Addressing the Mental Health Needs of the Rural Underserved: Findings from a Multiple Case Study of a Behavioral Telehealth Project

Behavioral telehealth is a reasonable solution to the accessibility to mental health care problem that exists in many rural communities. This paper reports the results of a multiple case study of a behavioral telehealth program administered through a marriage and family therapy training program. The results suggest that mental health services can be effectively delivered using existing distance education technology to underserved rural populations. Rural communities have unique barriers to accessing mental health care, some of which can be overcome through the distance delivery of services and some of which cannot. In order to effectively deliver treatment, accommodations to the technology must be made by both therapist and client.     

Global and local evaluations of public speaking performance in social anxiety

Differences in the relative use of global and local information (seeing the forest vs. the trees) may explain why people with social anxiety often do not benefit from corrective feedback, even though they pay close attention to details in social situations. In the current study, participants high (n = 43) or low (n = 47) in social anxiety symptoms gave a series of brief speeches, and then self-rated their speaking performance on items reflecting global and local performance indicators (self-assessment) and also received standardized performance feedback from an experimenter. Participants then completed a questionnaire asking how they thought the experimenter would rate their performance based on the feedback provided (experimenter assessment). Participants completed the self- and experimenter assessments again after 3 days, in addition to a measure of postevent processing (repetitive negative thinking) about their speech performance. Results showed that, as hypothesized, the High SA group rated their performance more negatively than the Low SA group. Moreover, the High SA group's ratings of global aspects of their performance became relatively more negative over time, compared to their ratings of local aspects and the Low SA group's ratings. As expected, postevent processing mediated the relationship between social anxiety group status and worsening global performance evaluations. These findings point to a pattern of progressively more negative global evaluations over time for persons high in social anxiety.     

Measuring the approximate number system

Recent theories in numerical cognition propose the existence of an approximate number system (ANS) that supports the representation and processing of quantity information without symbols. It has been claimed that this system is present in infants, children, and adults, that it supports learning of symbolic mathematics, and that correctly harnessing the system during tuition will lead to educational benefits. Various experimental tasks have been used to investigate individuals' ANSs, and it has been assumed that these tasks measure the same system. We tested the relationship across six measures of the ANS. Surprisingly, despite typical performance on each task, adult participants' performances across the tasks were not correlated, and estimates of the acuity of individuals' ANSs from different tasks were unrelated. These results highlight methodological issues with tasks typically used to measure the ANS and call into question claims that individuals use a single system to complete all these tasks.     

A functional view of artistic evaluation

I develop and defend the following functional view of art: a work of art typically possesses as an essential feature one or more points, purposes, or ends with reference to the satisfaction of which that work can be appropriately evaluated. This way of seeing a work’s artistic value as dependent on its particular artistic ends (whatever they may be) suggests an answer to a longstanding question of what sort of internal relation, if any, exists between the wide variety of values (moral, cognitive, aesthetic, etc.) that may be possessed by works of art and their value qua works of art.     

Measuring delay discounting in a crowdsourced sample: An exploratory study

Delay discounting is a measure of preferences for smaller immediate rewards over larger delayed rewards. Discounting has been assessed in many ways; these methods have variably and inconsistently involved measures of different lengths (single vs. multiple items), forced‐choice methods, self‐report methods, online and laboratory assessments, monetary and non‐monetary compensation. The majority of these studies have been conducted in laboratory settings. However, over the past 20 years, behavioral data collection has increasingly shifted online. Usually, these experiments involve completing short tasks for small amounts of money, and are thus qualitatively different than experiments in the lab, which are typically more involved and in a strongly controlled environment. The present study aimed to determine how to best measure future discounting in a crowdsourced sample using three discounting measures (a single shot measure, the 27‐item Kirby Monetary Choice Questionnaire, and a one‐time Matching Task). We examined associations of these measures with theoretically related variables, and assessed influence of payment on responding. Results indicated that correlations between the discounting tasks and conceptually related measures were smaller than in prior laboratory experiments. Moreover, our results suggest providing monetary compensation may attenuate correlations between discounting measures and related variables. These findings suggest that incentivizing discounting measures changes the nature of measurement in these tasks.     

The association of ecological variables and psychological distress with exposure to community violence among adolescents

Ecological theory suggests that exposure to community violence should be related to individual, family, and community characteristics; traumatic stress theory suggests that exposure to community violence should be related to level of psychological distress. A correlational study of 468 older adolescents in New York City tested these hypotheses. Exposure was found to be moderately related to level of psychological distress, but was not related to family or neighborhood characteristics. It was concluded that the nature of exposure to community violence poses difficulties for interventions aimed at either prevention or amelioration of effects.     

Differentiating corporal punishment from physical abuse in the prediction of lifetime aggression

Corporal punishment and parental physical abuse often co‐occur during upbringing, making it difficult to differentiate their selective impacts on psychological functioning. Associations between corporal punishment and a number of lifetime aggression indicators were examined in this study after efforts to control the potential influence of various forms of co‐occurring maltreatment (parental physical abuse, childhood sexual abuse, sibling abuse, peer bullying, and observed parental violence). College students (N = 1,136) provided retrospective self‐reports regarding their history of aggression and levels of exposure to childhood corporal punishment and maltreatment experiences. Analyses focused on three hypotheses: 1) The odds of experiencing childhood physical abuse would be higher among respondents reporting frequent corporal punishment during upbringing; 2) Corporal punishment scores would predict the criterion aggression indices after control of variance associated with childhood maltreatment; 3) Aggression scores would be higher among respondents classified in the moderate and elevated corporal punishment risk groups. Strong support was found for the first hypothesis since the odds of childhood physical abuse recollections were higher (OR = 65.3) among respondents who experienced frequent (>60 total disciplinary acts) corporal punishment during upbringing. Partial support was found for the second and third hypotheses. Dimensional and categorical corporal punishment scores were associated significantly with half of the criterion measures. These findings support efforts to dissuade reliance on corporal punishment to manage child behavior.