Prayer,Self‐Examination,and Christian Catechesis in Augustine and Luther

Augustine and Luther are well known for their self‐examinations of religious experience, especially its trials and temptations. Their theologies of prayer offer a distinctive window into this self‐examination because they traverse the juncture between doctrine and practice, thereby addressing both the theological and pastoral concerns on sin and grace at the heart of their discussions of religious experience. While emanating from their personal spiritual lives, their theologies of prayer also are firmly rooted within the corporate context of the church and Christian catechesis.     

Create a Bright Future for Children

It is a common understanding in worldwide that takingcare of children means the attentions to the human beings'tomorrow and protecting children means safeguarding thehuman beings' future. The ideas had become a veryimportant mark to the developing level of human societyas well as the progress of its civilization.retarded children. The Foundation presented the equip-ments of 1,380,000 Yuan RMB to the blind children'schools or the special education centers concerned, andoffered scholarships to…     

Interventions for Children with Anger Problems

Anger in children has received a lot of attention. This article is a review of several rational-emotive behavioral interventions for children struggling with anger problems. The first step discussed in this article involves helping children learn to recognize their internal signals that they are becoming angry. Children can be taught that there are certain physiological events that occur immediately preceding anger. Another important component of anger management involves the use of distraction, in which children are encouraged to substitute a happy or funny mental image to interrupt the anger producing thoughts. Finally, a detailed analysis of rational-emotive imagery is provided for children needing more extensive interventions with their anger problems.     

Children At-Risk for Borderline Personality Disorder

Adult patients who have been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD) have provided valuable information about events and family dynamics that are frequently associated with BPD. Clinicians who work with children are frequently aware of family or individual characteristics that may put a child at risk for developing BPD. Such situations frequently involve attachment issues with the child's caregivers and can include sexual abuse, divorce, alcoholism/substance use, illness/ death, and neglect. Child characteristics such as learning difficulties and temperament may also predict BPD. Yet, many children are resilient and seemingly unaffected by these events or situations, especially when early intervention may prevent development of BPD.     

Memory for Movement in Blind Children

The author assessed the mechanisms underlying skilled production of keying sequences in the discrete sequence-production task by examining the effect of sequence length on mean element execution rate (i.e., the rate effect). To that end, participants (N = 9) practiced fixed movement sequences consisting of 2, 4, and 6 key presses for a total of 588 trials per sequence. In the subsequent test phase, the sequences were executed with and without a verbal short-term memory task in both simple and choice reaction time (RT) paradigms. The rate effect was obtained in the discrete sequence-production task—including the typical quadratic increase in sequence execution time (SET, which excludes RT) with sequence length. The rate effect resulted primarily from 6-key sequences that included 1 or 2 relatively slow elements at individually different serial positions. Slowing of the depression of the 2nd response key (R₂) in the 2-key sequence reduced the rate effect in the memory task condition, and faster execution of the 1st few elements in each sequence amplified the rate effect in simple RT. Last, the time to respond to random cues increased with position, suggesting that the mechanisms that underlie the rate effect in new sequences and in familiar sequences are different. The data were in line with the notion that coding of longer keying sequences involves motor chunks for the individual sequence segments and information on how those motor chunks are to be concatenated.     

A Gender Identity Interview for Children

A 12-item gender identity interview schedule was administered to 85 children referred for concerns regarding their gender identity development and 98 clinical and normal control children. Factor analysis identified two factors, which were labeled Affective Gender Confusion and Cognitive Gender Confusion. The gender-referred group gave significantly more deviant responses than did the controls on both factors. Results were discussed with regard to several diagnostic and assessment issues pertaining to children with gender identity disorder.     

An Observational Technique for Preschool Children

Summary

A method for direct observational study of early peer-social and objectdirect behavior for human subjects was designed to be articulated with techniques widely used in studies of social behavior in infrahuman primates.

Occurrence of behavior fitting the definitions of each of six categories of object behavior and nine categories of social behavior is noted once during each 15-second interval. The number of recorded intervals in a 15-minute session provides the basic scoring unit.

Observer reliabilities were estimated from paired data and four observers. Thirty-eight Negro and white children ages three through five years were observed in three child play groups. Median reliabilities of .95 (range .63 to .98) and .81 (range .69 to .94) were obtained for object and social behavior categories respectively.     

Termination of Mental Health Services for Children

In this paper, we examine the termination of children's mental health services. Analyses were based on the 901 families in the Fort Bragg Evaluation Project who participated at Wave 1 and Wave 2 six months later. The project compared a full continuum of care provided at a demonstration site with traditional care at two comparison sites. The results showed that in most cases families and providers were partners in decisions to terminate treatment. About half of the clients self-terminated or were terminated solely at the discretion of the provider. Providers tended to play a more dominant role in terminating restrictive services; families played a more central role in terminating outpatient care. Regardless of initial psychopathology, children in single-headed households, whose parents were dissatisfied with services, did not expect their child to cooperate with treatment and did not expect treatment to help their child, were more likely to terminate care than others. While the Demonstration site had significantly fewer terminations, the sites did not differ with regard to the reasons for termination, who participated in termination decisions, or the factors that affected the likelihood to terminate care. Of most interest, mental health outcomes among children who had terminated all care did not vary by reasons for termination or by who participated in the termination decision.