Precursors to aggression are evident by 6 months of age

We tested the hypothesis that developmental precursors to aggression are apparent in infancy. Up to three informants rated 301 firstborn infants for early signs of anger, hitting and biting; 279 (93%) were assessed again as toddlers. Informants' ratings were validated by direct observation at both ages. The precursor behaviours were significantly associated with known risk factors for high levels of aggressiveness. Individual differences were stable from early infancy to the third year and predicted broader conduct problems. These findings suggest that some individuals set forth on the trajectory to high levels of aggression by 6 months of age. The findings have implications for developmental studies of aggression, clinical prevention and intervention strategies, and theoretical considerations regarding the detection of precursors in different domains of development.     

Dirty Money

Many states have significantly reduced their support for higher education in the last decade, increasing the importance of securing external funding for research and academic centers at colleges and universities. This paper addresses issues that have been raised by critics of funding from "morally tainted" sources like tobacco companies, pharmaceutical companies, and oil and gas companies and attempts to develop plausible criteria for "morally acceptable" funding in light of criticisms that focus on issues such as transparency, conflicts of interests, academic and scientific integrity, and coercion. A further discussion of whether special or unique criteria are necessary for ethicists and ethics centers is also included.     

Afterword: Elaborating Health and Medicine’s Publics

This essay argues that medical and health humanists interested in the rhetorical work of publics can extend their research by attending to embodiment and infrastructure. In addition to discussing how such strategies are illustrated in the essays appearing in this special issue, I relate them to the rhetorical study of personal health records (PHRs) as described in consumer-directed arguments. I conclude by posing two questions to health and medical humanists: “How do discursive constructions of publics and more specific instantiations of embodied experiences mutually shape each other?” and “What do the infrastructures of health and medical users look like and involve in their enactment?”     

Service and Medication Use and Their Effects on Arrest Rates Among Children with Emotional Disturbances Before Disenrollment from Medicaid

In this study we examine two assumptions that underlie the hypothesis that the outcomes of children with emotional disturbances are negatively affected by the loss of access to mental health services during their transitions to adulthood. The first is that children access mental health services during the pre-transition years, and the second is that these services are effective in reducing poor outcomes. We tested these assumptions using children who lost Medicaid enrollment between their 18th and 20th birthdays in Florida’s Medicaid program using arrests as the outcome. All children with an emotional disturbance received at least one outpatient service. However, while the mean days of service per month were 3, more than half the children received less than one day of service. Fifty-six percent of children received some psychotherapeutic medication treatment. Children with ADHD had the highest number of days of medication per month in both univariate and multivariate analysis. In multivariate analysis, children with disruptive behavior disorders had significantly more days per month of outpatient services than children with any other diagnoses except anxiety disorders. Medication days but not outpatient service days were negatively associated with arrests. Post hoc analysis suggested that children with ADHD who had high medication days had significantly fewer arrests than children with disruptive behavior disorders. This was not the case for children with ADHD and low medication days. Children with ADHD and high medication use may be most at risk of increases in arrests after Medicaid disenrollment as many will lose access to a service that was associated with fewer arrests. Findings suggest the need for reform of the children’s mental health system.     

Parent Training Outcomes Among Young Children with Callous–Unemotional Conduct Problems with or at Risk for Developmental Delay

School-aged children with conduct problems and high levels of callous–unemotional (i.e., lack of empathy, guilt, and lack of caring behaviors) traits (CP + CU) tend to yield less benefit from traditional interventions than do their low-CU counterparts, particularly with respect to conduct problem (CP) outcomes. To date, little is known about treatment response among young children with CP + CU, particularly those with or at risk for developmental delay. Components of parent–child interaction therapy (PCIT), a parent training program effective at reducing CP in young children, have compelling theoretical support for addressing core deficits unique to children with CP + CU and have been used successfully with young children with developmental delay. Our first aim was to test the psychometric properties of a measure of CU traits in preschool children with and without developmental delay. Our second aim was to test whether CU traits predicted post-treatment CP after controlling for initial levels of CP. Participants were 63 families of young children (mean age = 3.87 years), with or at risk for developmental delay, who presented with elevated CP and were treated in a hospital-based outpatient clinic. Results indicated that developmentally delayed children with high levels of CU traits, but not children at risk for delay due to premature birth, showed significantly poorer CP outcomes following treatment with PCIT than did children scoring low on CU traits, even after controlling for initial CP severity. The implications of these findings with regard to treating and preventing severe disruptive behaviors among young children with CP + CU are discussed.     

TEACHING RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS TO YOUNG CHILDREN WITH DOWN SYNDROME

Despite extensive evidence of significant and pervasive impairments in communication in individuals with Down syndrome, there is relatively little empirical and behavior analytic research demonstrating effective intervention procedures. In this study, we examined a behavior analytic intervention to teach answers to questions in two children with Down syndrome. Children acquired the target responses and generalized across settings and people. This contributes to the growing body of demonstrations of behavior analytic interventions to address the needs of children with Down syndrome. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The perception of a familiar face is no more than the sum of its parts

Why do faces become easier to recognize with repeated exposure? Previous research has suggested that familiarity may induce a qualitative shift in visual processing from an independent analysis of individual facial features to analysis that includes information about the relationships among features (Farah, Wilson, Drain, & Tanaka Psychological Review, 105, 482–498, 1998; Maurer, Grand, & Mondloch Trends in Cognitive Science, 6, 255–260, 2002). We tested this idea by using a “summation-at-threshold” technique (Gold, Mundy, & Tjan Psychological Science, 23, 427–434, 2012; Nandy & Tjan Journal of Vision, 8, 3.1–20, 2008), in which an observer’s ability to recognize each individual facial feature shown independently is used to predict their ability to recognize all of the features shown in combination. We find that, although people are better overall at recognizing familiar as opposed to unfamiliar faces, their ability to integrate information across features is similar for unfamiliar and highly familiar faces and is well predicted by their ability to recognize each of the facial features shown in isolation. These results are consistent with the idea that familiarity has a quantitative effect on the efficiency with which information is extracted from individual features, rather than a qualitative effect on the process by which features are combined.     

You learn it in your heart: transformative learning theory and clinical pastoral education

This article offers a broad overview of transformative learning theory focusing primarily on the rational and affective dimensions of the theory. As a comprehensive theory of adult learning, transformative learning theory seeks to articulate a process by which persons make meaning of their experiences and their lives. The theory provides a solid educational basis for the learning process in CPE. A list of major sources in the theory is included.