Training the supervisor: Integrating a family of origin approach

The replication of intergenerational patterns is considered here within the supervisor-family therapist-and family system, and the proposal of integrating a family of origin approach into the training of supervisors is presented. To become aware of the relation of one's own family of origin issues and their potential impact within the supervision and treatment can effectively improve intervention approaches, benefitting the supervisor, the therapist and the family in treatment. Being considerate of the training needs and levels of supervisors is an important component when integrating family of origin work into the training.     

Critical issues in the prevention of violence-related behavior in youth

Violence prevention programs with varying degrees of scientific support have proliferated in the United States and elsewhere. This paper previewed a broad range of programs involving youth, families, or systems that aimed to prevent or reduce violence-related behavior. The purpose of the review was to address critical issues concerning (1) target level of programming, (2) theory-driven versus problem-driven conceptualization, (3) cultural considerations, (4) developmental considerations, (5) intervention fidelity, and (6) outcome and impact assessment. Conclusions about these issues address tendencies and trends across programs.     

Group CBT for Externalizing Disorders in Urban Schools: Effect of Training Strategy on Treatment Fidelity and Child Outcomes

Public schools are an ideal setting for the delivery of mental health services to children. Unfortunately, services provided in schools, and more so in urban schools, have been found to lead to little or no significant clinical improvements. Studies with urban school children seldom report on the effects of clinician training on treatment fidelity and child outcomes. This study examines the differential effects of two levels of school-based counselor training: training workshop with basic consultation (C) vs. training workshop plus enhanced consultation (C +) on treatment fidelity and child outcomes. Fourteen school staff members (counselors) were randomly assigned to C or C +. Counselors implemented a group cognitive behavioral therapy protocol (Coping Power Program, CPP) for children with or at risk for externalizing behavior disorders. Independent coders coded each CPP session for content and process fidelity. Changes in outcomes from pre to post were assessed via a parent psychiatric interview and interviewer-rated severity of illness and global impairment. Counselors in C + delivered CPP with significantly higher levels of content and process fidelity compared to counselors in C. Both C and C + resulted in significant improvement in interviewer-rated impairment; the conditions did not differ from each other with regard to impairment. Groups did not differ with regard to pre- to- posttreatment changes in diagnostic severity level. School-based behavioral health staff in urban schools are able to implement interventions with fidelity and clinical effectiveness when provided with ongoing consultation. Enhanced consultation resulted in higher fidelity. Enhanced consultation did not result in better student outcomes compared to basic consultation. Implications for resource allocation decisions with staff training in EBP are discussed.     

Examining the relationship between family context and children’s physical activity beliefs: The role of parenting style

Objectives

Previous research studies examining parental influences on children’s physical activity (PA) have focused primarily on parents’ own PA behavior, as well as their PA-related beliefs and socially supportive behaviors. The present study, although aligned with this mainstream parental influence research, was grounded in a broader child development perspective to examine the influence of parenting style on children’s PA beliefs and quality of parent-child communication.

Method

Self-report questionnaires were administered to 173 children ranging in age from 9 to 12 years to assess their perceptions of parenting style, parent-child communication patterns, as well as their own perceptions of fitness competence, value, and goal orientation.

Results

Children’s constellation of beliefs and attitudes regarding PA as well as their perceptions of the parent-child communication process did vary as a function of the type of parenting style they perceived their parents to use. High challenge parenting style was linked to higher perceived fitness competence and value on the part of the children. High support parenting style was linked to more positive perceived parent-child communication patterns.

Conclusion

Parenting style may be a critical underlying family process variable that impacts children’s development of a positive constellation of beliefs about PA. Future work is needed to link parenting style and children’s PA beliefs to their PA behavior.     

Teachers' knowledge of children's exposure to family risk factors: accuracy and usefulness

Teachers' knowledge of children's exposure to family risk factors was examined using the Family Risk Factor Checklist-Teacher. Data collected for 756 children indicated that teachers had accurate knowledge of children's exposure to factors such as adverse life events and family socioeconomic status, which predicted children's mental health problems at 1 year follow-up. For children at high teacher-rated risk, odds ratios ranged from 3.04 to 7.46, after adjusting for prior mental health problems. Teachers had poor knowledge of internal family functioning, such as conflict, parenting practices, or parental drug abuse. The findings suggest that asking teachers to report children's exposure to particular family risk factors is a feasible method for identifying children for selective interventions, but improved family-school communication may further enhance this process.     

