Adaptation and Validation of a Positive Health Scale for Adolescents

There is a demonstrated need to develop alternative approaches to measuring health from a positive health perspective in order to support systematic planning and evaluation of health promotion in schools. The Salutogenic Health Indicator Scale (SHIS) aims to measure health from a positive perspective. However, it has not been developed, or previously been tested, for use with adolescents between the ages of 12 and 16, at which age youth often exhibit a need for extra support in order to be successful in school and life. Inspired by the SHIS, we generated a Positive Health Scale (PHS) appropriate for 12–16-year-olds and determined its validity and reliability using principal component analysis (PCA). In the study, the scale was tested in a sample of 1,527 Grade 6–9 students, using PCA. The findings indicated the need to reduce the scale to nine items, which was then shown to be valid and reliable for use with both adolescent boys and adolescent girls. We conclude that the PHS can be used in systematic health promotion planning and evaluation. Communities and schools can use this scale to examine and improve health determinants in different adolescent settings.     

Bareback sex and the law: the difficult issue of HIV status disclosure

1. Unsafe anal intercourse (bareback sex) is on the rise within the gay community. 2. Barebacking constitutes a sexual practice with strong HIV-related legal implications. Nurses need to be aware of public health laws to be able to protect clients from undue legal prosecution. 3. Nurses need to be aware of the components of HIV pretest counseling. 4. Adopting a nonjudgmental, matter-of-fact approach is essential in establishing effective therapeutic relationships with clients who engage in bareback sex.     

Infants use contextual memory to attend and learn in naturalistic scenes

Infants encounter new objects and learn about object features in relation to a rich and detailed visuospatial context. Using a contextual cueing task, recent work showed that 6- and 10-month-old infants search more efficiently for target objects in repeated rather than novel visuospatial contexts (i.e., arrays of shapes on a blank background). Here, we investigate whether infants' sensitivity to visuospatial context scales up to more complex and potentially more distracting, naturalistic scenes. In an eye-tracking task, 8-month-olds searched for a novel target object in colorful photographs of everyday environments (e.g., bedrooms and kitchens). Repeated (“Old”) contexts co-varied with target locations, such that the target object appeared in exactly the same location on the same scene, while varying (“New”) contexts contained target objects placed in different counterbalanced locations across a variety of scenes. Infants exhibited faster search times, more anticipation of target animation, and longer looking at targets that appeared in Old relative to New contexts. In a subsequent memory test, infants showed better recognition of label-object pairings for target objects that had appeared in Old, rather than New, contexts. These results indicate that infants can use visuospatial contextual information in complex naturalistic scenes to facilitate memory-guided attention and learning of object-paired labels.     

Adolescents’ perceptions of social risk and prosocial tendencies: Developmental change and individual differences

Many prosocial behaviors involve social risks such as speaking out against a popular opinion, bias, group norm, or authority. However, little is known about whether adolescents’ prosocial tendencies develop over time with their perceptions of social risks. This accelerated longitudinal study used within-subject growth-curve analyses to test the link between adolescents' prosocial tendencies and social risk perceptions. Adolescents completed self-reports annually for 3 years (N = 893; M_age = 12.30 years, 10–14 years at Wave 1, and 10–17 years across the full study period; 50% girls, 33% White non-Latinx, 27% Latinx, 20% African American, 20% mixed/other race). The association between social risk tolerance and prosocial tendencies changed significantly across adolescence. Specifically, for younger adolescents, more prosocial tendencies were associated significantly with less social risk tolerance, whereas for relatively older adolescents, more prosocial tendencies were associated marginally with more social risk tolerance. Additional individual differences by empathy (but not sensation seeking) emerged. These findings suggest that prosocial tendencies across adolescence may be associated with an underlying ability to tolerate social risks.     

Species-specific facilitation shapes primary successional communities under nurse trees in an abandoned slag dump

Urban Ecosystems - Facilitation by nurse plants shapes community development during primary succession. Human activity—especially in urban settings—has created environments like...     

Preschoolers’ responses to prosocial opportunities during naturalistic interactions with peers: A cross-cultural comparison

The goal of this study was to better understand similarities and differences in preschool children's expression of needs and prosocial responsiveness to peers’ needs across two culturally distinct contexts. Preschoolers were observed in a semi-naturalistic design across rural Mexico and urban Canada, wherein they were instructed to build a tower with blocks. Three- to 6-year-olds (N = 306; 48% female) were divided into 64 peer groups. We coded for children's expression of needs (instrumental, material, or emotional), responses to prosocial opportunities (prosociality, denial, or no response), prosociality without an apparent need (spontaneous prosociality), and types of prosocial behavior (helping, sharing, or comforting). While instrumental and material needs were expressed similarly across both samples, Tzotzil Maya children expressed fewer emotional needs than Canadian children. Failing to respond to others’ needs, followed by denial, were the most frequent need-provoked response in both countries; surprisingly, only 9% of needs received a prosocial response. Though need-provoked prosociality was rare in both cultural contexts, children engaged in considerable spontaneous prosociality which varied as a function of age, gender, and cultural context. Lastly, Canadian more than Tzotzil Maya children denied emotional and instrumental needs (but not material needs). The findings inform how cultural practices may shape the presentation of needs and prosocial responsiveness in peer interactions.