Differences in Internalizing Symptoms Across Specific Ethnic Minority Groups: An Analysis Across Chinese American,Filipino American,Japanese American,Native Hawaiian,and White Youth

Research to date on child and adolescent anxiety and depression have focused predominantly on major ethnic groups. Very few studies to date have been conducted on specific ethnic minority groups and the relatively few studies on these ethnic minority samples have produced mixed findings. The following question therefore still remains: Do specific ethnic subgroups differ with respect to their expression of anxiety and depression? And do these differences differ as a function of reporter type (i.e., youth versus parent)? If the expression of internalizing symptoms differs across specific ethnic subgroups, these differences could inform approaches to assessing and treating these populations. In the current study, we therefore examined ethnic differences in anxiety and depression symptoms in ethnic subgroups. A total of 629 children and adolescents from various public and private schools, aged 8–18 years (M = 12.37, SD = 2.8) and their caregivers completed anxiety and depression scales. Multiple indicators, multiple causes confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the following specific ethic subgroups were associated with significantly greater anxiety and depression relative to Caucasian youth: Chinese American, Filipino American, Japanese American, and Native Hawaiian. These results were found only among parent (but not youth) reports. Age and low SES status was also associated with more internalizing problems among Chinese, Filipino, and Japanese American youth. Implications related to ethnic minority subgroup differences and the role of multi-informant reports in understanding the relationship between anxiety, depression and ethnic minority subgroups are discussed.     

How special are objects? Children's reasoning about objects, parts, and holes

Discrete physical objects have a special status in cognitive and linguistic development. Infants track and enumerate objects, young children are biased to construe novel words as referring to objects, and, when asked to count an array of items, preschool children tend to count the discrete objects, even if explicitly asked to do otherwise. We address here the question of whether discrete physical objects are the only entities that have this special status, or whether other individuals are salient as well. In two experiments, we found that 3-year-olds are just as good at identifying, tracking, and counting certain nonobject entities (holes in Experiment 1; holes and parts in Experiment 2) as they are with objects. These results are discussed in light of different theories of the nature and development of children's object bias.     

The right to refuse treatment in Oregon: A two-year statewide experience

The right to refuse treatment seems well established for psychiatric patients. Individual states, however, have very different procedures for managing this right and for overriding the refusal. Oregon's administrative procedure for override depends on an evaluation by an independent examining psychiatrist. This article empirically examines the 432 refusals leading to override requests in three Oregon psychiatric institutions in 1983 and 1984. Treatment refusal was found to be a common occurrence in all age groups. Those who refused treatment were seriously ill, unemployed, single individuals with previous psychiatric hospitalizations. Most refused treatment because of denial of their illness or delusional thinking about medication. Most refusals were overridden following the independent psychiatrist's examination. Because of the significant cost of the override procedure to the patient and the mental health system, the authors propose a new procedure which combines parts of the current procedure with a requirement that, at the time of the civil commitment hearing, the judge makes a separate decision as to the patient's competency to make treatment decisions.     

The insanity sentence: Oregon's psychiatric security review board

In response to the dilemma of management of mentally ill persons who commit crimes, Oregon has created the Psychiatric Security Review Board (PSRB) to administrate the supervision and treatment of insanity acquittees. This paper presents an overview of the PSRB structure and examines the quasi-criminal justice features of Oregon's Insanity Sentence. The primary goal of the PSRB is the protection of societý. The maximum sentence, had the individual been found guilty, becomes the PSRB's jurisdictional period for that former defendant. A review of the administrative rules for conditional release and revocation of release that the PSRB is now in the process of adopting are described. The authors conclude that the PSRB is a promising approach which offers better community protection and better treatment for mentally ill offenders (NGRIs) than does the present prison parole system.     

Why we are fairer than others

Subjects wrote lists of either fair or unfair things that they or others did. A pervasive tendency was found for subjects to associate themselves with fair behaviors and others with unfair behaviors. When different subjects rated samples of the written behaviors for fairness and frequency we found that fair behaviors were rated as more frequent than unfair behaviors and self-ascribed behaviors were rated as fairer than behaviors ascribed to others. These findings and others are shown to result from a tendency for subjects to perceive a stronger link between the fairness and frequency of their own behavior than between the fairness and frequency of the behavior of other people. A final analysis showed that the subcategories of unfair behavior that subjects associated with others were different from those associated with themselves.     

Use of systematic desensitization in the treatment of airplane phobic patients

There have been several studies of the phenomenon of airplane phobia mostly dealing with professional aviators and aircrews (Goorney, 1960; Aitken, 1970). There has also been a report of the use of penthranization in the in vivo desensitization of an airplane phobic patient (Mildman, 1969). Recently one case of successful in vivo desensitization using flight simulators and flight instruction has been reported (Bernstein and Beaty, 1971).This paper describes the application of Wolpe's (Wolpe, 1969) technique of systematic desensitization for persons with an airplane phobia.     

Eye contact as a setting event for infant learning

Three-month-old human infants received social reinforcement contigent upon each vocalization. The experimenter wore eye glasses with lenses composed of clear acetate, skin-toned opaque shields, or life-size photographs of the experimenter's eyes (with direct or averted gaze), and maintained visual contact with the infant's eyes (via pinholes in the lenses) during all sessions. Each group of three subjects experienced two of the four possible lens conditions. During baseline and extinction sessions vocalization rate was quite similar under each lens condition. During conditioning sessions, however, vocalizations exceeded baseline rates in all but the opaque lens condition. In this study eye contact was neither a reinforcing, discriminative, nor eliciting stimulus. Eye contact was a setting stimulus (catalyst) for the response-reinforcement relationship.     

Positive evaluation of stressful experiences

Two studies were conducted to test the hypothesis that the more stressful an experience is, the more positively it will be evaluated. Stressfulness was manipulated in the two studies by means of threat of shock, and both self-report and physiological measures of stress indicated that these manipulations were highly successful. In both studies subjects who were exposed to the more stressful situation evaluated their experience as significantly more worthwhile and somewhat more interesting than did subjects exposed to the less stressful situation. Furthermore, as expected, subjects did not like the high stress experience more than the low stress experience. Implications and qualifications of these findings are discussed.