A comparison of children with serious emotional disturbance served in residential and school settings

The National Adolescent and Child Treatment Study (NACTS) was designed to study children identified and served by the public mental health and special education systems as seriously emotionally disturbed. Children (N=812) and their parents (N=740) participated in the first wave of data collection in this longitudinal study. Subjects lived in six states, with approximately half in psychiatric residential treatment centers and the other half in public school special education programs. A multi-method, multi-source methodology was employed. The sample is characterized by externalizing problems, poor adaptive functioning, and substantial academic deficits. Residential children were more likely to have blended families, were more likely to have previously received residential treatment, and had higher rates of conduct disorder, anxiety, and attention deficit disorder, as measured by the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children. The two groups did not differ on intelligence, age of onset, or rates of schizophrenia or depression. The data suggest the presence of greater at-risk factors in the residential group and different paths of entry into special education and residential treatment programs.     

Family patterns leading to learning disability: A cognitive approach

Traditional treatment of the learning disabled child seeks to offer an individualized remediation. The authors offer as an alternative the innovative use of the family therapy modality for treatment of the learning dysfunction. This approaches the source of the learning dysfunction embedded in the faulty communication patterns within the family. The child has the opportunity to experience and more accurately comprehend the communication patterns, become more adept at interpretation of implicit meanings, and to transfer these developing skills to the formal learning situation.     

Identifying emotional disturbance in children- the professionals differ

This study investigated perceptions of conduct and personality indicators of elementary school age children as perceived characteristics of emotional disturbance. The indicators were ranked by teachers, school counselors, school psychologists, clinical psychologists, and psychiatrists, using a Q-sort. It was found that teachers and school counselors did not distinguish between conduct and personality indicators, while the other remaining professional groups demonstrated a significant preference for the personality indicators as characterizing emotional disturbance.     

Event-related potentials related to normal and morphed emotional faces

S. Bentin and L. Y. Deouell (2000) have suggested that face recognition is achieved through a special-purpose neural mechanism, and its existence can be identified by a specific event-related potential (ERP) correlate, the N170 effect. In the present study, the authors explored the structural significance of N170 by comparing normal vs. morphed stimuli. They used a morphing procedure that allows a fine modification of some perceptual details (first-order relations). The authors also aimed to verify the independence of face identification from other cognitive mechanisms, such as comprehension of emotional facial expressions, by applying an emotion-by-emotion analysis to examine the emotional effect on N170 ERP variation. They analyzed the peak amplitude and latency variables in the temporal window of 120-180 ms. The ERP correlate showed a classic N170 ERP effect, more negative and more posteriorly distributed for morphed faces compared with normal faces. In addition, they found a lateralization effect, with a greater right-side distribution of the N170, but not directly correlated to the morphed or normal conditions. Two cognitive codes, structural and expression, are discussed, and the results are compared with the multilevel model proposed by V. Bruce and A. W. Young (1986, 1998).     

Affective learning increases sensitivity to graded emotional faces

How does the affective significance of emotional faces affect perceptual decisions? We manipulated affective significance by pairing 100% fearful faces with aversive electrical stimulation and hypothesized that increasing the significance of a stimulus via its prior history would lead to enhanced processing. After fear conditioning, participants viewed graded emotional faces that ranged from neutral to fearful. Faces were shown either in a color that was previously paired with shock or a color not paired with shock during conditioning. Increases in the frequency of "fearful" responses for faces shown in the shock-paired color were most robust for faces at intermediate intensity levels (40-60% fearful). Psychometric fits to the data revealed significant increased sensitivity for shock-paired relative to unpaired faces. Thus, despite identical physical features for shock-paired and unpaired stimuli (aside from the color, which was counterbalanced), more frequent (and faster) "fearful" responses were made when participants viewed affectively significant stimuli.     

Classroom behavior and the ability to decode nonverbal cues in boys with severe emotional disturbance

Nonverbal decoding skills are important for successful social functioning, particularly for emotionally disturbed children. Boys with severe emotional disturbance (n = 25) and a control group of boys (n = 22) were compared regarding the relationship between ratings of classroom social behaviors and nonverbal decoding skills. Participants were predominantly African American. The Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy (Nowicki, 2001; Nowicki & Duke, 1994) was administered individually to the boys while teachers completed ratings of their social behavior in the classroom. The 2 groups of boys did not differ in nonverbal skills. However, aggressive classroom behaviors were associated with specific nonverbal skills only for the boys with severe emotional disturbance. These findings suggest that nonverbal abilities may have a greater impact on the social behavior of emotionally disturbed boys. Future research is needed to better understand the social difficulties of boys with severe emotional disturbance.     

