2,101 research outputs found
Subcultural Influences on Self-attitudes: The Expression of Low Self-esteem in Race/ethnicity-, Age-, Gender-, Social class-, and Generation-differentiated Subgroups
Self-esteem is conceptualized in terms of self-feelings that are evoked by self-evaluation of self-concept and that motivate self-enhancing or self-protective responses. Since (sub)cultural conventions and the self-esteem motive frequently invalidate self-report measures, it is argued that self-esteem should be measured as the confluence of self-evaluative statements and measures of subjective distress. In support of this, findings are presented from a longitudinal multigeneration study that demonstrate variation in the association between self-evaluative statements and reports of emotional distress between groups differentiated according to race/ethnicity, age, gender, social class, and generation. The results clearly indicate that prevalent self-report measures, whether considering total scores or component items, have differential emotional significance depending on groupings.
Adolescent substance use and adult health status
The intuitively appealing hypothesized relationship between drug use and physical health status is reexamined critically in a longitudinal perspective. Individuals who were first surveyed in Houston junior high schools in 1971 are followed up through personal interviews in the fourth decade of life. In addition to focusing on the baseline effect of drug use on health, we include latent constructs reflecting deviance and psychological maladjustment as theoretically relevant antecedent and mediating variables. Using structural equation models, we found a positive, significant relationship between adolescent substance use and poor physical health in adulthood. Controlling for the spurious effects of adolescent psychological health, the baseline relationship is reduced, but remains significant. However, including a latent construct for adolescent deviance in the models attenuates the baseline relationship to insignificance. On the assumption that deviance is a cause, rather than a consequence of drug use, we conclude that the general deviant lifestyle, rather than drug use per se, adversely effects physical health, even into middle adulthood
Socio-Environmental Factors Associated With Pubertal Development in Female Adolescents: The Role of Prepubertal Tobacco and Alcohol Use
This cross-sectional study of 3,106 female adolescents, aged 11–21 years, evaluated the association between prepubertal alcohol and tobacco use and the onset of puberty. Ages at initial breast development, body hair growth, and menarche were self-reported. Prepubertal alcohol and tobacco use were defined as the age at first use before the age of pubertal development and accompanied by regular use. Hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated using Cox proportional hazard models. Logistic regression was used to estimate the association between substance use and delayed puberty, defined as lack of breast development by the age of 13 years
Nonperturbative Matching for Field Theories with Heavy Fermions
We examine a paradox, suggested by Banks and Dabholkar, concerning
nonperturbative effects in an effective field theory which is obtained by
integrating out a generation of heavy fermions, where the heavy fermion masses
arise from Yukawa couplings. They argue that light fermions in the effective
theory appear to decay via instanton processes, whereas their decay is
forbidden in the full theory. We resolve this paradox by showing that such
processes in fact do not occur in the effective theory, due to matching
corrections which cause the relevant light field configurations to have
infinite action.Comment: 10 pages, no figures, uses harvmac, Harvard University Preprint
HUTP-93/A03
A Topcolor Jungle Gym
We discuss an alternative to the topcolor seesaw mechanism. In our scheme,
all the light quarks carry topcolor, and there are many composite SU(2)
doublets. This makes it possible to get the observed top quark mass and
observed breaking in a way that is quite different from the
classic seesaw mechanism. We discuss a model of this kind that arises naturally
in the context of dynamically broken topcolor. There are many composite scalars
in a theory of this kind. This has important effects on the Pagels-Stokar
relation and the Higgs mass. We find GeV, lighter than in
typical topcolor models. We also show that the electroweak singlet quarks in
such a model can be lighter than the corresponding quarks in a seesaw model.Comment: 23 pages, LaTeX, uses epsf and psfi
A comparison of errorless and errorful therapies for dysgraphia after stroke.
