Marriage and Family Therapists' Endorsement of Myths About Marriage

Marriage and family therapy training programs aim to provide students with research-based knowledge about marriage and divorce. A group of 223 California-based clinical members of the American Association for Marital and Family Therapy (AAMFT) was surveyed on their endorsement of 21 myths about marriage. Therapists provided correct responses to an average of 9.4 of these items. Endorsement of specific myths correlated with varying demographic, professional and family of origin variables. Implications for therapist training, practice, and future research are discussed.     

Measurements of Muscular Strength,Endurance, and Recovery Over Fifteen Successive Days

Muscular output was measured in terms of strength, endurance, impulse, and recovery, with 10 Ss, 4 times per day over 15 successive days. A general index (the mean percentage of baseline performance with all measures) indicated that performance generally improved over the first 5 or 6 days, and remained relatively stable thereafter. The measures of strength were sensitive to within-day effects, whereas endurance and recovery measures were not influenced by such circadian rhythms.     

Effective treatment programs for violent adolescents: Programmatic challenges and promising features

The search for effective treatment programs for violent adolescent offenders has produced more questions than answers. Only a handful of treatment programs have proven efficacious with adolescent offenders. This paper reviews the similarities and common features of four programs that have proven effective at reducing recidivism in adolescent offenders. The programs not only differ in many ways, but they also share some striking similarities. All take a comprehensive approach; utilizing a multidimensional treatment system to work with the youth and their family. All share a similar philosophy, theoretical framework, and structural approach to treatment. These similarities provide a template to facilitate progress in future programming, and research.     

Executive Functioning and Gambling: Performance on the Trail Making Test is Associated with Gambling Problems in Older Adult Gamblers

ABSTRACT

Rates of gambling problems in older adults have risen with increased accessibility of gambling venues. One possible contributor to problem gambling among older adults is decreased self-control brought about by diminished executive functioning. Consistent with this possibility, Study 1 revealed that older adults recruited from gambling venues reported greater gambling problems if they also experienced deficits in executive functioning, measured via the Trail Making Test. Study 2 replicated this finding and demonstrated that problem gambling is associated with increased depression among older adults, mediated by increased financial distress. These studies provide support for the hypothesis that older adult gamblers who have executive functioning problems are also likely to have gambling problems.     

Fear conditioning-induced alterations of phospholipase C-beta1a protein level and enzyme activity in rat hippocampal formation and medial frontal cortex

We investigated the effects of one-trial fear conditioning on phospholipase C-beta1a catalytic activity and protein level in hippocampal formation and medial frontal cortex of untreated control rats and rats prenatally exposed to ethanol. One hour following fear conditioning of untreated control rats, phospholipase C-beta1a protein level was increased in the hippocampal cytosolic fraction and decreased in the hippocampal membrane and cortical cytosolic and cortical membrane fractions. Twenty-four hours after fear conditioning, phospholipase C-beta1a protein level was reduced in the hippocampal cytosolic fraction and elevated in the cortical nuclear fraction; in addition, 24 h after conditioning, phospholipase C-beta1a activity in the cortical cytosolic fraction was increased. Rats that were exposed prenatally to ethanol displayed attenuated contextual fear conditioning, whereas conditioning to the acoustic-conditioned stimulus was not different from controls. In behavioral control (unconditioned) rats, fetal ethanol exposure was associated with reduced phospholipase C-beta1a enzyme activity in the hippocampal nuclear, cortical cytosolic, and cortical membrane fractions and increased phospholipase C-beta1a protein level in the hippocampal membrane and cortical cytosolic fractions. In certain cases, prenatal ethanol exposure modified the relationship between fear conditioning and changes in phospholipase C-beta1a protein level and/or activity. The majority of these effects occurred 1 h, rather than 24 h, after fear conditioning. Multivariate analysis of variance revealed interactions between fear conditioning, subcellular fraction, and prenatal ethanol exposure for measures of phospholipase C-beta1a protein level in hippocampal formation and phospholipase C-beta1a enzyme activity in medial frontal cortex. In the majority of cases, fear conditioning-induced changes in hippocampal phospholipase C-beta1a protein level were augmented in rats prenatally exposed to ethanol. In contrast, fear conditioning-induced changes in cortical phospholipase C-beta1a activity were, often, in opposite directions in prenatal ethanol-exposed compared to diet control rats. We speculate that alterations in subcellular phospholipase C-beta1a catalytic activity and protein level contribute to contextual fear conditioning and that learning deficits observed in rats exposed prenatally to ethanol result, in part, from dysfunctions in phospholipase C-beta1a signal transduction.     

Use of the MMPI-2 in American Indians: II. Empirical correlates

R. W. Robin, R. L. Greene, B. Albaugh, A. Caldwell, and D. Goldman (2003) reported that members of 2 American Indian tribal groups had statistically significant higher T scores on several MMPI-2 clinical, content, and supplementary scales than did the MMPI-2 normative group. The present study investigated the empirical correlates of the MMPI-2 scales in these American Indian tribal members. There were a large number of significant correlates reflecting antisocial symptoms with Scales 4 (Psychopathic Deviate), 9 (Hypomania), Anger, and Antisocial Practices. There were even a larger number of significant correlates reflecting generalized distress and negative affect with Scales 7 (Psychosthenia), 8 (Schizophrenia), Anxiety, Obsessions, Depression, and Welsh Anxiety. The rationally derived MMPI-2 content scales generally had larger correlations with these constructs than the clinical scales. Thus, the differences reported by R. W. Robin et al. (2003), appear to reflect behaviors and symptoms that American Indians participants were experiencing rather than test bias.     

The effects of exposure to red and blue light on physiological indices and time estimation

The effects of exposure to red, white, and blue lights on time estimation and physiological indices were examined. Sixty subjects were exposed to a total of four presentation series of red, white, and blue lights. There were two phases of the experiment: a verbal estimation phase in which subjects were required to count out loud the length of each color while measures of eyeblinks, skin conductance, pulse volume, heart rate, and EEG activity were obtained; and a production phase in which subjects were required to produce several intervals while measures of EEG were obtained. The data on each dependent measure were subjected to three-way repeated-measures ANOVAs. EEG data were digitized and analyzed with power spectral, peak frequency, percentage of alpha activity, and discriminant analyses. Results indicate that color did not exert consistent significant effects on any of the dependent measures and raise serious questions about the assumption that 'warm' colors are more arousing than 'cool' colors.