Effects of immediate performance feedback on implementation of behavior support plans

Research has focused on increasing the treatment integrity of school-based interventions by utilizing performance feedback. The purpose of this study was to extend this literature by increasing special education teachers' treatment integrity for implementing antecedent and consequence procedures in an ongoing behavior support plan. A multiple baseline across teacher-student dyads (for two classrooms) design was used to evaluate the effects of performance feedback on the percentage of antecedent and consequence components implemented correctly during 1-hr observation sessions. Performance feedback was provided every other week for 8 to 22 weeks after a stable or decreasing trend in the percentage of antecedent or consequence components implemented correctly. Results suggested that performance feedback increased the treatment integrity of antecedent components for 4 of 5 teachers and consequence components for all 5 teachers. These results were maintained following feedback for all teachers across antecedent and consequence components. Teachers rated performance feedback favorably with respect to the purpose, procedures, and outcome, as indicated by a social validity rating measure.     

Processes Underlying Gender‐Role Flexibility: Do Androgynous Individuals Know More or Know How to Cope?

This research examined gender-role flexibility across a variety of stressful events, and tested two proposed hypotheses that explicate the processes underlying gender-role flexibility. The knowing-more hypothesis posits that androgynous individuals have a broad coping repertoire. The knowing-how hypothesis posits that androgynous individuals know how to cope according to changing situational characteristics. The coping responses of Chinese university students were assessed in both real-life (Study 1) and hypothetical (Study 2) stressful situations. Results revealed that androgynous participants, who were less depressed than others, were characterized by (a) cognitive astuteness in distinguishing among situational characteristics and (b) deployment of strategies that fit specific situational demands. Results supported the knowing-how hypothesis only.     

Imitation: is cognitive neuroscience solving the correspondence problem?

Imitation poses a unique problem: how does the imitator know what pattern of motor activation will make their action look like that of the model? Specialist theories suggest that this correspondence problem has a unique solution; there are functional and neurological mechanisms dedicated to controlling imitation. Generalist theories propose that the problem is solved by general mechanisms of associative learning and action control. Recent research in cognitive neuroscience, stimulated by the discovery of mirror neurons, supports generalist solutions. Imitation is based on the automatic activation of motor representations by movement observation. These externally triggered motor representations are then used to reproduce the observed behaviour. This imitative capacity depends on learned perceptual-motor links. Finally, mechanisms distinguishing self from other are implicated in the inhibition of imitative behaviour.     

Evaluation of content and vocal style in relaxation instructions

The relative contributions of content and vocal style in relaxation instructions were studied in vivo. Eighty adult dental patients, 40 males and 40 females, who required two amalgam dental restorations were randomly assigned to four conditions (10 males and 10 females in each): a control group in which the restorations were completed in the typical fashion; a group who listened to standard relaxation instructions during the dental procedure; a group who listened to relaxation instructions presented in a conversational tone and pace: and a group who listened to a travelogue presented in a calm, quiet voice at a slow pace. Several cognitive self-rating measures and electrodermal response measures were obtained. The pattern of results suggested that content may be somewhat more important than style in relaxation instructions. However, both appear to be necessary to produce effective relaxation.     

Prevention of anxiety symptoms in children: results from a universal school-based trial

The present study evaluated the effectiveness of a universal school-based cognitive behavior prevention program (the FRIENDS program) for childhood anxiety. Participants were 638 children, ages 9 to 12 years, from 14 schools in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. All the children completed standardized measures of anxiety and depression, social and adaptive functioning, coping strategies, social skills, and perfectionism before and after the 10-week FRIENDS program and at two follow-up assessments (6 and 12 months) or wait period. Children who participated in the FRIENDS program exhibited significantly fewer anxiety and depressive symptoms, and lower perfectionism scores than children in the control group at 12-month follow-up. Younger children (9-10-year-olds) displayed treatment gains immediately after the intervention, whereas older children (11-12-year-olds) showed anxiety reduction only at 6- and 12-month follow-up. Perfectionism and avoidant coping acted as mediators of pre- to postintervention changes in anxiety scores. This study provides empirical evidence for the utility of the FRIENDS program in reducing anxiety and depressive symptoms among German children.     

Disorganized Attachment and Inhibitory Capacity: Predicting Externalizing Problem Behaviors

The aim of the present study was to investigate whether attachment insecurity, focusing on disorganized attachment, and the executive function (EF) component of inhibition, assessed at age 5, were longitudinally related to general externalizing problem behaviors as well as to specific symptoms of ADHD and Autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and callous-unemotional (CU) traits. General externalizing problem behaviors were also measured at age 5 to allow for a developmental analysis. Outcome variables were rated by parents and teachers. The sample consisted of 65 children with an oversampling of children with high levels of externalizing behaviors. Attachment was evaluated using a story stem attachment doll play procedure. Inhibition was measured using four different tasks. The results showed that both disorganized attachment and poor inhibition were longitudinally related to all outcome variables. Controlling for initial level of externalizing problem behavior, poor inhibition predicted ADHD symptoms and externalizing problem behaviors, independent of disorganized attachment, whereas for ASD symptoms no predictive relations remained. Disorganized attachment independently predicted CU traits.