Influence of communicator's race on efficacy of an HIV/STD prevention intervention among African American and Caucasian college students.

OBJECTIVES: The present research examined the influence of communicator's race on the efficacy of intervention videos in the reduction of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) among African American and Caucasian college females. DESIGN: Experimental HIV/STD prevention digital versatile disks (DVDs) featured a White female as a primary or a secondary communicator relative to a Black female, while a control DVD featured 2 Black females. Respondents watched 1 DVD and completed questionnaires before and after viewing the DVD as well as 2 and 4 weeks later. SAMPLE: 79 African American females and 88 Caucasian females participated. MEASUREMENTS: Perceptions of the DVDs, HIV/STD risk, intentions to use condoms, and number of condoms purchased after viewing the videos were assessed. RESULTS: The intervention was effective in increasing intentions to use condoms with a current partner across the follow-up periods. There was no effect of race of communicator on any variable for African American or Caucasians. CONCLUSIONS: While communicator's race did not affect this intervention, more research is necessary. Future studies should use multiple Black and White communicators to isolate the role of race and should be conducted where larger samples of African American college students can be recruited.

Dissociating sources of dual-task interference using human electrophysiology.

In the psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm, two unmasked targets are presented, each of which requires a speeded response. Response times to the second target (T2) are slowed when T2 is presented shortly after the first target (T1). Electrophysiological studies have previously shown that the P3 event-related potential component is not delayed during T2 response slowing in the PRP paradigm, but that the lateralized readiness potential is delayed, which suggests a bottleneck on response selection operations but not on stimulus identification. Recently, researchers (Arnell & Duncan, 2002; Jolicoeur & Dell'Acqua, 1999) observed T2 response slowing in an encoding-speeded response (ESR) paradigm where T2 followed a masked T1 that required identification but not a speeded response. T2 response slowing in the ESR paradigm is often indistinguishable from that in the PRP paradigm, prompting some researchers to postulate a common processing bottleneck for the two paradigms. With the use of the ESR paradigm, we observed T2 response slowing and, in contrast to the PRP paradigm, we also observed corresponding P3 delays. The results suggest that dissociable bottlenecks underlie the dual-task costs from the two paradigms.