Attitudes,Knowledge, and Sexual Behavior of High-Risk Adolescents: Implications for Counseling and Sexuality Education

A survey was conducted to examine high-risk sexual behavior in a large group of adolescents who were involved with the juvenile justice system. The findings showed that these youth are at high risk for unintended pregnancy and AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. Compared to national norms, the sample reported a very early mean age at first intercourse and a high rate of pregnancy. Those who had been involved in a pregnancy reported having begun sexual activity the earliest of those surveyed. Most participants reported an extremely unreliable use of birth control, with this unreliable use of birth control being strongly associated with espousal of high-risk attitudes but generally unassociated with factual knowledge regarding pregnancy and contraception. These findings support the argument for expanding the scope of traditional sex education and beginning sexuality education programs earlier than they usually are in this country.     

The Development and Impact of Ritual in Couple Counseling

This article explores the importance of rituals to a culture and more particularly the formation, development, and evolution of rituals in couples. The article also explores the ways in which values of the couple and counselor affect the development of new rituals and the reevaluation of existing rituals as a grounding mechanism for change.     

The Story of Story Hour

Children's stories, pajamas, robes, and stuffed animals provide the setting for Story Hour, a very successful program in a residence hall setting. This article describes the development of a three-year program that has become a significant support group for students, especially new freshmen. Story Hour also provides an ideal setting for exposing students to a variety of stimulating and thought-provoking ideas. The implementation, format, leadership, outcomes, and selected stories are discussed in this article.     

Direct Open Supervision: A Team Approach

Created in the absence of one-way mirror facilities, Direct Open Supervision combines elements of live supervision with team participation in training family therapists. The theory and application of this approach to direct supervision are described.     

The Effect of Self‐Control on Attentional Bias for Alcohol Cues in Male Heavy Drinkers1

Attentional bias for alcohol cues increases craving and subsequent alcohol consumption. Override processes can be used to disengage attention from alcohol cues. This requires self‐control and implies that depletion of self‐control would impair the ability to disengage attention from alcohol cues. This study examined the effect of self‐control on attentional bias among male heavy drinkers. To manipulate self‐control resources, an expression control task was used. Attentional bias was measured with a visual probe task. The Obsessive Compulsive Drinking Scale (OCDS; Anton, Moak, & Latham, 1996 ) assessed the urge to drink and persistent thoughts about alcohol. The results suggest that participants who scored relatively high on the OCDS showed more attentional bias after controlled emotional expression, compared to free emotional expression.     

Was Jekyll Hyde?

Many philosophers say that two or more people or thinking beings could share a single human being in a split-personality case, if only the personalities were sufficiently independent and individually well integrated. I argue that this view is incompatible with our being material things, and conclude that there could never be two or more people in a split-personality case. This refutes the view, almost universally held, that facts about mental unity and disunity determine how many people there are. I suggest that the number of human people is simply the number of appropriately endowed human animals.     

Revisiting the Tropic of Value: Reply to Rabinowicz and Rønnow‐Rasmussen*

In this paper, I defend the view that the values of concrete objects and persons are reducible to the final values of tropes. This reductive account has recently been discussed and rejected by Rabinowicz and R0nnow‐Rasmussen (2003). I begin by explaining why the reduction is appealing in the first place. In my rejoinder to Rabinowicz and R0nnow‐Rasmussen I defend trope‐value reductionism against three challenges. 1 focus mainly on their central objection, that holds that the reduction is untenable since different evaluative attitudes have, ontologically speaking, different objects. I grant that this may well be so, but argue that the objection is based on an unwarranted, loose reading of the notion ‘value for its own sake’. On the more reasonable strict reading, it is plausible to maintain that tropes are the sole ontological category that can properly be ascribed final value.     

Empirically Unbinding the Double Bind: Review of Research and Conceptual Reformulations

This article reviews the empirical research on the double-bind concept and describes the conceptual and methodological limitations of the studies. Because of the difficulty in defining and operationalizing the concept, most studies have not adequately tested substantive issues related to the double-bind hypothesis. The relationship of the concept to other family dynamics concepts is discussed and a reformulation of some of the basic tenets are presented. The article also attempts to clarify several of the theoretical and methodological issues related to the double-bind hypothesis, and specific recommendations are made regarding future research on this topic.     

Patterns of Preference for Numerical and Verbal Probabilities

We report results of an experiment designed to test a principle formulated by Budescu and Wallsten (1995), that, when communicating uncertainty information, mode choices are sensitive to sources and degrees of vagueness. In addition, we examined subjects’ efficacy in using such uncertainty information as a function of communication mode, source, and vagueness. In phase one of the experiment, subjects in a dyad used precise (numerical) or imprecise (verbal) expressions to communicate to a remote partner precise or vague uncertainty about the likelihoods of events. Spinner outcomes were used to generate precise uncertainty while answers to almanac questions were used to elicit vague uncertainty. In phase two, subjects saw the events paired with their partners’ estimates of similar events, and were asked to gamble on one event from each pair. Communication mode preferences were measured as the relative frequency that subjects chose the numerical mode to either express or receive uncertainty information regarding the events. Efficacy was measured as the relative frequency that subjects choose from the pair the event associated with the objectively more probable uncertainty expression. Underlying uncertainty interacted with direction of communication to affect preferences for modes of expression of the probabilities. Subjects preferred precise (numerical) information, especially for precise events (spinners). For vague events (questions), their preference for precise (numerical) information was stronger when receiving than when communicating information. Similar preferences were reflected in the efficiency of subsequent gamble decisions based on the probability estimates. Specifically, decisions were more efficacious (i.e. consistent with Expected Utility) when degrees of precision in events and estimates matched. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.