Predicting stability and change in toddler behavior problems: contributions of maternal behavior and child gender

This study examined the stability and continuity of early-identified behavior problems and the factors associated with this stability. Children and their mothers (N=125) were seen when the children were 2 and 4 years of age. Maternal reports of child externalizing behavior and laboratory observations of child noncompliance were stable from age 2 to age 4. Early externalizing behaviors decreased over time; however, child noncompliance in the laboratory did not. Although few associations were found between maternal positive behavior and child behavior problems, maternal controlling behavior was related to increases in child behavior problems, particularly at high levels of both prior noncompliance and prior maternal control. Child noncompliance was predictive of increases in maternal controlling behavior over time.     

Violence: incidence and frequency of physical and psychological assaults affecting mental health providers in Georgia

Threats to the physical safety and psychological well-being of mental health professionals present serious problems, according to 1,131 licensed mental health professionals in the state of Georgia. The professionals included clinical social workers, marriage and family therapists, professional counselors, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers. From a total of 6,431 surveys sent out, 1,131 (18%) were returned. The results revealed 2.696 separate accounts of 14,120 acts of physical or psychological assaults committed by 8,292 perpetrators. The results also showed that 61% of the respondents had been victimized in violent acts of a psychological or physical nature and that 29% had feared for their lives at least once during their professional careers. These data are consistent with other research that indicates that 6 out of 10 professionals will be assaulted during their professional careers.     

Resilience and Protective Factors in Adolescence: An Autobiographical Perspective From Disadvantaged Youth

This article focuses on the development of adolescent resilience and protective factors within a sample of 86 inner-city high school students in Chicago. Resilience was considered present when (a) children living in conditions of risk (b) show better-than-predicted outcomes (c) presumably due to some intervening process. Conditions (a) and (b) were met using quantitative comparisons. Condition (c), the intervening process, was examined using autobiographical essays to begin to understand protective factors youth consider salient in overcoming adversity. Internal attributes such as perseverance, determination, and having the awareness to learn from the risk-attrition process surfaced in the content analyses. Motivational support from family members and teachers was also highly valued for promoting successful adjustment.     

Educational Expectations and School Achievement of Urban African American Children

The mechanisms used to convey parents' and teachers' educational expectations for the academic achievement of low-income African American children were explored using data from the Chicago Longitudinal Study. A total of 712 children were studied. A model of mediated effects was used to test the processes of influence from parents' and teachers' expectations to sixth-grade outcomes. Children's perceptions of expectations were hypothesized to mediate the effect of expectations to school outcomes. Study findings revealed that these perceptions only partially mediated the effects of expectations to sixth-grade reading and math outcomes, yet added unique independent variance to these outcomes. Prior achievement emerged as a powerful mediator of the effects of early educational intervention and sociodemographic variables to sixth-grade outcomes. These findings suggest a need to further investigate the processes of communicating parent and teacher expectations.     

The Place of Rationality in Stoicism and REBT

In this paper we explore parallels between Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) and the applications of Stoic philosophy. We look especially at the foundations of the philosophy in Chrysippus, rather than just at the writings of the better known Roman Stoics. Similarities are found against very different historical backgrounds, although there are also important differences. Our investigation highlights some peculiarly modern aspects of Ellis's philosophy, which may be inessential to the practice of REBT. At the same time REBT provides a model for interpreting Stoic practices to modern audiences.     

The Effects of "Mandatory Volunteerism" on Intentions to Volunteer

Abstract—With the widespread emergence of required community-service programs comes a new opportunity to examine the effects of requirements on future behavioral intentions. To investigate the consequences of such "mandatory volunteerism" programs, we followed students who were required to volunteer in order to graduate from college. Results demonstrated that stronger perceptions of external control eliminated an otherwise positive relation between prior volunteer experience and future intentions to volunteer. A second study experimentally compared mandates and choices to serve and included a premeasured assessment of whether students felt external control was necessary to get them to volunteer. After being required or choosing to serve, students reported their future intentions. Students who initially felt it unlikely that they would freely volunteer had significantly lower intentions after being required to serve than after being given a choice. Those who initially felt more likely to freely volunteer were relatively unaffected by a mandate to serve as compared with a choice. Theoretical and practical implications for understanding the effects of requirements and constraints on intentions and behavior are discussed.     

The Mystery Spot Illusion and its Relation to Other Visual Illusions

Observations at The Mystery Spot, a roadside attraction near Santa Cruz, California, suggest intriguing visual illusions based on tilt-induced effects. Specifically, a tilted spatial background at The Mystery Spot induced misperceptions of the orientation of the cardinal axes (i.e., true horizontal and vertical), which then led to illusions in the perceived height of twoindividuals. This illusion was assessed at The Mystery Spot and replicated in the laboratory using pictorial and lined displays rotated in the picture plane. These findings are described in terms of the orientation framing theory, which suggests that these and other tilt-induced illusions (e.g., Ponzo illusion, Zöllner illusion) can be attributed to distorted frames of reference.     

What’s in a name? Lexical knowledge drives infants’ visual preferences in the absence of referential input

Seventeen-month-old infants were presented with pairs of images, in silence or with the non-directive auditory stimulus ‘look!’. The images had been chosen so that one image depicted an item whose name was known to the infant, and the other image depicted an image whose name was not known to the infant. Infants looked longer at images for which they had names than at images for which they did not have names, despite the absence of any referential input. The experiment controlled for the familiarity of the objects depicted: in each trial, image pairs presented to infants had previously been judged by caregivers to be of roughly equal familiarity. From a theoretical perspective, the results indicate that objects with names are of intrinsic interest to the infant. The possible causal direction for this linkage is discussed and it is concluded that the results are consistent with Whorfian linguistic determinism, although other construals are possible. From a methodological perspective, the results have implications for the use of preferential looking as an index of early word comprehension.