New legal rights related to emotional stress in the workplace

This article reviews the new legal rights that employees can exercise due to their experience of excessive emotional stress in the workplace. Three types of worker stress insurance claims are delineated: mental-physical, physical-mental, and mental-mental. Reasons for the expected increase in these types of claims are forwarded.     

A comparison of female and male adolescents' social behaviors and cognitions: A challenge to the assertiveness literature

Sex differences were investigated in the thoughts and behaviors of adolescents in simulated social situations. The pattern of sex differences indicated females to be more appropriately assertive in their overt behaviors than males. Males were more aggressive. In their cognitions females were more likely to deny their impact on others, while males were more likely to deny the impact of others on themselves. Potency training was suggested for females, assertiveness training for males. Cluster analyses of correlations among behaviors and thoughts revealed four clusters for females: external locus of control, internal locus of control, active expressiveness, and social isolation or denial. The three male clusters were a negative impotent one, a positive active cluster, and an aggressive hostile cluster.The research reported is based on a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Ph.D., University of Toronto (OISE). The research was partially funded by OISE Research and Development Grant No. 3478, awarded to the second author.     

Self-reported emotional disturbance and its relation to electrodermal reactivity,defensiveness and trait anxiety

The discordance between an electrodermal and a subjective measure of disturbance was studied in 36 males. Electrodermal responses to emotionally loaded questions were recorded and subjects were requested to rate on visual analogue scales how disturbing they found the questions. The subjects were divided into three groups according to their ‘accuracy’ of self-perception and it was hypothesised that those who reported low subjective disturbance but reacted relatively strongly electrodermally (‘repressors’), would have a high defensiveness score but low trait anxiety. Conversely, subjects who amplify their disturbance (‘sensitisers’) were expected to have a low defensiveness score and high trait anxiety. The hypotheses were confirmed suggesting that both under and over reporting of subjective disturbance are related to defensiveness and trait anxiety. Another finding was that ‘sensitisers’ were significantly younger than ‘repressors’.     

A comparison of maladaptive behaviors of athletes and nonathletes.

A comparison of maladaptive behavior tendencies of men and women who were athletes and nonathletes was undertaken. Participating students (N = 200) were divided into four groups: male athletes, male nonathletes, female athletes, and female nonathletes. Maladaptive behavior tendencies were determined from responses on C. MacAndrew's (1965) Alcoholism Scale. The statistical analysis used was an independent groups 2 x 2 analysis of variance to determine significant main effects and interaction effects. The mean maladaptive behavior score (MBS) for athletes (M = 21.87) was significantly higher (p < .05) than the MBS for nonathletes (M = 20.24). The MBS for the men (M = 21.68) was significantly higher (p < .05) than the MBS for the women (M = 20.43). No significant interaction (p > .05) between gender and athletic status was found. Male athletes are more likely than the other 3 groups to have maladaptive behavior tendencies. Research directed toward greater understanding and the development of preventive and coping techniques for this population is needed.     

Reading disability: A problem in rule learning and word decoding

Traditional explanations of reading disability (e.g., perceptual, memory, and phonetic receding deficits) have encountered logical difficulties and substantial empirical disconfirmation. An alternative conceptualization of the nature of reading disability is proposed. Disabled readers are hypothesized to suffer a fundamental problem in acquiring word knowledge and word processing skills. Poor decoding skills prevent them from developing sophisticated reading comprehension skills. From this perspective, the cognitive deficits of disabled readers result from failure to acquire and generalize complex processing skills originally mastered through reading experience. Recent research of the author and of others relating to these issues is discussed.     

A comparison of game theory and learning theory

It is shown that Estes' formula for the asymptotic behavior of a subject under conditions of partial reinforcement can be derived from the assumption that the subject is behaving rationally in a certain game-theoretic sense and attempting to minimax his regret. This result illustrates the need for specifying the frame of reference or set of the subject when using the assumption of rationality to predict his behavior.     

Social learning modulates the lateralization of emotional valence

Although neuropsychological studies of lateralization of emotion have emphasized valence (positive vs. negative) or type (basic vs. complex) dimensions, the interaction between the two dimensions has yet to be elucidated. The purpose of the current study was to test the hypothesis that recognition of basic emotions is processed preferentially by the right prefrontal cortex (PFC), whereas recognition of complex social emotions is processed preferentially by the left PFC. Experiment 1 assessed the ability of healthy controls and patients with right and left PFC lesions to recognize basic and complex emotions. Experiment 2 modeled the patient’s data of Experiment 1 on healthy participants under lateralized displays of the emotional stimuli. Both experiments support the Type as well as the Valence Hypotheses. However, our findings indicate that the Valence Hypothesis holds for basic but less so for complex emotions. It is suggested that, since social learning overrules the basic preference of valence in the hemispheres, the processing of complex emotions in the hemispheres is less affected by valence.