Bully Busters: A Psychoeducational Intervention for Reducing Bullying Behavior in Middle School Students

The present study examined the effectiveness of a bully prevention program counselors may use to modify teachers' knowledge/use of bullying intervention skills, teachers' self‐efficacy, and students' classroom bullying behaviors. Participants attended 3 training sessions and participated on a support team. The findings indicated that the treatment program effectively increased teachers' knowledge/use of intervention skills, teachers' personal self‐efficacy, and self‐efficacy related to working with specific types of children and reduced classroom bullying as measured by disciplinary referrals.     

Self‐reference and group membership: evidence for a group‐reference effect

Two experiments were designed to explore whether encoding information in reference to a group would facilitate the later recall of that information to the same extent as encoding with reference to the self. In both experiments, participants encoded adjectives with reference to the self, semantic properties, or a group and were subsequently given a surprise‐free recall test. In Experiment 1 (N = 37), the participants' university served as the reference group. In Experiment 2 (N=41), the participants' family served as the reference group. In both experiments, self‐reference resulted in better recall than semantic processing, replicating the typical self‐reference effect (SRE). More importantly, strong evidence for a group‐reference effect (GRE) was found in that group‐reference resulted in better recall than semantic processing and in fact facilitated recall to the same extent as self‐referencing. The existing explanations (schemas, organization, elaboration, mental cueing, and evaluation) for the SRE were compared with regard to their viability in accounting for the GRE patterns. We discuss additional features that may be important in the explanation of the SRE and suggest future directions for research on group‐referencing. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Does Motivation Impact OCD Symptom Severity? An Exploration of Longitudinal Effects

Understanding the role of patient motivation in OCD treatment is of clinical importance given the requisite autonomous role of patients in Exposure and Response Prevention. The present study investigated state- and trait-like relations between three variables: two previously established motivational constructs, readiness to change (RTC) and committed action (CA), derived from the University of Rhode Island Change Assessment, and OCD symptom severity as measured by the self-report Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS-SR). Utilizing a random-intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) design, we assessed autoregressive, within-time correlations, and cross-lagged effects of RTC, CA, and Y-BOCS-SR scores at admission, month 1 of treatment, and discharge from an intensive/residential treatment program for OCD. Results revealed significant autoregressive (i.e., state-like) effects for CA and Y-BOCS-SR, negative within-time correlations between state CA and Y-BOCS-SR across all time points, a positive within-time correlation between state CA and RTC at admission, and a cross-lagged effect between state Y-BOCS-SR at month 1 of treatment and state RTC at discharge. Results also demonstrated that the stability of the RTC variable was attributable to trait-like factors in the present sample. This study is novel in its use of RI-CLPM in an OCD sample and represents an important addition to the literature on the longitudinal impacts of dynamic constructs of motivation. Our findings may provide future researchers with strategies to supplement ERP with CA-driven motivational interviewing.     

Reproductive justice for incarcerated mothers and advocacy for their infants and young children

The United States has seen unprecedented growth in the number of incarcerated women, most of whom are mothers with minor children. Major public health concerns relate to the reproductive health of women in prisons and jails and the well-being of their infants and young children. In the current article, we use a reproductive justice framework to examine the intersection of incarceration and maternal and child health. We review (a) current research on the reproductive health of incarcerated women, (b) characteristics and experiences of pregnant incarcerated women, (c) outcomes of infants and young children with incarcerated parents, (d) implications of research findings for policy and practice, and (e) the need for increased research, public education, and advocacy. We strongly recommend that correctional policies and practices be updated to address the common misconceptions and biases as well as the unique vulnerabilities and health needs of incarcerated women and their young children.     

The mediating role of state maladaptive emotion regulation in the relation between social anxiety symptoms and self-evaluation bias

Although social anxiety symptoms are robustly linked to biased self-evaluations across time, the mechanisms of this relation remain unclear. The present study tested three maladaptive emotion regulation strategies – state post-event processing, state experiential avoidance, and state expressive suppression – as potential mediators of this relation. Undergraduate participants (N?=?88; 61.4% Female) rated their social skill in an impromptu conversation task and then returned to the laboratory approximately two days later to evaluate their social skill in the conversation again. Consistent with expectations, state post-event processing and state experiential avoidance mediated the relation between social anxiety symptoms and worsening self-evaluations of social skill (controlling for research assistant evaluations), particularly for positive qualities (e.g. appeared confident, demonstrated social skill). State expressive suppression did not mediate the relation between social anxiety symptoms and changes in self-evaluation bias across time. These findings highlight the role that spontaneous, state experiential avoidance and state post-event processing may play in the relation between social anxiety symptoms and worsening self-evaluation biases of social skill across time.     

Temporal dynamics in attention bias: effects of sex differences,task timing parameters,and stimulus valence

New methods of calculating indices from the dot-probe task measure temporal dynamics in attention bias or fluctuations in attention bias towards and away from emotional stimuli over time. However, it is unclear how task-specific parameters such as stimulus valence and stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) as well as participant sex affect temporal dynamics in attention bias. To address this, male and female participants (N?=?106) completed either a fearful or happy face dot-probe task with four levels of SOA (84?ms, 168?ms, 336?ms, and 672?ms). Results suggest that temporal dynamics in attention bias are (1) greatest at the longest SOA, (2) greater in females, and (3) insensitive to stimulus valence. These findings indicate that participant sex and task timing, but not stimulus valence, are related to temporal dynamics in attention bias and should be considered in future studies utilizing this approach.     

Perception of speech reflects optimal use of probabilistic speech cues

Listeners are exquisitely sensitive to fine-grained acoustic detail within phonetic categories for sounds and words. Here we show that this sensitivity is optimal given the probabilistic nature of speech cues. We manipulated the probability distribution of one probabilistic cue, voice onset time (VOT), which differentiates word initial labial stops in English (e.g., "beach" and "peach"). Participants categorized words from distributions of VOT with wide or narrow variances. Uncertainty about word identity was measured by four-alternative forced-choice judgments and by the probability of looks to pictures. Both measures closely reflected the posterior probability of the word given the likelihood distributions of VOT, suggesting that listeners are sensitive to these distributions.     

Left frontal cortical activation and spreading of alternatives: tests of the action-based model of dissonance

The action-based model of dissonance predicts that following decisional commitment, approach-oriented motivational processes occur to assist in translating the decision into effective and unconflicted behavior. Therefore, the modulation of these approach-oriented processes should affect the degree to which individuals change their attitudes to be more consistent with the decisional commitment (spreading of alternatives). Experiment 1 demonstrated that a neurofeedback-induced decrease in relative left frontal cortical activation, which has been implicated in approach motivational processes, caused a reduction in spreading of alternatives. Experiment 2 manipulated an action-oriented mindset following a decision and demonstrated that the action-oriented mindset caused increased activation in the left frontal cortical region as well as increased spreading of alternatives. Discussion focuses on how this integration of neuroscience and dissonance theory benefits both parent literatures.     

Effect of pacing and working memory loads on error type patterns in a routine skill

Event counting provides a laboratory paradigm for studying types and causes of error in routine activity. Experiment 1 demonstrated that as more time per event is allowed, counting errors typically are undercounts, then overcounts as the time per event is extended to approximately 3 s. Experiments 2 and 3 examined 2 possible causes of this phenomenon, forgetting and confusions due to overrehearsal of the next number to be used. These findings demonstrate that overcount errors during event counting are reduced by working memory loads, which may result from a lower ability to rehearse the current total. Implications for theoretical accounts of goal representation, control, and error monitoring are discussed.