A measurement model of women's behavioral risk taking.

The current study was designed to gain a better understanding of the nature of the relationship between substance use and sexual risk taking within a community sample of women (N = 1,004). Using confirmatory factor analysis, the authors examined the factor structure of sexual risk behaviors and substance use to determine whether they are best conceptualized as domains underlying a single, higher order, risk-taking propensity. A 2 higher order factor model (sexual risk behavior and substance use) provided the best fit to the data, suggesting that these 2 general risk domains are correlated but independent factors. Sensation seeking had large general direct effects on the 2 risk domains and large indirect effects on the 4 first-order factors and the individual indicators. Negative affect had smaller, yet still significant, effects. Impulsivity and anxiety were unrelated to sexual health risk domains.     

Rawlsian Civic Education: Political not Minimal

abstract In Political Liberalism and later work John Rawls has recast his theory of justice as fairness in political terms. In order to illustrate the advantages of a liberal political approach to justice over liberal non‐political ones, Rawls discusses what kind of education might be required for future citizens of pluralistic and democratic societies. He advocates a rather minimal conception of civic education that he claims to derive from political liberalism. One group of authors has sided with Rawls’ political perspective and educational proposal, holding that a political approach and educational requirements that are not too demanding would have the advantage of being acceptable to a wide range of citizens with different religious, moral and philosophical perspectives. A second group of authors have criticized Rawls’ educational recommendations, holding that the production of a just society composed of reasonable citizens requires a more demanding civic education and, hence, that the political approach is not viable. The present paper argues that both groups are only partially right, and that there is a third way to understand civic education in Rawlsian terms, a way that is political but not minimal.     

Children and adults both see ‘pirates’ in ‘parties’: letter‐position effects for developing readers and skilled adult readers

Developing readers often make anagrammatical errors (e.g. misreading pirates as parties), suggesting they use letter position flexibly during word recognition. However, while it is widely assumed that the occurrence of these errors decreases with increases in reading skill, empirical evidence to support this distinction is lacking. Accordingly, we compared the performance of developing child readers (aged 8–10 years) against the end‐state performance of skilled adult readers in a timed naming task, employing anagrams used previously in this area of research. Moreover, to explore the use of letter position by developing readers and skilled adult readers more fully, we used anagrams which, to form another word, required letter transpositions over only interior letter positions, or both interior and exterior letter positions. The patterns of effects across these two anagram types for the two groups of readers were very similar. In particular, both groups showed similarly slowed response times (and developing readers increased errors) for anagrams requiring only interior letter transpositions but not for anagrams that required exterior letter transpositions. This similarity in the naming performance of developing readers and skilled adult readers suggests that the end‐state skilled use of letter position is established earlier during reading development than is widely assumed.     

Hindsight bias: An interaction of automatic and motivational factors?

If subjects are asked to recollect a former response after having been informed about the correct response, their recollection tends to approach the correct response. This effect has been termedhindsight bias. We studied hindsight bias in an experiment requiring numerical responses to almanac-type questions for physical quantities. We varied (1) the time at which the correct information was provided, (2) the encoding of the original responses by asking/not asking subjects to give a reason for the respective response, and (3) the motivation to recall correctly. We found that hindsight is less biased if reasons are given and if the correct information is provided at an earlier time. Motivation had only interactive effects: (1) With high motivation to recall correctly, the time the correct information was provided had no influence. (2) With reasons given, the variation of motivation showed no effect. These results rule out purely motivational and purely automatic explanations.     

Power,family therapy,and the systemic-organismic paradigm

How is the concept of power integrated into the systemic organismic paradigm? Power concepts, especially Kantor and Lehr's six dimensions of distance regulation mechanisms, are related to several models of family therapy. Power is found to be a part of the Gestalt formation process of Perls, a process of dynamic selfregulation. Each family therapy model is regarded as part of an integrating process. A theory of conflict strategy and of integration strategy in therapy is developed. The article is intended to promote comparison and exploratory discussion around different models of family therapy.     

TEACHING CHILD-CARE SKILLS TO MOTHERS WITH DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES

The present study identified and remediated child-care skill deficits in parents with developmental disabilities to reduce their risk of child neglect. Eleven mothers with developmental disabilities who were considered by social service and child welfare agencies to be providing neglectful child care were found in baseline to have several important child-care skill deficits (e.g., bathing, diaper rash treatment, cleaning baby bottles) compared to nonhandicapped mothers. Parent training (consisting of verbal instructions, pictorial manuals, modeling, feedback, and reinforcement) resulted in rapid acquisition and maintenance of child-care skills in all mothers. Mean percentage correct scores increased from 58% in baseline to 90% in training and 91% in follow-up (M = 31 weeks). The latter two scores compare favorably to the mean score (87%) of 20 nonhandicapped mothers on the same skills. Where observable, parent training was associated with corresponding benefits to the children (e.g., elimination of diaper rash and cradle cap, increased weight gain, successful toilet training). These results indicate that parent training may be a viable option to the removal of the child from the home when parenting skill deficits place the child's well-being in jeopardy.