Motivation for Change: Implications forSubstance Abuse Treatment

Psychological science has made significant progress exploring the role of motivation in recovery from substance abuse and dependence over the past 20 years. Although recovery is complicated by physiological and psychological dependence, the intentions and motivation of the abuser are a critical part of this process. Motivation for change plays an important part in the process of recognizing the need for change, seeking treatment, and achieving successful sustained change. This article reviews how motivational readiness to change, as conceptualized within the transtheoretical model, contributes to the process of recovery. Important distinctions between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, imposed and intentional change, and readiness for change versus readiness for treatment are highlighted.     

Domestic pigs (Sus scrofa) engage in non-random post-conflict affiliation with third parties: cognitive and functional implications

Animal Cognition - In social mammals, conflict resolution involves the reunion of former opponents (aggressor and victim) after an aggressive event (reconciliation) or post-conflict triadic...     

Adapting Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up for infants and young children with intellectual disabilities and developmental delays in South Africa: Reflections and recommendations from local stakeholders

Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC) is an intervention targeted at enhancing the socioemotional and regulatory functioning of at-risk infants. However, to use the ABC for infants/toddlers with intellectual disabilities/developmental delays (ID/DD) and in novel cultural contexts, such as South Africa, adaptations may be required. This study aimed, therefore, to explore the opinions of clinical experts and perceptions of caregivers regarding the use of ABC for children with ID/DD in South Africa. It also sought to incorporate the experiences of families of children with ID/DD who received, and intervenors who delivered, ABC in its first implementation in South Africa. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 18 participants. Thematic analysis explicated 12 main themes: Intervention Strengths, Points of Concern, and Recommendations (Experts); Focus on Caregiver-child Relationship, and Intervention Targets and Duration (Caregivers); Benefits of ABC, and Cultural Considerations (ABC Recipients); Focused and Targeted, Value of Feedback, Supportive Supervision, Working Alliance, and Challenges Experienced (ABC Intervenors). Practice and training recommendations include psychoeducation for parents and training for intervenors that is ID/DD-specific, expanding supervision capacity, building intervenors’ cultural/linguistic sensitivity and competence, accessing referral networks, including local Community Health Workers as intervenors, and greater flexibility in how the sessions are organized.     

Gender and Age Differences in Brazilian Children's Friendship Nominations and Peer Sociometric Ratings

This article reports on an investigation into the relation between young adults' retrospective reports of their mothers' and fathers' division of household labor (egalitarian or traditional) and parenting styles (authoritative, permissive, authoritarian, or disengaged). Participants' own gender attitudes were also tested in relation to parents' division of labor and parenting. The sample included 294 women and men (M =19-years old) who were raised in 2-parent households and came from a range of ethnic backgrounds. When mothers' parenting was evaluated, permissive parenting was more likely among those from egalitarian households whereas authoritarian parenting was more likely among those from traditional households. When fathers' parenting was evaluated, authoritative parenting was more likely among participants from egalitarian households and disengaged parenting was more likely among those from traditional households. The association between fathers' parenting style and division of labor was specific to the division of childcare (rather than housework). Participants' gender attitudes were not related to parents' division of labor or parenting style.     

HIV/AIDS and Psychosis: Needs,Challenges, and Support of Affected Mothers

Little is known about parenting in the context of HIV and psychosis, two co-existing conditions affecting many mothers in South Africa. In this study a mixed methods approach was used to firstly do qualitative investigation of the illness and parenting experiences of a case group of mothers living with HIV/AIDS and psychosis (n?=?41). Secondly, the support networks of this group are compared with a control group of mothers with HIV/AIDS without psychosis (n?=?44). Integrating qualitative and quantitative data highlight the emotional and physical disruption experienced by the case group that contribute to dysfunctional mother–child interactions. This experience may be detrimental to the child’s well-being and formation of attachment relationships. Healthy support networks may buffer these adversities. The availability of support figures is similar between the groups, but the case group has less spousal support. Paranoia associated with the case group predicted fewer support figures, thus emphasizing the vulnerability of this group of mothers and children.     