Despite the increasing significance of written communication, there is limited research into spelling therapy for adults with acquired dysgraphia. Existing studies have typically measured spelling accuracy as an outcome, although speed may also be important for functional writing. As spelling is relatively slow, effortful and prone to errors in people with dysgraphia, minimising errors within therapy could be a factor in therapy success. This within-participant case-series study investigated whether errorless and errorful therapies would differ in their effects on spelling speed and accuracy for four participants with acquired dysgraphia. Matched sets of words were treated with errorless or errorful therapy or left untreated. Results were collated one week and five weeks after therapy. Both therapy approaches were successful in improving spelling accuracy. For three participants, equivalent gains were demonstrated following errorless and errorful therapy. One participant made significantly greater improvements in spelling accuracy following errorless therapy. The effects were maintained five weeks later. There was no significant difference in post-therapy spelling speed between the two therapy conditions. The results of this study suggest that both errorful and errorless therapies can be effective methods with which to treat spelling in adults with acquired dysgraphia
Academic achievement : the role of praise in motivating students
The motivation of students is an important issue in higher education, particularly in the context of the increasing diversity of student populations. A social-cognitive perspective assumes motivation to be dynamic, context-sensitive and changeable, thereby rendering it to be a much more differentiated construct than previously understood. This complexity may be perplexing to tutors who are keen to develop applications to improve academic achievement. One application that is within the control of the tutor, at least to some extent, is the use of praise. Using psychological literature the article argues that in motivating students, the tutor is not well served by relying on simplistic and common sense understandings of the construct of praise and that effective applications of praise are mediated by students' goal orientations, which of themselves may be either additive or interactive composites of different objectives and different contexts
Partisan Asymmetries in Online Political Activity
We examine partisan differences in the behavior, communication patterns and
social interactions of more than 18,000 politically-active Twitter users to
produce evidence that points to changing levels of partisan engagement with the
American online political landscape. Analysis of a network defined by the
communication activity of these users in proximity to the 2010 midterm
congressional elections reveals a highly segregated, well clustered partisan
community structure. Using cluster membership as a high-fidelity (87% accuracy)
proxy for political affiliation, we characterize a wide range of differences in
the behavior, communication and social connectivity of left- and right-leaning
Twitter users. We find that in contrast to the online political dynamics of the
2008 campaign, right-leaning Twitter users exhibit greater levels of political
activity, a more tightly interconnected social structure, and a communication
network topology that facilitates the rapid and broad dissemination of
political information.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figures, 6 table
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Insulin-Like Growth Factor Axis and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes in Women
IGF-I shares structural homology and in vitro metabolic activity with insulin. Laboratory models suggest that IGF-I and its binding proteins IGFBP-1 and IGFBP-2 have potentially beneficial effects on diabetes risk, whereas IGFBP-3 may have adverse effects. We therefore conducted a prospective nested case-control investigation of incident diabetes (n = 742 case subjects matched 1:1 to control subjects) and its associations with IGF-axis protein levels in the Nurses’ Health Study, a cohort of middle-aged women. The median time to diabetes was 9 years. Statistical analyses were adjusted for multiple risk factors, including insulin and C-reactive protein. Diabetes risk was fivefold lower among women with baseline IGFBP-2 levels in the top versus bottom quintile (odds ratio [OR]q5–q1 = 0.17 [95% CI 0.08–0.35]; P trend < 0.0001) and was also negatively associated with IGFBP-1 levels (ORq5–q1 = 0.37 [0.18–0.73]; P trend = 0.0009). IGFBP-3 was positively associated with diabetes (ORq5–q1 = 2.05 [1.20–3.51]; P trend = 0.002). Diabetes was not associated with total IGF-I levels, but free IGF-I and diabetes had a significant association that varied (P interaction = 0.003) by insulin levels above the median (ORq5–q1 = 0.48 [0.26–0.90]; P trend = 0.0001) versus below the median (ORq5–q1 = 2.52 [1.05–6.06]; P trend < 0.05). Thus, this prospective study found strong associations of incident diabetes with baseline levels of three IGFBPs and free IGF-I, consistent with hypotheses that the IGF axis might influence diabetes risk
Comparing uni-modal and multi-modal therapies for improving writing in acquired dysgraphia after stroke.
Writing therapy studies have been predominantly uni-modal in nature; i.e., their central therapy task has typically been either writing to dictation or copying and recalling words. There has not yet been a study that has compared the effects of a uni-modal to a multi-modal writing therapy in terms of improvements to spelling accuracy. A multiple-case study with eight participants aimed to compare the effects of a uni-modal and a multi-modal therapy on the spelling accuracy of treated and untreated target words at immediate and follow-up assessment points. A cross-over design was used and within each therapy a matched set of words was targeted. These words and a matched control set were assessed before as well as immediately after each therapy and six weeks following therapy. The two approaches did not differ in their effects on spelling accuracy of treated or untreated items or degree of maintenance. All participants made significant improvements on treated and control items; however, not all improvements were maintained at follow-up. The findings suggested that multi-modal therapy did not have an advantage over uni-modal therapy for the participants in this study. Performance differences were instead driven by participant variables
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