Fathers for Change for Substance Use and Intimate Partner Violence: Initial Community Pilot

The lack of focus on the role of men as fathers within intervention programs for men with histories of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) or substance abuse is of significant concern given the large numbers of these men who are actively parenting and coparenting children. Fathers for Change is a new intervention designed to fill this gap. Eighteen fathers with co‐occurring IPV and substance abuse were randomly assigned to Fathers for Change or Individual Drug Counseling (IDC). They were assessed at baseline, post‐intervention and 3 months following the 16‐week intervention period. Men in the Fathers for Change group: (1) were more likely to complete treatment; (2) reported significantly greater satisfaction with the program; (3) reported a trend toward less IPV; and (4) exhibited significantly less intrusiveness in coded play interactions with their children following treatment than fathers in the IDC group. Results indicate further evaluation of this intervention in a larger sample is warranted. Limitations and directions for future research are discussed.     

Developmental effects of economic and educational change: Cognitive representation in three generations across 43 years in a Maya community

We studied the implications of social change for cognitive development in a Maya community in Chiapas, Mexico, over 43 years. The same procedures were used to collect data in 1969–1970, 1991, and 2012—once in each generation. The goal was to understand the implications of weaving, schooling and participation in a commercial economy for the development of visual pattern representation. In 2012, our participants consisted of 133 boys and girls descended from participants in the prior two generations. Procedures consisted of placing colored sticks in a wooden frame to make striped patterns, some familiar (Zinacantec woven patterns) and some novel (created by the investigators). Following Greenfield (2009), we hypothesised that the development of commerce and the expansion of formal schooling would influence children's representations. Her theory postulates that these factors move human development towards cognitive abstraction and skill in dealing with novelty. Furthermore, the theory posits that whatever sociodemographic variable is changing most rapidly functions as the primary motor for developmental change. From 1969 to 1991, the rapid development of a commercial economy drove visual representation in the hypothesised directions. From 1991 to 2012, the rapid expansion of schooling drove visual representation in the hypothesised directions.     

Taxometric Investigation of PTSD: data from two nationally representative samples

Current psychiatric nosology depicts posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a discrete diagnostic category. However, only one study has examined the latent structure of PTSD, and this study suggested that PTSD may be more accurately conceptualized as an extreme reaction to traumatic life events rather than a discrete clinical syndrome. To build on the existing literature base, the present research examined the latent structure of posttraumatic stress reactions by applying three taxometric procedures (MAXEIG, MAMBAC, and L-Mode) to data collected from large nationally representative samples of women (ns = 2684 and 3033) and adolescents (n = 3775). Results consistently provided evidence for a dimensional PTSD solution across samples and statistical procedures. These findings have important implications for the theory, assessment, and investigation of posttraumatic stress reactions.     

The role of phonological recoding in orthographic learning

The objective of this research was to explore whether orthographic learning occurs as a result of phonological recoding, as expected from the self-teaching hypothesis. The participants were 32 fourth- and fifth-graders (mean age = 10 years 0 months, SD = 7 months) who performed lexical decisions for monosyllabic real words and pseudowords under two matched experimental conditions: a read aloud condition, wherein items were named prior to lexical decision to promote phonological recoding, and a concurrent articulation condition, presumed to attenuate phonological recoding. Later, orthographic learning of the pseudowords was evaluated using orthographic choice, spelling, and naming tasks. Consistent with the self-teaching hypothesis, targets learned with phonological recoding in the read aloud condition yielded greater orthographic learning than those learned with concurrent articulation. The research confirms the critical nature of phonological recoding in the development of visual word recognition skills and an orthographic lexicon.     

Effectiveness of Imagery Rehearsal Therapy for the Treatment of Combat-Related Nightmares in Veterans

Imagery Rehearsal Therapy (IRT) has been shown to be efficacious in reducing nightmares, but the treatment has not been well-studied in veterans. The effectiveness of IRT was assessed from a chart review of veterans seeking outpatient treatment for chronic, trauma-related nightmares. Of those offered IRT, veterans who completed a full course of treatment for PTSD in the past year were more likely to initiate treatment. However, completion of IRT was not related to previous treatment, demographic variables, or nightmare severity reported at the first treatment session. Treatment completers reported significant reductions in nightmare frequency and intensity, severity of insomnia, and subjective daytime PTSD symptoms. Insomnia and PTSD symptoms, on average, were below clinical cutoffs following treatment, and 23% of patients showed a complete treatment response (≤ 1 nightmare/week). Findings suggest IRT may be an effective short-term treatment for nighttime and daytime PTSD symptoms among veterans who complete a full course of treatment.     

Adapting to test structure: Letting testing teach what to learn

We propose that we encode and store information as a function of the particular ways we have used similar information in the past. More specifically, we contend that the experience of retrieval can serve as a powerful cue to the most effective ways to encode similar information in comparable future learning episodes. To explore these ideas, we did two studies in which all participants went through study–test cycles of single category lists while we manipulated the nature of the recognition tests. The recognition tests either included only same-category lures or only different-category lures. The experience of repeated testing leads participants to avoid conceptual-based strategies but only when conceptual knowledge was poorly diagnostic for recognition (i.e., in the same-category lures condition). In a second study with a similar manipulation, we showed that repeated testing with lures from the same category as study items improved performance in a final recall surprise test compared to conditions in which different-category lures were used. Such a difference is akin to the one obtained when encoding instructions focus on distinctive item features compared to cases in which the focus is on relational processing. We suggest that testing requirements lead to adaptive changes at encoding.     

Maternal teaching techniques and preschool children's ideational fluency

As a counterpart to research showing relationships between parental behaviors and attitudes and children's divergent thinking, this study investigated mothers’ teaching techniques and preschool children's ideational fluency, one aspect of creativity. Twenty mother‐child dyads were videotaped interacting in both a warm‐up and structured teaching session. Mothers’ teaching behaviors were assessed with the Maternal Teaching Observation Technique (MTOT) and children's ideational fluency was measured with the Multidimensional Stimulus Fluency Measure (MSFM). Correlational analyses indicated relationships between children's divergent thinking and mothers’ use of verbal negative feedback (r = .51), physical control (r = ‐.40), and visual cues (r = ‐.44).