Faculty and Student Attitudes Toward Community Service: A Comparative Analysis

The Humanitarian Engineering initiative, sponsored by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, at the Colorado School of Mines, is creating a program that will support engineering students in understanding their responsibility for solving community development problems that exist throughout the world. As part of this effort, data has been collected on faculty and student attitudes using the ‘Community Service Attitudes Scale,” developed and validated by Shiarella, McCarthy, and Tucker. During the fall 2004, 78 students and 34 faculty members responded to this instrument. Statistically significant differences were found between the attitudes of students and faculty, males and females, and among different age groupings with respect to service activities. A general finding was that faculty displayed better attitudes toward community service than the students.     

Maternal depression and early positive parenting predict future conduct problems in young children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are at risk for adverse outcomes such as substance abuse and criminality, particularly if they develop conduct problems. Little is known about early predictors of the developmental course of conduct problems among children with ADHD, however. Parental psychopathology and parenting were assessed in 108 children who first met Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.) criteria for ADHD at 4-7 years old. When demographic variables and baseline ADHD and conduct problems were controlled, maternal depression predicted conduct problems 2-8 years following the initial assessment, whereas positive parenting during the structured parent- child interaction task predicted fewer future conduct problems. These findings suggest that maternal depression is a risk factor, whereas early positive parenting is a protective factor, for the developmental course of conduct problems among children with ADHD. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recognizing, assessing, and intervening with problems of professional competence.

Working collaboratively, psychologist educators and trainers at the doctoral, internship, and postdoctoral levels; credentialers; practitioners; and students offer 8 proposals for psychologists to consider in recognizing, assessing, and intervening with problems of professional competence in students and practicing professionals. In the proposals, the authors address the following topics: definitions and categories; preparing the system; self-assessment; remediation; diversity; communication across various levels of the system; confidentiality; and ethical, regulatory, and legal underpinnings. They also propose future directions for the assessment of problems in professional competence in both students and practicing psychologists. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interrelations of social support measures: Theoretical and practical implications.

To obtain a clearer picture of what constitutes social support, we conducted three studies to compare measures of different conceptions of social support. Relations of these instruments to various personality measures were also investigated. Subdividing the construct into discrete functions did not add to the sensitivity of the indices. Measures of received support and support networks were not strongly related to most of the perceived available support measures. Interview and questionnaire approaches were similar in the information they evoked about close supportive relationships. The results suggest that measures of perceived available support, regardless of the way the instruments attempt to break down the construct, generally assess the extent to which an individual is accepted, loved, and involved in relationships in which communication is open. Psychometric characteristics of the measures were associated with differential sensitivity over the range of supportive relationships. The theoretical implications of the findings are discussed with emphasis on the common core underlying social support indices. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Controlled prospective longitudinal study of women with cancer: II. Psychological outcomes.

The incidence and etiology of major life difficulties for women with survivable cancer were studied. Women with early stage cancer (n?=?65) were assessed after diagnosis but prior to treatment and reassessed at 4, 8, and 12 mo posttreatment. Two matched comparison groups, women diagnosed and treated for benign disease (n?=?22) and healthy women (n?=?60), were also assessed longitudinally. Results for 4 life areas are reported: (a) Emotional response to the life-threatening diagnosis and anticipation of treatment was characterized by depressed, anxious, and confused moods, whereas the response for women with benign disease was anxious only; these responses were transitory. (b) There was no evidence for a higher incidence of relationship dissolution or poorer marital adjustment; however, 30% of the women treated for disease reported that their partners may have had some sexual difficulty. (c) There was no evidence for impaired social adjustment. (d) Women treated for cancer retained their employment; however, their involvement was significantly reduced during recovery. Data suggest "islands" of significant life disruption following cancer, which do not appear to portend global adjustment vulnerability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The residential therapeutic caring community.

The residential therapeutic caring community (RTCC) for adolescents combines psychotherapeutic principles of the professional model and self-help concept of the therapeutic community by using the collective resources of members to mobilize peer pressure. The RTCC is a safe, structured, supportive treatment environment that employs a confrontation, teaching, interpretative, and reasoning approach and uses the psychotherapeutic principles of reality therapy and existential thought. In the RTCC, the staff serve as mentors and role models, and they demonstrate their concern by maintaining high expectations for immediate improved behavior. The personal qualities necessary for a psychotherapist working in an RTCC are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cathodic reduction of acids in dimethylformamide on platinum

A linear correlation was shown to exist between the acidity and the cyclic voltammetric half-potential of the reduction of acids in DMF for carboxylic and N-acids in the pK_a range of 6-16. Chlorophenols are reduced at slightly lower potentials giving a separate parallel line. Applying the obtained equation and employing the same method to literature data in DMSO, the pK_a values for conjugate aids of DMF and DMSO can be calculated, showing DMSO·H⁺ to be more acidic (pK_a = 2.9) than DMF·H⁺ (pK_a = 5.7). The analysis of cyclovoltammetric data demonstrated that a CE mechanism operates in the reduction of strong acids, including the conjugate acid of DMF. Weaker acids are reduced by direct discharge or a mixed mechanism.     

Cortical cholinergic impairment and behavioral deficits produced by kainic acid lesions of rat magnocellular basal forebrain.

The rat magnocellular basal forebrain (MNBF) is homologous to the human nucleus basalis of Meynert, a structure implicated in the cholinergic hypothesis of cognitive impairment in Alzheimer's disease (AD). In the present study, 18 male Sprague-Dawley rats with kainic acid lesions in the MNBF were compared with 6 unoperated controls, 10 sham-operated controls, and 6 controls injected with kainic acid in the cortical area directly above the MNBF. MNBF lesions depleted choline acetyltransferase in cortex but not in striatum or hippocampus. Cortical dopamine levels were unchanged; serotonin levels were unchanged in hippocampus and parietal cortex but decreased in frontal cortex. Compared with controls, MNBF-lesioned Ss were impaired in 24-hr retention, but not acquisition, of a passive avoidance task with escapable footshock. The groups did not differ in mean number of daily avoidances on a barpress active avoidance task, although learning was slower in MNBF-lesioned Ss. In a serial spatial discrimination reversal test, MNBF-lesioned Ss performed significantly worse than controls. This model may be useful for studying the role of the cholinergic system in memory and possibly for developing treatment strategies to alleviate the cognitive dysfunction of AD. (63 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)