Women Attending High-Risk Substance Abuse Clinics Versus General Obstetrics Clinics

Substance-abusing women experience burdens making attending high-risk prenatal care critical for a healthy pregnancy. Many face barriers that compromise their health by reducing access to care, delaying their first prenatal appointment. One hundred forty-one women attending a high-risk prenatal clinic were compared to a matched group from the hospital’s general obstetrics clinic. Analyses revealed that substance-abusing women with a mental illness attended prenatal care earlier than those without a mental illness. This is important because psychiatric illnesses might precipitate poor reproductive behaviors. Women with HIV also entered prenatal care earlier, which improves reproductive health. Clinicians’ roles are discussed.     

Payment of Universal Credit for couples in the UK: Challenges for reform from a gender perspective

Universal Credit has been rolled out gradually in the United Kingdom since 2013 as one integrated means-tested benefit replacing six different transfers with a single monthly payment. Previously, these benefits were awarded for distinct purposes and, for couples who claimed them, were potentially payable to different partners. Concerns about Universal Credit’s single payment include the opportunities it may create for facilitating domestic abuse, the fostering of more unequal power relations within couples, the reduction of financial autonomy for individuals, and the de-labelling of benefit payments. This article explores debates about the prospects for individual payments to partners in couples of Universal Credit as a jointly assessed integrated means-tested benefit, including different approaches emerging from the United Kingdom’s devolved governments (mainly Scotland and Northern Ireland). Whilst payment to each partner is likely to be more feasible where there are separate rather than integrated means-tested benefits, it concludes that genuine financial autonomy for partners in couples is best pursued via individually based non-means-tested benefits.     

Robust effects of stress on early lexical representation

This study aims to elucidate the factors that affect the robustness of word form representations by exploring the relative influence of lexical stress and segmental identity (consonant vs. vowel) on infant word recognition. Our main question was which changes to the words may go unnoticed and which may lead the words to be unrecognizable. One‐hundred 11‐month‐old Hebrew‐learning infants were tested in two experiments using the Central Fixation Procedure. In Experiment 1, 20 infants were presented with iambic Familiar and Unfamiliar words. The infants listened longer to Familiar than to Unfamiliar words, indicating their recognition of frequently heard word forms. In Experiment 2, four groups of 20 infants each were tested in each of four conditions involving altered iambic Familiar words contrasted with iambic Unfamiliar nonwords. In each condition, one segment in the Familiar word was changed—either a consonant or a vowel, in either the first (unstressed) or the second (stressed) syllable. In each condition, recognition of the Familiar words despite the change indicates a less accurate or less well‐specified representation. Infants recognized Familiar words despite changes to the weak (first) syllable, regardless of whether the change involved a consonant or a vowel (conditions 2a, 2c). However, a change of either consonant or vowel in the stressed (second) syllable blocked word recognition (conditions 2b, 2d). These findings support the proposal that stress pattern plays a key role in early word representation, regardless of segmental identity.     

Practice and Research in Career Counseling and Development—2000

The authors summarize the career counseling and development literature that appeared during 2000 in refereed journals, book chapters, and full‐length books. The review of literature is divided into 5 major categories: (a) theoretical and conceptual advances, (b) career counseling and development of identified populations, (c) assessment in career counseling and development, (d) career counseling programs and interventions, and (e) resources for the professional development of career counselors and vocational psychologists.     

Testing Parsons: Evidence from an Organizational Subunit and Implications for Structural Functional Theorizing*

Talcott Parsons’ ideas are shown to have operational meaning when applied to organizations in two respects. (1) Parsons’ typology of system needs provides a meaningful way of categorizing administrative rules (protocols) developed by the subunit under study, and (2) “phase dominance,” anticipated by structural functionalists, is tested. Our analysis adds to Parsons’ framework (a) by helping to clarify the distinctive (and generally unappreciated) role that can be played by ground‐level administrative units in the process of adaptive change within large and complex organizations, and (b) by informing our understanding of organizational alignment with external societal forces.     

International Transitions: Generating Subjective Sense and Subjective Configuration in Relation to the Development of Identity

This article provides an in-depth examination of the emerging identity of a 5-year-old child during her international transition from Saudi Arabia to Malaysia. Observations of the child’s everyday life at home and school, alongside interviews with the child’s mother and teacher, enabled an understanding of the dynamic relation between past, current, and future events. The process of forming a new friendship foregrounded shared motives, emotions, and actions that ameliorated a transitional crisis and supported the child during this international transition.     

Emotion Talk and Friend Responses Among Early Adolescent Same‐sex Friend Dyads

To better understand early adolescent emotion talk within close same‐sex friendships, this observational study examined emotion talk, as measured by emotion term use, in relation to friend supportive and dismissive responses to such terms among 116 adolescents (58 friend dyads) in Grades 7–8 (56.9% female, M = 13.08, SD = .61). Partial intra‐class correlation coefficients derived by using actor partner interdependence models revealed similarities in the frequency of dyad mates use of positive and negative emotions terms. Chi‐square analyses indicated that when friends responded to participants' emotion talk supportively, rather than dismissively, participants were more likely to disclose emotions in subsequent utterances. Research and clinical implications for early adolescent emotional development are discussed.