The ontogenesis of primary prevention: Lengthy strides and subbed toes

Reviews evolution of the concept of primary prevention in the past 40 years and cites progress in overcoming significant early deterrents (e.g., loosely anchored, overinclusive definitions; weak supporting empirical base) to this development. Highlights the growing trend to define the concept specifically around the yoked notions of risk, and the goal of forestalling major psychological dysfunction. This de facto shift in definitional emphasis has obscured primary prevention's early vision of promoting health and wellness. Stresses need for a comprehensive, multilevel, proactive approach targeted systematically toward the enhancement of psychological wellness in all people, from the start. This article is based on the Seymour B Sarason Award talk given at the 103rd annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, New York City, August 12, 1995. Although the spoken and written versions are similar, and their intended bottom lines identical, the two differ in several ways. One is that the talk's many references to Sarason'shighly influential contributions to the field, and his unique, thought-stimulating style, do not appear here. They continue, however to be keenly felt. Those views are a matter official record (see “In Honor of Seymour Sarason,”American Journal of Community Psychology, 1976, Vol. 4, pp. 244–246). A second difference between the talk and the article is that the former was more relaxed, breezier, and less jargonesque. Although I have tried to preserve some of that informality, the article is surely stuffier than the talk.     

Second-order beliefs about intention and children's attributions of sociomoral judgment

Predicting how another person will evaluate the intention underlying an action involves consideration of second-order mental states. Children (ages 5-10 years) and college students (N=105) predicted an observer's belief about an actor's intention and evaluated the actor from both their own perspectives and the perspective of the observer. Younger children were more likely than older children and adults to attribute a belief to the observer that mismatched the actor's prior intention. Attributed beliefs about intention were more likely to match negative prior intentions than to match positive prior intentions and were also more likely to match prior intentions when the observer knew the actor's prior intention than when the observer did not know the actor's prior intention. The judgments attributed to the observer were based on the beliefs about intention attributed to the observer, showing use of second-order mental states to infer another's sociomoral judgments.     

Self-esteem and beliefs about memory in environmentally stable and relocated students

This research examined beliefs about the utility of environmental, semantic, and phonological cues for remembering, as these beliefs are related to feelings of self-esteem, assertiveness, and locus of control. We proposed different types of relationships between self-esteem (and assertiveness) and metamemory for two group of college students, based on their differential experiences with distinctive memory failures. For students who were familiar with their current environment, self-esteem was positively related to confidence in having a good memory. It was only for newcomers—students who had recently moved to a new environment—that beliefs about the benefits of environmental cues were positively related to self-esteem and assertiveness. These results suggested that if newcomers were less aware of the utility of environmental cues, they were more likely to attribute their memory failures to their own inadequacies. We also obtained evidence that subjects with an internal locus of control were more knowledgeable regarding the utility of environmental cues than were externally oriented subjects.     

My beliefs about your beliefs: a case study in theory of mind and epistemic logic

We model three examples of beliefs that agents may have about other agents’ beliefs, and provide motivation for this conceptualization from the theory of mind literature. We assume a modal logical framework for modelling degrees of belief by partially ordered preference relations. In this setting, we describe that agents believe that other agents do not distinguish among their beliefs (‘no preferences’), that agents believe that the beliefs of other agents are in part as their own (‘my preferences’), and the special case that agents believe that the beliefs of other agents are exactly as their own (‘preference refinement’). This multi-agent belief interaction is frame characterizable. We provide examples for introspective agents. We investigate which of these forms of belief interaction are preserved under three common forms of belief revision.     

The role of a mentoring group for family therapy trainees and therapists of color

This article discusses the development, process, and impact of a mentoring group for family therapists of color. A within-group process for trainees of color in a predominantly White institution can provide a valuable resource for support, validation, empowerment, and collective action. The article examines how such mentoring promotes the effectiveness of therapists of color, as well as the practices and goals of social justice and diversity within training institutions and the field in general. Reflections and recommendations for implementing such a group are offered, as well as a personal narrative of a group member's experience of finding her voice in the group.     

Beliefs about beliefs: representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children's understanding of deception

Understanding of another person's wrong belief requires explicit representation of the wrongness of this person's belief in relation to one's own knowledge. Three to nine year old children's understanding of two sketches was tested. In each sketch subjects observed how a protagonist put an object into a location x and then witnessed that in the absence of the protagonist the object was transferred from x to location y. Since this transfer came as a surprise they had to assume that the protagonist still believed that the object was in x. Subjects had to indicate where the protagonist will look for the object at his return. None of the 3–4-year old, 57% of 4–6-year old, and 86% of 6–9-year old children pointed correctly to location x in both sketches. Of the many cases where 4–6-year olds made an error they failed in only about 20% to remember the initial location correctly. As a test of the stability of children's representation of the protagonist's wrong belief the sketches continued with a statement about the protagonist's intention to either deceive an antagonist or truthfully inform a friend about the object's location. Independent of age, of those children who correctly thought that the protagonist would search in x, 85% of the time they also correctly thought that he would direct his antagonist to location y and his friend to location x. This shows that once children can represent a person's beliefs they can constrain their interpretation of this person's stated intentions to the person's beliefs. In a more story-like situation another group of children had to infer a deceptive plan from the depiction of a goal conflict between two story characters and one character's expedient utterance. At the age of 4–5 years children correctly judged this utterance as a lie only 28% of the time while 5–6-year olds did so 94% of the time. These results suggest that around the ages of 4 to 6 years the ability to represent the relationship between two or more person's epistemic states emerges and becomes firmly established.     

