Family Microtransitions: Observing the Process of Change in Families with Adolescent Children

To read this article in Spanish, please see this article's Supporting Information on Wiley InterScience (http://interscience.wiley.com/journal/famp). To read this article's abstract in both Spanish and Mandarin Chinese, please visit the article's full‐text page on Wiley InterScience ( http://interscience.wiley.com/journal/famp ). The aim of the study is to explore the process of microtransitions in families with adolescent children. Original methodological procedures were designed in order to have families as the objects of study and to analyze data with particular attention to the family process of change. A family interview focused on the adolescent and family change was conducted with 12 families having an adolescent child. As indicators of change, we used coordination and oscillation. Our results highlight different patterns of family interactions, illustrating various ways through which families deal with change. Conclusive remarks focus on the theoretical relevance of the study, the method and the implications for family practice and policy.     

Predicting AIDS-Induced Behavioral Change in the General Population of Young People

Sets of individual-psychological and sociodemographic variables for predicting self-reported AIDS-relevant behavioral change were examined. The self-completing questionnaire used in the study contained scales of knowledge and attitudes about AIDS, sex and drug abuse experience scales, and six behavioral change scales. It was anonymously administered to 2,655 young people of both sexes, 15–30 years of age, living in 18 cities and towns, regularly employed or attending school. The overall level of knowledge was high and the attitudes moderately liberal. Regression analyses showed that only a small fraction of variance in any of the six behavioral change criteria (sex, drugs, personal concern, chance of contracting the disease, desire for more knowledge, and nonfunctional practices) could be attributed to the four predictors presumed to influence the criteria directly (sex risk index, drugs risk index, knowledge, and attitudes). The prediction improved when another 10 variables with assumed indirect influence were included. Socioeconomic status and the drug abuse risk index were most predictive of behavior change. Knowledge and attitudes proved to be poor predictors. It is stressed that the social and cultural specifics in planning prevention activities must be observed.     

Adult attachment and transportation into narrative worlds

Adult attachment affects close bonds, including bonds with fictional characters, but does it also influence the level of engagement with fictional worlds? This article aims to build on previous research on how attachment relates to narrative transportation. In Study 1, attachment anxiety, but not attachment avoidance, predicted a greater tendency to become transported into narratives, even after controlling for broader personality traits related to attachment. In Study 2, attachment anxiety again predicted a greater tendency to engage in narratives but only at high levels of attachment avoidance. In Study 3, this interaction between attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance in predicting narrative transportation was again observed when transportation was measured immediately after viewing a specific narrative.     

Posthypnotic suggestions and behavior change: Highly hypnotizables compared with simulators

The authenticity of a posthypnotically released emotion was examined to see whether this emotion also could modify the reaction times (RTs) of subjects. The simulant design proposed by Orne (1979) was utilized, with 10 highly hypnotizable subjects and 10 non-hypnotizable simulators participating in the experiment. The subjects received a post-hypnotic suggestion to the effect that every presentation of a light stimulus would release a feeling of discomfort and that a second light stimulus would be neutral. They were informed that they could terminate the stimulation by pressing a RT switch and received a suggestion of amnesia for the posthypnotic suggestion. The simulators skilfully imitated the objective behavior of the hypnotic subjects; their physiological reactions increased and their RTs were shorter when exposed to the aversive stimulation. The main differences occurred in the subjective reports. The hypnotic subjects reported that the emotion was released involuntarily and found relief in escaping from it, while the simulators reported no corresponding experiences, saying that they had deliberately manipulated the objective behavior.     

Family Communication Patterns,Discourse Behavior,and Child Television Viewing

This study investigated the relationship between the Family Communication Patterns (FCP) Inventory and parent-child discourse, the effect of FCP scores on child compliance, and the effect of parent discourse strategies on child compliance. Parents and children did not appear to agree about the norms in their family and appeared to be using different instances of discourse to draw conclusions about their family. For parents, control orientation was related to controlling verbal strategies; for children, control was related to global negative affect. Communication orientation was related to information sharing for parents but to fewer parental commands for children. In addition, greater control orientation resulted in less compliance. Parent discourse strategies also were related to child compliance. Younger children were more compliant when parents used directive language coupled with positive affect, but older children were less compliant in response to this verbal strategy.