Exploring classical conditioning for strengthening the links between semantic and lexical representations in pure anomia: Preliminary findings from a single case study

The same language symptom might arise at different functional loci in people with aphasia. Therefore, it is plausible that different therapeutic interventions should be adopted to approach the same difficulties in different patients. Although this point of view is still widely accepted, recently the focus has shifted from the functional locus of a rehabilitative intervention to the mechanisms of action underlying the relearning process. We maintain that both aspects should be taken into account when programming a rehabilitative intervention; furthermore, investigating relearning mechanisms might shed new light on the functional architecture of the disrupted processes. Here, we investigated, in a single case study, whether classical conditioning was a suitable relearning paradigm for targeting word‐finding difficulties in pure anomia, that is in a patient with an impairment in accessing intact output lexical representations from a spared semantic system. Using a word‐repetition task on picture presentation, we contrasted a condition in which the stimulus onset asynchrony between word and picture stimuli was well suited to produce classical conditioning with a condition in which repetition training could not benefit from this learning mechanism. Only classical conditioning training exerted a significant, long‐lasting effect on our patient's naming skill. Tentative implications of our results for the functional architecture of single‐word processing are discussed.     

Links between social information processing in middle childhood and involvement in bullying

The aim of this study was to investigate the way in which bullies, victims, bully/victims, and those not involved process social information. A peer nomination measure of bullying and victimization was administered twice over an interval of one year. The sample consisted of 236 (126 girls and 110 boys) children at the beginning of the study (T1) and 242 children one year later (T2) (mean age: 8 years). To test how children responded when provoked, both spontaneously and after prompting, we used provocation scenarios, and to test their attributional interpretations we used ambiguous scenarios. The results showed that children not involved in bullying responded in an assertive way to provocation more often than bullies and victims, but not more than bully/victims. In general, aggressive answers diminished after prompting and irrelevant answers increased. Appealing for the help of an adult or a peer was the strategy most often chosen. When the intent of the perpetrator was ambiguous, bully/victims attributed more blame, were angrier, and would retaliate more than those not involved. Partly similar results were obtained when stably involved children were compared with those unstably involved. Suggestions for intervention are presented. Aggr. Behav. 29:116–127, 2003. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Attachment in foster children associated with caregivers' sensitivity and behavioral problems

This study focused on attachment of foster children by examining factors associated with attachment relationships of children raised from birth by the same parents. The sample included 61 children between 26 to 88 months of age and their foster caregivers. Attachment security and caregiver sensitivity were coded on the basis of, respectively, a home‐observation (Attachment Q‐Set) and a laboratory procedure (Three boxes). Other measures included caregiver reports of child externalizing and internalizing behavior problems and symptoms of attachment disorder, including inhibited and disinhibited attachment as well as secure base distortions. For a subsample of children, teacher ratings of behavior problems also were available. Foster parent sensitivity was positively associated with attachment security, but only if symptoms of disordered attachment were partialled out. Symptoms of inhibited and disinhibited attachment as well as secure base distortions were positively related to parent reports of externalizing and internalizing behavior problems whereas attachment security was negatively related to teacher reports of externalizing behavior problems. Attachment theoretical tenets appeared valid with foster parent–child relationships, except for children with symptoms of attachment disorder.     

Visuospatial priming of the mental number line

It has been argued that numbers are spatially organized along a "mental number line" that facilitates left-hand responses to small numbers, and right-hand responses to large numbers. We hypothesized that whenever the representations of visual and numerical space are concurrently activated, interactions can occur between them, before response selection. A spatial prime is processed faster than a numerical target, and consistent with our hypothesis, we found that such a spatial prime affects non-spatial, verbal responses more when the prime follows a numerical target (backward priming) then when it precedes it (forward priming). This finding emerged both in a number-comparison and a parity judgment task, and cannot be ascribed to a "Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes" (SNARC). Contrary to some earlier claims, we therefore conclude that visuospatial-numerical interactions do occur, even before response selection.