Perspectives on Engagement Barriers and Alternative Delivery Formats from Non-completers of a Community-Run Parenting Program

The purpose of our study was to learn about barriers to participation faced by families who had signed up for but not completed a community-based parenting program that was not part of a research project. We also sought to gauge interest in alternative, web-based methods of delivering a parent training intervention. Semi-structured phone interviews were conducted with 27 parents who had signed up for but not completed a community-based parenting program. Results indicated that practical reasons such as scheduling were the most common barrier faced by parents. Results also suggested substantial interest in alternative web-based and hybrid models of program delivery. Hybrid models would allow participants to move between face-to-face small group classes and web-based classes; allowing for easy make-up of missed small-group sessions. Interventions designed by community organizations and researchers should consider using alternative methods, including hybrid models, of program delivery in order to reach a larger number of individuals.     

Development of the Friendships and Social Skills Test (FASST): A Parent Report Measure

This paper describes the initial development of the Friendships and Social Skills Test (FASST), a clinically oriented 25-item parent report measure of child peer relationships and social skills in a community (N = 423) and clinical sample (N = 159) of elementary school age children. Confirmatory factor analyses supported five factors measuring pro-social skills, negative peer directed behavior, friendship interactions, peer victimization, and the level of concern expressed about a child’s social functioning. Internal consistency and test–retest reliability of the FASST factors predominately ranged from moderate to very good. Validity was supported through higher scores in at-risk and clinical groups compared to children in the community and through correlations with an existing measure of social skills and emotional and behavioral functioning. Cross-informant validity was supported by correlations with teacher-report. Moreover, the scales measuring negative social behaviors and pro-social skills predicted changes in peer victimization and concern expressed about the child over a 1-year duration. By assessing positive and negative aspects of peer-directed behaviors and relationships the FASST has the potential to facilitate the identification and treatment of childhood social deficits in mental health settings.     

Managing Child Behavior Problems in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders: Utilizing Structural and Solution Focused Therapy With Primary Caregivers

Previous therapeutic models for modifying and managing problem behaviors in children with an Autism Spectrum Disorder have, typically, focused on working directly with the diagnosed child. The exclusion of other family member involvement in treatment displayed a need for creating a systemic model for managing children's problem behaviors. This model proposes Solution Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) and Structural Family Therapy (SFT) with a focus on the caregivers of children with ASDs to reduce parental stress, increase parental self-efficacy, and ultimately begin to manage child behavior problems.     

Personifying the State: Consequences for Attitude Formation

Because states are abstract entities, they often require embodiment for mass publics and elites to understand them. This embodiment often occurs as personification, where the state is associated with the most salient figure in the political system, but embodiment can also occur through political institutions and social groups. Surprisingly, there is virtually no systematic empirical work on the political and psychological consequences of state personification, or other forms of embodiment. In this experiment, we investigate how various ways of embodying the state influence attitude formation processes. Drawing on the on-line/memory-based processing and entitativity literatures, we hypothesize that personification of the state should facilitate on-line processing and stronger attitudes, whereas embodying the state as a parliamentary institution should produce weaker attitudes that are formed in a memory-based fashion. The results support these hypotheses. Embodiment as a social group produced inconsistent results. This study provides the first systematic evidence that the widespread practice of personification of the state has robust and potentially far-reaching attitudinal consequences that have meaningful implications for strategic interaction, perception and learning, and attitude change in the international realm.     

Attitudes Toward Date Rape Among University Students in South Korea

The purpose of this study is to examine attitudes toward date rape among university students in South Korea. Participants included 163 students recruited from two universities in South Korea. Results show that male students were less rejecting of date rape-tolerant attitudes than female students were. Also, male students were less rejecting of the belief that the use of force to have sex on a date is acceptable under certain conditions. Attending a sexual assault educational program was associated with more rejection of date rape-tolerant attitudes among females, but not among males. The results will be of particular value to advocates who provide rape prevention and victim intervention programs.     

