The relationship between binge drinking and prosocial bystander behavior among college men

Abstract

Objectives: This study prospectively examined binge drinking’s effect on prosocial bystander behavior and indicators of bystander behavior: intentions to intervene, self-efficacy to intervene, and positive outcome expectancies for intervening. Participants: College men were recruited from February to April 2010. Methods: Pre- and posttest surveys were administered as part of a randomized controlled trial (n?=?743). Potential confounders were identified using Pearson product-moment correlations. Controlling for covariates, multiple linear regression was used to examine whether binge drinking was predictive of prosocial bystander behavior and indicators of bystander behavior. Results: Binge drinking was related to lower bystander behavior (p<.05), lower intentions to intervene (p<.001), and less positive outcome expectancies for intervening (p<.05). Conclusions: Binge drinking may reduce the ability to notice a risk situation and intervene as a prosocial bystander. Results highlight the need for bystander programs to address alcohol use within the context of bystander behavior.     

The Role of Verbal Repetition in the Development of Infant Speech Preferences From 4 to 14 Months of Age

Four experiments investigated infants' preferences for age‐appropriate and age‐inappropriate infant‐directed speech (IDS) over adult‐directed speech (ADS). Two initial experiments showed that 6‐, 10‐, and 14‐month‐olds preferred IDS directed toward younger infants, and 4‐, 8‐, 10‐, and 14‐month‐olds, but not 6‐month‐olds, preferred IDS directed toward older infants. In Experiment 3. 6‐month‐olds preferred IDS directed toward older infants when the frequency of repeated utterances matched IDS to younger infants. In Experiment 4, 6‐month‐olds preferred repeated IDS utterances over the same IDS utterances organized without repetition. Attention to repeated utterances precedes word segmentation and sensitivity to statistical cues in continuous speech, and might play a role in the discovery of these and other aspects of linguistic structure.     

Clicking Toward Better Grades: The Use of Student Response Systems in Social Work Education

Faculty members at universities are increasingly shifting their pedagogical focus from traditional lectures to active learning by integrating academic technology such as clickers (i.e., student response systems) into classrooms. However, few studies have examined the effect of clickers on learning outcomes such as test grades, and even fewer studies have evaluated this technology in social work education. This study examined the effect of clickers on learning outcomes in an undergraduate social work course. Findings indicated that frequency of clicker use significantly contributed to increased test scores after controlling for important covariates, suggesting that clickers may be an effective tool in actively engaging social work students and promoting learning. Instructors guidelines for integrating technology into future social work courses are discussed.     

Social Interaction Effects on Fertility: Intentions and Behaviors

The existing literature shows that the social interactions in personal networks affect individuals’ reproductive attitudes and behavior through three mechanisms: social influence, social learning, and social support. In this article, we discuss the extent to which the socio-psychological model of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) takes these social mechanisms into account when used in modeling fertility intentions and behavior. We argue that by integrating all three social network mechanisms, the ability of the TPB to explain reproductive events could be enhanced in two respects. First, social influence explains why some beliefs and practices are reproduced at the individual level even in the face of macro-level changes, and social learning mechanisms are crucial to distinguish who finally adopts new behavioral beliefs and practices in response to changes at the macro level. Second, social support relationships represent a capital of services to complement institutional provision (informal child care) as well as a capital of knowledge which helps individuals navigate in a complex institutional environment, providing a crucial element to explain heterogeneity in the successful realization of fertility intentions across individuals. The integration of the three social network mechanisms into the TPB helps to address the connection between changes in what the theory indicates as background factors and variation in individual intentions and behavior. We develop specific hypotheses concerning the effect of social interactions on fertility intentions and their realization and conclude with a critical review of the existing surveys that could serve to test these hypotheses and their limits.     

Time Use by Gender and Quality of Life

Italy has no survey that was specifically designed to measure the degree of quality of life for the population, although certain other surveys exist which contribute useful information on the issue. This paper will concentrate on the potential of using existing sample surveys and on initial studies carried out starting from the Time Use survey conducted by the National Statistical Institute in 1989.Daily activities are the key factor when analysing a person's quality of life, however, these must also be considered in context. First and foremost this context is the household, within which each person carries out more or less defined roles. The roles covered are, in fact, a crucial variable when evaluating each person's quality of life. This angle of obsevation is particularly instructive when seen in terms of developments from a gender standpoint. Interpreting a woman's lifestyle according to the presence of symmeetry of asymmetry of roles, accompanying this analysis with one covering subjective perception of satisfaction as to daily activities, is an essential approach for determining the real satisfaction derived from the different aspects of a person's daily life. In addition to conventional indicators, newly conceived indicators taking into account the division of roles can be of great help when carrying out this kind of study. In this sense the analysis of individual time use in relation to household time use represents a significant step forward when studying quality of life.     

Stress Pattern Preference in Spanish‐Learning Infants: The Role of Syllable Weight

As a result of exposure, infants acquire biases that conform to the rhythmic properties of their native language. Previous lexical stress preference studies have shown that English‐ and German‐, but not French‐learning infants, show a bias toward trochaic words. The present study explores Spanish‐learning infants' lexical stress preferential patterns and the role of syllable weight at 9 months of age. Spanish is a syllable‐timed language with no vowel reduction and variable stress. Around 50% of the word types in Spanish are disyllabic, with a superior proportion of trochees than iambs (60% and 40%, respectively). Experiment 1 with CV.CV pseudo‐words failed to reveal a clear trochaic bias in 9‐month‐old Spanish‐learning infants. However, when preference was explored with items containing a heavy syllable (CVC.CV and CV.CVC, respectively), both a trochaic (Experiment 2) and an iambic preference (Experiment 3) could be elicited. These results suggest that knowledge about the close and highly regular link between heavy syllables and stress assignment in Spanish can be easily acquired and determines infants' preference at 9 months of age, while for CV.CV items, the trochaic bias appears to be weak. Our results broaden the current knowledge on the factors that determine the emergence of rhythmic biases.     

Gender similarity in growth patterns of support toward friends during young adulthood

The purpose of this article was to analyze change over time in a specific aspect of prosocial behavior, emotional support toward friends, using two different methodologies. We examined how emotional support changes during the transition to adulthood and whether gender‐based group comparisons yield different gender patterns than person‐centered growth mixture models. We hypothesized that emotional helping toward friends would increase over time and that person‐centered analyses would not show gender differences as large as those indicated by group comparison models. Participants were 466 young adults (ages 18–21). Findings indicated that important intragroup variance was masked when analyses focused on comparisons between gender groups. Person‐centered analyses indicated two mixed‐gender groups with different prosocial trajectories. We discuss how the methods and outcomes of person‐centered analyses are more congruent with current theories of “gender similarities” as well as empirical evidence of the small gender difference in social behaviors such as emotional support.     

University gatekeepers’ use of the rhetoric of citizenship to relegate the status of students with disabilities in Canada

Despite affirmation that students with disabilities should have equal access to education, individuals with disabilities are still not participating to the same degree as individuals without disabilities, particularly within postsecondary institutions. Students in Health and Human Service (HHS) programs experience many unique challenges and disadvantages. In-depth focus groups and interviews were conducted with 14 university stakeholders in HHS programs regarding their perceptions and experiences of working with students with disabilities. We found that the rhetoric of citizenship, specifically notions of rationality, autonomy, and productivity, interacts with beliefs about students with disabilities to allow stakeholders to justify their exclusion or limited participation. Our findings demonstrate how taken-for-granted beliefs can limit the inclusion of students with disabilities in ways that seem natural and unproblematic.