Origins of Mothers' and Fathers' Beliefs about Infant Crying

Origins of mothers' and fathers' beliefs about infant crying were examined in 87 couples. Parents completed measures of emotion minimization in the family of origin, depressive symptoms, empathy, trait anger, and coping styles prenatally. At 6 months postpartum, parents completed a self-report measure of their beliefs about infant crying. Mothers endorsed more infant-oriented and less parent-oriented beliefs about crying than did fathers. Consistent with prediction, a history of emotion minimization was linked with more parent-oriented and fewer infant-oriented beliefs about infant crying for both mothers and fathers either as a main effect or in conjunction with the partners' infant-oriented beliefs. Contrary to expectation, parents' own emotional dispositions had little effect on parents' beliefs about crying. The pattern of associations varied for mothers and fathers in a number of ways. Implications for future research and programs promoting sensitive parenting are discussed.     

The prevention of anxiety and depression in children from disadvantaged schools

A randomised controlled trial evaluated the Aussie Optimism Program in preventing anxiety and depression. Grade 7 students (n = 496) from disadvantaged government schools in Perth Western Australia, participated. Six schools were randomly assigned to Aussie Optimism and six schools received their usual health education lessons. Students completed questionnaires on depression, anxiety, attribution style, and social skills. Parents completed the Child Behavior Checklist. No significant group effects were found for student-reported data. Parents of intervention group only students reported reductions in internalizing problems at post-test. No follow-up group effects were significant. Students and teachers found the program acceptable.     

Neighbourhood,school and family determinants of children's aspirations in primary school

Aspirations can be important for young children as well as adolescents. However, there is little research on the determinants of aspirations in young children. We carried out this study to investigate the early contextual (neighbourhood, school and family) determinants of occupational aspirations in primary school children. Our sample comprised children from the Millennium Cohort Study who lived in England in the beginning of our study period (n = 10,086; 5,126 boys). Occupational aspirations were measured at age 7 years, while their contextual determinants were measured in the previous data sweeps, at ages 3 and 5 years. We fitted structural equation models to test the role of family and neighbourhood socio-economic status (SES) and child ethnicity in predicting aspirations both directly and via their associations with parental involvement, household chaos, school-level achievement and child cognitive ability. We found that the only significant determinants of aspirations at age 7 years were family SES and ethnicity, and only in boys. Family SES and ethnicity were also related to parental involvement, household chaos, cognitive ability and school-level achievement, but none of these factors predicted aspirations. Supplementary analysis showed that family SES was a particularly powerful determinant of the aspirations of white compared to non-white boys.     

Assessment of family functioning in Caucasian and Hispanic Americans: reliability, validity, and factor structure of the Family Assessment Device

The purpose of this study was to examine the factor structure, reliability, and validity of the Family Assessment Device (FAD) among a national sample of Caucasian and Hispanic American families receiving public sector mental health services. A confirmatory factor analysis conducted to test model fit yielded equivocal findings. With few exceptions, indices of model fit, reliability, and validity were poorer for Hispanic Americans compared with Caucasian Americans. Contrary to our expectation, an exploratory factor analysis did not result in a better fitting model of family functioning. Without stronger evidence supporting a reformulation of the FAD, we recommend against such a course of action. Findings highlight the need for additional research on the role of culture in measurement of family functioning.     

False-belief understanding at age 5 predicts beliefs about learning in year 3 of primary school

This study examined the concurrent and longitudinal relationships between children's theory of mind (ToM) and their beliefs about learning. A sample of 63 children was tested for theory of mind and verbal ability at four time points: 5, 6, 7 and 8 years of age. In addition, at Time 4, children were administered a questionnaire investigating their beliefs about learning. Results showed longitudinal and concurrent relationships between ToM and constructivist, but not reproductive, beliefs about learning. Crucially, false-belief understanding at age 5 predicted unique variance in constructivist beliefs about learning at age 8, when controlling for subsequent levels of ToM. This relationship was not due to verbal ability. The authors discuss theoretical and practical implications of the longitudinal effect of theory of mind ability on constructivist beliefs about learning.