The purpose of this study was to understand why there is such lack of citizen participation among Asian Americans, despite the exponential growth of Asian American population in the state. Based on the literature on sense of community, citizen participation, and psychological empowerment, it was speculated that how individuals experience community may influence their motivation to participate. With the goal to understand and document how Asian Americans define community and experience sense of community, a sample of Asian Americans were interviewed. These individuals were participants of the Photovoice project conducted by a local community-based organization. The second aim of the study was to explore if and how a project like Photovoice enhanced the sense of community among participants. The findings suggested that Asian Americans defined various types and multiple communities. Also, it was suggested that because Asian American community is an imposed community of people of diverse Asian background, Asian Americans may not necessarily define it as a community or experience sense of community within the community. Based on the experiences of the participants, Photovoice seem to have great potential in bringing such diverse group as Asian Americans together as a community. Limitations of the study and future directions are discussed.

Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) is a genetic disorder that affects approximately 1 out of every 600 African-American newborns (NHLBI, 2006). SCD and its associated symptoms can have widespread impact on both the psychological functioning of the individual diagnosed with the illness and their families. The purpose of this study was to apply the illness intrusiveness framework to better understand the relations among vaso-occlusive pain crises (VOC), child age, pediatric health related quality of life (QOL), and parental psychosocial adjustment. Participants included 103 parent-child dyads. Parents completed a background form, the Brief Symptom Inventory-18, and the Illness Intrusiveness Rating Scale. Children completed the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory. Results revealed that experiencing a greater frequency of VOC’s was related to decrements in QOL across domains. However, this relation was not mediated by parental perceived illness intrusiveness. Further, results revealed that the effect of frequency of vaso-occlusive pain crises in children with SCD on parental psychosocial maladjustment is mediated by parental illness intrusiveness, which is contingent upon child age.

Previous research suggests that parents can benefit from youth participation in after-school programs. However, little research has explored parent involvement in after-school programs as an important program characteristic leading to youth development. Bioecological Systems Theory suggests that individuals are influenced by the interactions of others within their environment. Building from this theory, it was posited that parent benefits resulting from involvement in after-school programs can facilitate positive youth development. Surveys were completed by 117 parents whose daughters participated in the Cool Girls, Inc. after-school program, a program serving primarily low-income, African American, urban youth. Using Exploratory Factor Analysis, a three factor structure of parent benefits was identified. Parent benefits include increased (1) parent-child communication, (2) parent social capital, and (3) parent-school involvement. A fourth parent benefit of help for working parents was identified in subsequent analyses using a smaller sample of only working parents (n = 86). Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that more parent after-school program involvement was associated with increases in each of the four parent benefits. As predicted, each of the four parent benefits mediated the association between parent involvement in after-school programs and parent reported changes in positive youth development outcomes due to participation in Cool Girls, Inc. These results suggest the importance of further research into ways parents benefit from their child’s participation in after-school programs and how those benefits can influence youth developmental trajectories. These findings also demonstrate the importance of involving parents in after-school programs.

This study applies qualitative methodology to the study of sociopolitical development (SPD) among community and labor organizers of color. Participant data (open-ended applications) were obtained from a long-standing training institution, span 18 years (n=200), and equally represent Black, Latino/a, and Asian individuals. This study sought to reveal important dimensions of SPD and to identify contributing life experiences. Three SPD themes emerged: (1) social analysis, (2) commitment, and (3) empowerment. An organizer thus exhibits multidimensional insight into social injustice, commitment to taking action, and genuine belief in his/her individual and collective abilities. Four experiential domains contributed to participants’ SPD: (a) family, (b) social identity, (c) social injustice and (d) sociopolitical work. Each theme and domain is described in a multidimensional way. The relationships between life experiences and SPD themes are furthermore examined, and located within existing psychological research. Finally, implications of these findings for practitioners are discussed.

