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This study examines the role of social identity (acculturation and gender) in moderating the association between discrimination and Somali adolescent refugees' mental health. Participants were English-speaking Somali adolescent refugees between the ages of 11 and 20 (N = 135). Perceived discrimination, trauma history, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depressive symptoms, and behavioral acculturation were assessed in structured interviews. Fourteen in-depth qualitative interviews and 3 focus groups were also conducted. Results indicated that discrimination was common and associated with worse mental health. For girls, greater Somali acculturation was associated with better mental health. Also, the association between discrimination and PTSD was less strong for girls who showed higher levels of Somali acculturation. For boys, greater American acculturation was associated with better mental health, and the association between discrimination and depression was less strong for boys with higher levels of American acculturation. DOI: 10.1111/j.1939-0025.2010.01061.x

This study addresses potentially stressful events that accompany the process of immigration for children and their families. Acculturation stress, combined with service disparities, may contribute to a higher risk for psychopathology among immigrant children and youth, as compared to their parents. Culturally informed, evidence-based treatment and preventive interventions that meet the mental health and cultural needs of immigrant children and families have the potential to minimize this higher risk of adverse mental health consequences. DOI: 10.1111/j.1939-0025.2010.01053.x

This article investigates the relationship between psychological distress, acculturation, and help-seeking attitudes among people of African descent (N = 130). Psychological distress was measured using the Global Severity Index from the Brief Symptom Inventory (L. R. Derogatis & N. Melisaratos, 1983), acculturation was measured using the Measurement of Acculturation Strategies for People of African Descent (E. M. Obasi, 2005), and help-seeking attitudes were measured using the Attitudes Toward Seeking Professional Psychological Help scale (E. H. Fischer & J. I. Turner, 1970). Overall, as psychological distress increased, attitudes toward seeking professional psychological services became more negative. The negative relationship between psychological distress and confidence in therapist was significantly stronger for participants who expressed a cultural maintenance of traditional beliefs. Future directions for this body of research are discussed. Keywords: African American, acculturation, psychological distress, help-seeking attitudes, mental health disparities

There is considerable evidence indicating that Asian American college students have less favorable attitudes toward and are less likely to use mental health services than other ethnic groups in the United States. Because a person's attitudes are often strongly associated with their voluntary behaviors, understanding what influences help-seeking attitudes may help shed light on why Asian American college students refrain from seeking mental health treatment. Andersen's Sociobehavioral Model is commonly used as a guide to understand help-seeking in the mainstream population. A modified version of this model that includes culture-related variables (i.e., level of acculturation and stigma tolerance) was used to guide this study. Results indicated that stigma tolerance predicted help-seeking attitudes above and beyond traditional variables associated with help-seeking. These findings suggest that reducing societal stigma and increasing individual tolerance to stigma should be a focus for prevention and intervention programs on college campuses. Keywords: Asian American, help-seeking attitudes, stigma, college students, acculturation

Models of compensation for phonological variation in spoken word recognition differ in their ability to accommodate complete assimilatory alternations (such as run assimilating fully to rum in the context of a quick run picks you up). Two experiments addressed whether such complete changes can be observed in casual speech, and if so, whether they trigger perceptual compensation. Experiment 1 used recordings of naive speakers and found that the presence of following context supporting place assimilation led to an increase in miscommunication rate when listeners were asked to identify the potentially assimilated words. This result was also obtained when trained phoneticians gave their considered judgments of a subset of the stimuli. Experiment 2 examined the extent to which words articulated correctly by naive speakers (e.g., rum) would be perceived as assimilated and found that compensation for assimilation in these stimuli depended on the type of following phonemic context and the semantic fit with the preceding sentence. These results suggest that place assimilation does involve complete alternations and that the perceptual system can compensate for them in certain circumstances. Keywords: assimilation, speech perception, spoken word recognition, lexical access, phonological variation

Social judgment theory holds that a person's own attitudes function as reference points, influencing the perception of others' attitudes. The authors argue that attitudes themselves are influenced by reference points, namely, the presumed attitudes of others. Whereas exposure to a group that acts as a contextual reference should cause attitude assimilation, exposure to a group that acts as a comparative reference should cause attitude contrast. In Study 1, participants subliminally primed with their political ingroup or outgroup endorsed more extreme political positions than did controls. Study 2 demonstrated that prime types known to uniquely facilitate assimilation and contrast enhanced the polarization effect in the ingroup and outgroup conditions, respectively. Study 3 established an important boundary condition for whether group salience produces attitude assimilation or contrast by showing that perceived closeness to the elderly moderates the direction and strength of the group priming effect. The results suggest that the transition from assimilation to contrast occurs when a group ceases to function as a context and becomes a comparison point. Implications for social judgment theory, assimilation and contrast research, and conflict escalation are discussed. Keywords: attitudes, reference points, assimilation, contrast, intergroup conflict

Acculturation, the process by which individuals or groups transition from one or more cultures into another, can be complex and often stressful. In many cases, reason for immigration can contribute, both positively and negatively, to levels of acculturative stress. Immigrants to the United States from Iraq over the past several decades have shifted in terms of prevalence, reason for and ease of immigration, and pre and postmigration trauma among individuals and groups. The authors examined the psychological by-products of acculturative stress by measuring posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression among three distinct waves of immigrants from Iraq. The authors found support for the hypotheses that these variables were positively correlated with recency of immigration. Implications for psychological practitioners are discussed. Keywords: Iraqi, immigrants, acculturation, stress, PTSD

Three studies found support for the notion that immigrants' acculturation to the host culture is interactively determined by their need for cognitive closure (A. W. Kruglanski & D. M. Webster, 1996) and the reference group they forge on their arrival. If such reference group is fashioned by close social relations with coethnics, the higher the immigrants' need for closure, the weaker their tendency to assimilate to the new culture and the stronger their tendency to adhere to the culture of origin. By contrast, if the reference entry group is fashioned by close relations with members of the host country, the higher their need for closure, the stronger their tendency to adapt to the new culture and the weaker their tendency to maintain the culture of origin. These findings obtained consistently across 3 immigrant samples in Italy, 1 Croatian and 2 Polish, and across multiple different measures of acculturation.