,塑造良好的同伴环境对于青少年的健康发展有重要作用。     

Ethical Care for Vulnerable Populations Receiving Psychotropic Treatment

The increasing use of pharmacotherapy raises specific ethical concerns for psychologists working with vulnerable populations. Due to a shortage of trained specialists, professionals without training in mental health, such as primary care providers, are increasingly prescribing and monitoring psychotropic medications. Vulnerable populations (e.g., older adults, people currently low in social status, immigrants, and racial/ethnic minorities) face additional barriers to mental health treatment and are at heightened risk when these factors intersect. Hence, these patients experience unique barriers to receiving optimal psychopharmacological care and are differentially vulnerable to deleterious outcomes associated with misdiagnosis and overmedication. Taken together, these factors fuel inequities in the access, quality, and utilization of mental health care. Psychologists working with these patients are ethically mandated to protect patients from harm and ensure equitable care across patient populations. Specifically, psychologists must respond to the dilemma of how to effectively treat patients within these vulnerable populations who have been misdiagnosed or poorly medicated while remaining within the bounds of their competence. This article recommends pathways to address these dilemmas through education, training, research, and advocacy.     

Smoking,depression, & stress: predictors of fibromyalgia health status

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of smoking, stress, and depression on fibromyalgia health status. Fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) is a chronic musculoskeletal pain condition that negatively affects health status. Health status is not only affected by the constellation of physical symptoms, but also by mood symptoms, stress levels, and patient behaviors (e.g. smoking). Participants were 491 individuals with a physician’s diagnosis of FMS. They completed self-report measures of their current levels of depression, stress, the number of cigarettes smoked per day, and health status. A linear regression analysis was conducted to determine whether these measures predicted FMS health status. All three measures predicted worse health status, predicting 51.5% of the variance in health status. However, it is important to evaluate and treat more than just the physical symptoms of FMS. Attention should also be paid to mental health status and to engagement in unhealthy behaviors in order to reduce their effects on FMS health status. Future researchers should design and evaluate interventions that target these modifiable risk factors to determine the extent to which they could improve health outcomes.     

Gender roles and decision making among isiXhosa-speaking adolescents

This exploratory study examined gender roles and decision making among isiXhosa-speaking adolescents. Participants were a non-probability sample of 40 Grade 12 learners (females = 50%; aged between 17 and 24 years). Data were collected using identity status interviews and analysed thematically to profile the adolescents’ gender role identity statuses and related decisions. The findings suggest the adolescents to endorse gender roles somewhat discrepant to traditionalist roles in that females endorsed primary family financing provider and decision making, whereas the males were accepting of nurturing or carer roles in the family home. Gender role statuses and decision making among teenage isiXhosa appear to be shifting away from traditional roles towards modern thinking of gender equality.     

Psychometrics in Psychological Research: Role Model or Partner in Science?

This is a reaction to Borsboom's (2006) discussion paper on the issue that psychology takes so little notice of the modern developments in psychometrics, in particular, latent variable methods. Contrary to Borsboom, it is argued that latent variables are summaries of interesting data properties, that construct validation should involve studying nomological networks, that psychological research slowly but definitely will incorporate latent variable methods, and that the role of psychometrics in psychology is that of partner, not role model. Requests for reprints should be sent to Klaas Sijtsma, Department of Methodology and Statistics, FSW, Tilburg University, PO Box 90153, 5000 LE, Tilburg, The Netherlands.     

Disfluencies signal theee,um, new information

Speakers are often disfluent, for example, saying theee uh candle instead of the candle. Production data show that disfluencies occur more often during references to things that are discourse-new, rather than given. An eyetracking experiment shows that this correlation between disfluency and discourse status affects speech comprehension. Subjects viewed scenes containing four objects, including two cohort competitors (e.g., camel, candle), and followed spoken instructions to move the objects. The first instruction established one cohort as discourse-given; the other was discourse-new. The second instruction was either fluent or disfluent, and referred to either the given or new cohort. Fluent instructions led to more initial fixations on the given cohort object (replicating Dahan et al., 2002). By contrast, disfluent instructions resulted in more fixations on the new cohort. This shows that discourse-new information can be accessible under some circumstances. More generally, it suggests that disfluency affects core language comprehension processes.     

Moral Agency in Other Animals

Some philosophers have argued that moral agency is characteristic of humans alone and that its absence from other animals justifies granting higher moral status to humans. However, human beings do not have a monopoly on moral agency, which admits of varying degrees and does not require mastery of moral principles. The view that all and only humans possess moral agency indicates our underestimation of the mental lives of other animals. Since many other animals are moral agents (to varying degrees), they are also subject to (limited) moral obligations, examples of which are provided in this paper. But, while moral agency is sufficient for significant moral status, it is by no means necessary.     

The Embryo Rescue Case

In the debate regarding the moral status of human embryos, the Embryo Rescue Case has been used to suggest that embryos are not rightholders. This case is premised on the idea that in a situation where one has a choice between saving some number of embryos or a child, it seems wrong to save the embryos and not the child. If so, it seems that embryos cannot be rightholders. In this paper, I argue that the Embryo Rescue Case does not independently show that embryos are not rightholders.     

The role of athlete as contributor to peer status in school-age and adolescent females in the United States: From pre-title IX to 2000 and beyond

Despite its importance for males, athleticism has been considered inconsequential as a predictor of peer status for females. In the United States, however, female sports have seen dramatic increases in participation, sport type variety, and role models since the passage of Title IX. An extensive literature review was conducted to determine if athletic variables have become more significant predictors of peer status for school-age (ages 7–13) and adolescent (ages 14–18) females in the United States over the past 30 years. An integration of findings suggested that the relation between athletic variables and peer status remained relatively stable across age groups. Review of literature addressing the internal perceptions of female athletes allowed for speculation regarding the increases in participation despite the lack of peer status benefits.     

On Being Poor and Feeling Poor: Low Socioeconomic Status and the Moral Self

Persons of low socioeconomic status generallyexperience worse health and shorter lives thantheir better off counterparts. They alsosuffer a greater incidence of adversepsychosocial characteristics, such as lowself-esteem, self-efficacy, and self-masteryand increased cynicism and hostility. Thesepopulation data suggest another category ofharm to persons: diminished moral agency. Chronic socioeconomic deprivation can createenvironments that undermine the development ofself and capacities constitutive to moralagency – i.e., the capacity forself-determination and crafting a life of one'sown. The harm affects not only the choicesa person makes, but the chooser herself. Thismoral harm is particularly salient in modernWestern societies, especially in the UnitedStates, where success and failure is attributedto the individual, with little notice of thelarger social and political realities thatinform an individual's circumstances and choices.