The current exploratory study examined the relationships between intimacy or mutuality and expression of violence among a sample of Spanish-speaking immigrant men (N = 70) mandated to a batterer intervention program in the Western United States. Correlations, hierarchical regressions, ANOVAs, and t-tests were used to explore the three-phase program’s effects on changes in men’s self-reports of mutuality, physical violence, and total emotional violence and its components - verbal emotional violence and controlling behavior. The study found that higher reports of mutuality were significantly related to lower reports of all three measures of emotional violence at intake. It was also found that reports of total emotional violence and verbal emotional violence, but not controlling behavior were reduced with participation in the program. Two distinct groups of participants emerged, with men measured in the second phase of intervention reporting higher initial verbal emotional violence and mutuality than those measured in the third phase. In addition, men measured in the second phase reported greater changes in both verbal-emotional violence and mutuality than those who reported in the third phase. The findings appear to show limitations of the measurement methods and instruments. They also seem to indicate that batterer intervention programs in general may need to examine other ways to address the more pernicious social and political roots of domestic violence.

Group mentoring has received much less empirical attention than one-on-one mentoring and it is not clear whether group programs can be expected to yield similar outcomes or whether the mechanisms of change are similar compared to one-on-one mentoring programs. This study examined the effects of a group mentoring intervention on quality of relationships with parents and peers for 71 program participants relative to a comparison group of 31 students. Further, analyses were performed among program participants only to determine effects of sense of belonging with mentor and mentoring group on changes in quality of relationships with parents and peers. Findings revealed no program effects, yet among program participants, findings revealed that sense of belonging with mentor and group are important in predicting changes in quality of relationship with fathers and peers.

The Rapid Automatized Naming test (RAN) has been shown to be a strong predictor of reading ability (Bowers and Wolf, 1993), however, the nature of this relationship remains unclear. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether the visual scanning and sequential components of the continuous RAN format are similar to those same visual scanning processes required in reading, and whether these processes partially account for the relationship. The sample consisted of 57 undergraduate students (63.2% female). The majority of the sample was either Caucasian (33.3%) or African American (29.8%). The eye movement measures consisted of three short stories and the continuous versions of two RAN tasks (colors and letters). This study examined the percent of regressions and fixations during both types of tasks (reading text and RAN). The findings suggest that the continuous RAN measures important visual scanning and sequencing processes that are important in predicting reading ability.

Research has demonstrated a close relationship between verbal short-term (STM) and working memory (WM) and receptive language in children (Baddeley, Gathercole, & Papagno, 1998; Ellis & Sinclair, 1996). Few studies have examined the relationship between memory and language production, and these studies focus on STM only. Though correlations have been found between verbal STM and production, the nature of the correlations are unclear. The current study examined the possibility that receptive language mediates the relationship between memory and language production. Children between 3;0 and 5;11 were administered tests assessing receptive vocabulary, receptive grammar, expressive vocabulary, verbal STM, and verbal WM. Additionally, transcripts from free-play sessions were used to assess grammar production. A regression based analytic approach revealed STM and WM mediate the relationship between receptive language and productive language. The existence of these mediated relationships are discussed in relation to the role of working memory in the speech output buffer.

Recent research has begun focusing on the connections between reading and mathematics. Little research, however, has examined connections between mathematics and other reading related skills, such as spelling. Moreover, working memory may a play a significant role in both systems. Results indicated a significant predictive relationship between spelling and mathematics. Furthermore, this relationship was found to be partially mediated by measures of phonological working memory.

The third ventricle region houses several neuroanatomical structures that are primary components of the human memory system, and provides pathways through which these brain regions communicate with critical regions of the frontal and medial temporal lobes. Archival data was obtained for 42 children with cerebellar or third ventricle tumors, and was examined for tumor and treatment related confounds. Children with third ventricle tumors were hypothesized to exhibit; 1) better performance on a measure of auditory attention, 2) greater impairment in learning across trials, 3) greater memory loss over a 20-minute delay, and 4) greater impairment across delayed memory tests than the cerebellar group. Children with third ventricle tumors demonstrated significantly better auditory attention, but greater impairments in verbal learning, and greater verbal memory loss following a 20-minute delay. In contrast, children with third ventricle tumors did not demonstrate significantly greater memory impairments across long delay memory tests.