Disease severity, stress, and maternal adjustment in juvenile rheumatic disease: A test of Varni and Wallander's model

Examined 42 mothers of children with juvenile rheumatic disease (JRD) to assess the relationship of risk and resistance factors to level of psychological adjustment. Dimensions of maternal adjustment, disease severity, stress, and social support were assessed. As a group, mothers evidenced significant levels of general psychological distress, and appear to constitute an at-risk population. Multiple regression analyses indicated higher levels of maternal distress were associated with increased levels of daily hassles and illness-related stress. Disease severity and social support did not contribute significantly to the model; however, disease severity was shown to be indirectly related to maternal adjustment through a relationship with psychosocial stress variables.</p

The effects of multiple-exemplar self-instructional training on high school students' generalized conversational interactions

A multiple-baseline-across-students design was used to investigate the effects of multiple-exemplar self-instructional training on the acquisition and generalization of conversational interaction of 4 high school students with mental retardation. The multiple-exemplar component of the model consisted of (a) several peers without disabilities teaching the use of a self-instructional social skills strategy across diverse examples of conversational interactions and across two settings and (b) assessing the generalized effects of training across additional peers and one setting. Findings indicated that peers were effective in teaching the multiple-exemplar strategy and that peer training was associated with systematic increases in generalized conversational interactions with familiar and unfamiliar peers with and without disabilities in an additional setting. Social validation data indicated that following multiple-exemplar training, all participants' performances approximated those of general education students and was judged by others to have improved