The helping relationship and program participation in early childhood home visiting

As researchers have focused on better understanding those circumstances under which home visiting can lead to positive effects on parent and child outcomes, there has been growing interest in examining variation in the experiences of families within these programs, including the quality of the helping relationships between home visitors and parents. The current study examined how participating mothers perceive the helping relationship, using information collected from the Early Head Start National Research and Evaluation Project. Results suggest that although maternal report of the helping relationship is biased towards positive ratings, it remains a significant predictor of program participation, over and above general program satisfaction. Implications for measurement development and program interventions are discussed.     

Training conditional and cumulative risk judgements: the role of frequencies,problem‐structure and einstellung

Two experiments implement and evaluate a training scheme for learning to apply frequency formats to probability judgements couched in terms of percentages. Results indicate that both conditional and cumulative probability judgements can be improved in this manner, however the scheme is insufficient to promote any deeper understanding of the problem structure. In both experiments, training on one problem type only (either conditional or cumulative risk judgements) resulted in an inappropriate transfer of a learned method at test. The obstacles facing a frequency‐based training programme for teaching appropriate use of probability data are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The PHQ-9 as a brief assessment of lifetime major depression

The Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9; R. L. Spitzer, K. Kroenke, J. B. W. Williams, & The Patient Health Questionnaire Primary Care Study Group, 1999), modified to ask about the worst period of depression lifetime, was validated against lifetime mood disorder diagnoses established by the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID; M. B. First, R. L. Spitzer, M. Gibbon, & J. B. W. Williams, 2001) in 526 participants. PHQ-9 dichotomous scores corresponded highly with major depressive episode (MDE) Criterion A, MDE, and major depressive disorder (MDD), odds ratios >or= 9.5, and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) >or= 0.84. The continuous scale score was higher in participants who did (M=17.14, SD=7.36) than in those who did not (M=6.05, SD=6.29) meet MDE Criterion A, t(524)=18.09, p<.001; was correlated with number of MDE Criterion A symptoms, r(525)=.67, p<.001; and detected MDE Criterion A (AUC=0.88). The PHQ-9 as a lifetime measure may be used to complement or replace more costly interview assessments.     

Reality monitoring and resistance to forgetting under short delay intervals

In three experiments, participants were asked to perform simple action statements or to imagine performing the actions in a single study session. In a test session that occurred 1 hr, 24 hr, 48 hr (Experiments 1a and 1b), or 1 week later (Experiments 2 and 3), participants were instructed to tell whether the action statement had been carried out or imagined. The primary finding was that, overall, recognition and reality monitoring showed a comparable rate of forgetting. The results add evidence to the hypothesis that, also after long retention delays, discrimination between an internal and an external source may not be inferior to item recognition. A new theoretical proposal to account for these findings is outlined.     

Children's theories of intelligence: beliefs, goals, and motivation in the elementary years

The authors tested a developmental model of children's theories about intelligence in kindergarten, second grade, and fourth grade children by using paper-and-pencil maze tasks. Older children were more likely than younger children to espouse learning goals (e.g., that they preferred difficult mazes to improve their skill), and less likely to espouse performance goals (e.g., that they preferred easy mazes to be successful). Children in all 3 age groups reported stronger beliefs in the malleability of intelligence than the stability of intelligence. In general, the results supported the authors' hypotheses about developmental change in children's theory-like conceptions of intelligence: Beliefs, goals, and motivation were related in expected ways for second and fourth graders more than for kindergartners. The authors discussed contextual influences on children's beliefs and the development of children's conceptualizations of intelligence.     

Promoting social competence in school-aged children: The effects of the open circle program

One hundred fifty-four fourth graders took part in an investigation of the Open Circle Program (OCP), an intervention model that encourages students, teachers and administrators to learn and practice communication, self-control and social problem-solving skills. Eight classrooms, two in each of four schools, were sampled. Two of these schools were located in middle to upper-middle class suburban areas and two served more diverse populations. Half the classrooms were headed by teachers well versed in OCP curriculum. The other half was not implementing a social competence program. Participants completed the student version of the Social Skills Rating System (SSRS) once in the fall and again in the spring. Teachers also rated the social competence of students at these same two points in the school year. Doubly-repeated measures mixed-design MANOVA analyses revealed that across the school year, OCP participants showed significantly greater teacher-reported improvements in both social skills and problem behaviors than did control group members. Although the largest gains were made by OCP children in urban areas, significant positive effects of program participation were shown by all students, regardless of school setting.     

Telephone versus print delivery of an individualized motivationally tailored physical activity intervention: Project STRIDE.

OBJECTIVE: Given that only 25% of Americans meet physical activity recommendations, there is a need to develop and disseminate effective, evidence-based interventions to promote physical activity. The authors tested 2 delivery channels, telephone and print, to determine whether one was more effective in promoting physical activity. DESIGN: The authors randomly assigned 239 healthy, sedentary adults to (a) telephone-based individualized feedback, (b) print-based individualized feedback, or (c) contact control. Both intervention arms were guided by a motivationally tailored, theoretically driven computer expert system. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Physical activity as measured by the 7-day Physical Activity Recall interview. RESULTS: At 6 months, both telephone and print arms significantly increased in minutes of moderate intensity physical activity compared with control, with no differences between the intervention arms. At 12 months, print participants reported a significantly greater number of moderate intensity minutes than both telephone and control participants, who did not differ. CONCLUSION: Results suggest that both telephone and print enhance the adoption of physical activity among sedentary adults; however, print interventions may be particularly effective in maintaining physical activity in the longer term.     

Interethnic Differences (or Similarities?) in the Relative Individuation of Women and Men

What roles do ethnicity, gender, and attitudes play in determining whether a person will be perceived as a unique individual versus a homogenized group member? Attitudes toward women’s roles have been found to predict Whites’ relative individuation of women and men; however, African Americans were found to individuate women and men equally, regardless of attitude (Stewart et al. 2000). Using a name–trait matching paradigm, the present research found that when targets were identified as African American, African American participants’ (18 male and 35 female college students) attitudes toward women’s roles predicted their individuation of men and women. These results suggest that an ethnic out-group homogeneity effect, rather than gender-egalitarian attitudes, contributed to the previous finding of equivalent individuation.     

Proprioception and Stimulus-Response Compatibility

Sixteen subjects pressed a left or right key in response to lateralized visual stimuli, in uncrossed (left index finger on left key, right finger on right key) and crossed conditions (left finger on right key and vice versa), with varying finger separations. Visual, tactile, or 'efference copy' cues about relative finger positions were unavailable. Subjects had to press the key on the same side as (compatible group) or opposite side to the stimulus (incompatible group). Separate proprioceptive judgements of the relative finger positions were obtained. Findings of an overall reaction time (RT) advantage for compatible instructions and for uncrossed hands were replicated. With decreasing finger separation the RT advantage for compatible instructions decreased, and the probability of responding with either hand increased. The compatibility effect disappeared completely at the 6-cm crossed position, not at the position that was hardest to judge proprioceptively. This suggests that two forms of neural activation are summed: automatic activation of the anatomically same-side limb, and an integrated, rule-based activation. The results further demonstrate that independent proprioceptive cues from each limb, unassociated with skin contact between the limbs, can mediate the determination of relative position for response selection in stimulus-response compatibility tasks.