USING STIMULUS EQUIVALENCE PROCEDURES TO TEACH NAME-FACE MATCHING TO ADULTS WITH BRAIN INJURIES

On pretests, 3 men with brain injuries matched dictated names of three therapists to written names, but did not match dictated or written names to photos, produce correct names in response to photos, locate offices given written names, or name therapists on sight. Match-to-sample training established conditional relations between dictated names and photos. Posttests showed the emergence of untrained conditional relations involving photos and written names, indicating development of three classes of equivalent stimuli (each containing a dictated name, photo, and written name). For 1 participant, conditional relations involving photos of office nameplates were also examined, but did not emerge pre- or posttraining. Two participants produced names orally when given photos and sorted written names and faces together after training; the 3rd participant was unavailable for these posttests. After training, 1 participant located and named all three therapists in their offices.     

The effects of Familial Sinistrality and preferred hand on dichaptic and dichotic tasks

Processing asymmetries for tactile-spatial and auditory-verbal processing were investigated in two studies using the S. F. Witelson (1974, Cortex, 10, 3–17) dichaptic procedure. Experiment 1 used eight right-handed males in a free recall procedure. More shapes were correctly detected by the left hand but only with a right hand response. In Experiment 2, right and left handers with no Familial Sinistrality (FS) were compared with left handers with various types of FS, looking at pre- and postcued order of report and precuing the response hand. No group showed hand asymmetry with pre- or postcuing for either responding hand. Right handers showed no difference with order of report; however, left handers made fewer correct detections for items to be reported second. There were differences between the Parental FS and the Sibling FS groups both on the dichotic listening and the haptic tasks.     

The Social Psychology of Jury Nullification: Predicting When Jurors Disobey the Law1

The United States judiciary assumes jurors obey the law as it is charged to them in the trial judge's instructions. This paper contends that jurors' comprehension of the law results from an active intelligence which makes available alternative decision rules giving rise to the power of juries to nullify instructions. To study the compliance assumption, we presented to mock jurors pattern jury instructions along with summaries of testimonies from a rape trial. Four times during the trial we administered to participants measures of their attributions of defendant responsibility, judgments about the legal elements of the case, and verdicts. Multiple regressions conducted with data from separate subsamples and with separate questionnaire administrations revealed that a) verdicts were based on attributions independent of the jury instructions, b) individual differences in life experiences predicted the degree to which decision makers used their attributions, and c) the more practiced participants were at applying the jury instructions the more heavily they weighed their own attributions and less heavily the judgments required by the law. We concluded that comprehension alone cannot predict the likelihood that jurors will comply with the law. Therefore, the assumption that jurors follow the law needs to be more carefully considered.     

Does Risk Assessment Make a Difference? Results of Implementing the SAVRY in Juvenile Probation

An effective approach to reducing recidivism is, first, to identify a youth's risk of reoffending and then to match the intensity of interventions to that risk level. This pre-post quasi-experimental, prospective study compared 247 (pre) with 217 (post) adjudicated youths to examine the implementation of the Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY) and its effects on case management practices in Louisiana's Caddo parish probation office. The results indicated that placement rates dropped by 50%, use of maximum levels of supervision dropped by almost 30%, and use of community services decreased except for high-risk youths, but only after the SAVRY was properly implemented. This shift towards more appropriate allocation of resources that are matched to risk level occurred without a significant increase in reoffending. The implications for implementation and for use of risk/needs assessment in juvenile probation are discussed. Copyright ? 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Language Development and Assessment in the Preschool Period

Most young children make significant progress in learning language during the first 4?years of life. Delays or differences in patterns of language acquisition are sensitive indicators of developmental problems. The dynamic, complex nature of language and the variability in the timing of its acquisition poses a number of challenges for the assessment of young children. This paper summarises the key developmental milestones of language development in the preschool years, providing a backdrop for understanding difficulties with language learning. Children with specific language impairment (SLI) are characterised illustrating the types of language difficulties they exhibit. Genetic evidence for language impairment suggests complex interactions among multiple genes of small effect. There are few consistent neurobiological abnormalities and currently there is no identified neurobiological signature for language difficulties. The assessment of young children??s language skills thus focuses on the evaluation of their performances in comparison to typically developing peers. Assessment of language abilities in preschool children should involve an evaluation of both expressive and receptive skills and should include an evaluation of more than one dimension of language. The use of a single measure of a language component, such as vocabulary, is considered inadequate for determining whether preschool children have typical language or language impairment. Available evidence supports the inclusion of measures of phonological short-term memory in the assessment of the language abilities of preschool children. Further study of genetic, neurobiological and early behavioural correlates of language impairments in preschool children is needed.     