Relations of maternal socialization and toddlers' effortful control to children's adjustment and social competence

The authors examined the relations of maternal supportive parenting to effortful control and internalizing problems (i.e., separation distress, inhibition to novelty), externalizing problems, and social competence when toddlers were 18 months old (n = 256) and a year later (n = 230). Mothers completed the Coping With Toddlers' Negative Emotions Scale, and their sensitivity and warmth were observed. Toddlers' effortful control was measured with a delay task and adults' reports (Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire). Toddlers' social functioning was assessed with the Infant/Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment. Within each age, children's regulation significantly mediated the relation between supportive parenting and low levels of externalizing problems and separation distress, and high social competence. When using stronger tests of mediation, controlling for stability over time, the authors found only partial evidence for mediation. The findings suggest these relations may be set at an early age.     

How Can Measures of Subjective Well-Being Be Used to Inform Public Policy?

ABSTRACT— The debate surrounding the use of subjective measures of well-being for policy purposes has intensified in recent years. Many social scientists are arguing that the time is right for policymakers to extend their traditional focus on material well-being and economic development to include the impact policies have on how people think and feel about their lives. However, policymakers may have many legitimate goals beyond making people happy. In this article, we begin by presenting three archetypal accounts of well-being that policymakers could use to guide policy (mental-state, objective-list, and desire-fulfillment accounts) and discussing some of the normative and methodological limitations of each. We discuss how a subjective (mental-state) approach could be used to aid the achievement of objective-list and desire-fulfillment policy goals. We then consider ways in which a subjective approach may benefit policymakers in its own right, such as by aiding the valuation of hard-to-quantify costs and benefits, providing a standard unit of measurement for comparisons of well-being across domains, and helping to set policy defaults. We conclude with a discussion of some of the remaining measurement issues and general policy implications.     

Incidental retrieval of emotional contexts in post-traumatic stress disorder and depression: an fMRI study

In the present study, we used fMRI to assess patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or depression, and trauma-exposed controls, during an episodic memory retrieval task that included non-trauma-related emotional information. In the study phase of the task neutral pictures were presented in emotional or neutral contexts. Participants were scanned during the test phase, when they were presented with old and new neutral images in a yes/no recognition memory task. fMRI results for the contrast between old and new items revealed activation in a predominantly left-sided network of cortical regions including the left middle temporal, bilateral posterior cingulate, and left prefrontal cortices. Activity common to all three groups when correctly judging pictures encoded in emotional contexts was much more limited. Relative to the control and depressed groups the PTSD group exhibited greater sensitivity to correctly recognised stimuli in the left amygdala/ventral striatum and right occipital cortex, and more specific sensitivity to items encoded in emotional contexts in the right precuneus, left superior frontal gyrus, and bilateral insula. These results are consistent with a substantially intact neural system supporting episodic retrieval in patients suffering from PTSD. Moreover, there was little indication that PTSD is associated with a marked change in the way negatively valenced information, not of personal significance, is processed.     

The Persistence-Strengthening Effects of DRA: An Illustration of Bidirectional Translational Research

We summarize a series of bidirectional research studies that demonstrate the persistence-strengthening effects of differential reinforcement of alternative behavior on problem behavior. We model a possible solution to this problem with rats followed by replication with a human clinical population. The importance of coordinated basic and applied research to stimulate new behavioral technologies is emphasized.     

Accounting for the Richness of Daily Activities

ABSTRACT— Serious consideration is being given to the impact of private behavior and public policies on people's subjective well-being (SWB). A new approach to measuring well-being, the day reconstruction method (DRM), weights the affective component of daily activities by their duration in order to construct temporal aggregates. However, the DRM neglects the potentially important role of thoughts. By adapting this method to include thoughts as well as feelings, we provide perhaps the most comprehensive measure of SWB to date. We show that some activities relatively low in pleasure (e.g., work and time with children) are nonetheless thought of as rewarding and therefore contribute to overall SWB. Such information may be important to policymakers wishing to promote behaviors that are conducive to a broader conception of SWB.