The Relationship Between Childhood Trauma,Combat Exposure,and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Male Veterans

The current study investigated the effects of combat exposure, childhood trauma, and depression on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) severity. Participants were 299 male veterans from the Korean War, World War II, Vietnam, and the first Gulf War who were being screened for admission to the PTSD unit. Participants were assessed with the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS), Combat Exposure Scale (CES), Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAMD), Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), and Mississippi Scale for PTSD (MPTSD). Results of multiple regression analyses indicated that, as expected, combat exposure and depression were significant predictors of PTSD severity. When examined with combat exposure, childhood trauma has a complex relationship to PTSD severity. Examination of the interaction between the CES and CTQ suggests that when levels of combat are low and childhood trauma levels are high, the CTQ is related to higher levels of PTSD severity on the CAPS, regardless of depression. Treatment implications are discussed.     

The role of verbal and nonverbal memory in the Family Pictures Subtest: Data from children with specific language impairment

This study examined the contribution of verbal and visual memory to performance on the Family Pictures subtest of the Children’s Memory Scale. This subtest purports to assess declarative memory functioning in the visual/nonverbal domain. A total of 115 nine-year-old children participated in this study. Fifty-eight had specific language impairment (SLI), whilst the remaining 57 were typically developing (TD), with no history of language difficulties. Results showed that the children with SLI, who had intact declarative memory for visual but not verbal information, obtained significantly lower scores on the Family Pictures subtest when compared to the TD group. Regression analyses revealed that across the entire sample, individual differences on the Family Pictures subtest was best predicted by a measure of verbal working memory. These results question whether the Family Pictures subtest can be considered a measure of visual memory in pediatric populations. These results have implications for the interpretation of scores on this subtest regarding the nature of the types of neurocognitive difficulties children may exhibit.     

Anxiety, depression and coping: CDI, MASC and CRI-Y for screening purposes in schools

This study used depression (CDI - Kovacs, 1981), anxiety (MASC - March, 1997) and coping strategy (CRI-Y - Moos, 1993) scales and studied the fitness and discriminant validity of reduced versions. The sample consisted of 916 Portuguese pupils, 54.3% feminine, aged 10 to 21 years old. The participants were selected from a set of public schools nation-wide. Two classes were chosen from the 5th to the 12th grades. A set of principal component analyses was carried out in a randomly chosen sample (n = 394) and all the three reduced measures were found to be strongly correlated with the previous. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) using the other part of the sample (n = 522) revealed adjustment indexes suggesting a good fit for both the whole model and gender and age groups separately. All scales revealed a good internal consistency. Globally, girls were more anxious and developed more coping strategies than boys. Older students tended to be less depressed, while younger adolescents present higher scores in depression and anxiety and less coping strategies. Reduced scales are sensitive to gender and age differences and can be used in school settings in order to establish a baseline and roadmaps for both universal and selective mental health school based programs.     

Recounting the same events again and again: children's consistency across multiple interviews

Children (2–13 years at time of injury) were interviewed four times about an injury that required hospital Emergency Room treatment, namely at 1 week, 6 months, 1 year, and 2 years. The consistency of children's reports was assessed and all children gave mostly the same information at each interview, although consistency was higher for older children and for injury rather than hospital details. Furthermore, details recalled at every interview were virtually always accurate while details that were sometimes omitted were a little less likely to be accurate. New information that was introduced after 6 months was more likely to be accurate than inaccurate but new information introduced at 1 or 2 years post‐injury was just as likely to be wrong as right (except for 12–13‐year‐olds). Implications for forensic situations are discussed. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Racial Microaggressions Against Black Americans: Implications for Counseling

Racial microaggression themes were identified using a focus‐group analysis of self‐identified Black participants. Six categories of demeaning and invalidating messages reflected beliefs of White supremacy that were unintentionally conveyed by perpetrators. Implications for counselors and the counseling process are discussed.