Infants of “depressed” mothers interact better with their nondepressed fathers

To determine whether infants of “depressed” mothers interact better with their nondepressed fathers, twenty-six 3- to 6-month-old infants were videotaped during face-to-face interactions with their parents. The “depressed” mother group consisted of twelve 3- to 6-month-old infants and their “depressed” mothers and nondepressed fathers. The control group was composed of 14 nondepressed mothers and nondepressed fathers and their 3- to 6-month-old infants. In the “depressed” mother group, the nondepressed fathers received better interaction ratings than the “depressed” mothers. In turn, the infants received better interaction ratings when they interacted with their nondepressed fathers than with their “depressed” mothers. In contrast, nondepressed fathers and mothers and their infants in the control group did not differ on any of their interaction ratings. These findings suggest that infants' difficult interaction behaviors noted during interactions with their “depressed” mothers may not extend to their nondepressed fathers. The data are discussed with respect to the notion that nondepressed fathers may “buffer” the effects of maternal depression on infant interaction behavior.     

Psychosocial Treatment Strategies in the MTA Study: Rationale, Methods, and Critical Issues in Design and Implementation

The Collaborative Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), the MTA, is the first multisite, cooperative agreement treatment study of children, and the largest psychiatric/psychological treatment trial ever conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health. It examines the effectiveness of Medication vs. Psychosocial treatment vs. their combination for treatment of ADHD and compares these experimental arms to each other and to routine community care. In a parallel group design, 579 (male and female) ADHD children, aged 7–9 years, 11 months, were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental arms, and then received 14 months of prescribed treatment (or community care) with periodic reassessments. After delineating the theoretical and empirical rationales for Psychosocial treatment of ADHD, we describe the MTA's Psychosocial Treatment strategy applied to all children in two of the four experimental arms (Psychosocial treatment alone; Combined treatment). Psychosocial treatment consisted of three major components: a Parent Training component, a two-part School Intervention component, and a child treatment component anchored in an intensive Summer Treatment Program. Components were selected based on evidence of treatment efficacy and because they address comprehensive symptom targets, settings, comorbidities, and functional domains. We delineate key conceptual and logistical issues faced by clinical researchers in design and implementation of Psychosocial research with examples of how these issues were addressed in the MTA study.Deceased     

Does the contextual interference effect last over extended transfer trials?

The contextual interference effect (random practice yields better transfer and retention compared to blocked practice) detected in a study of 24 boys and 33 girls randomly selected (M age = 10.5 yr., SD = .6) performing a linear positioning motor task seemed to dissipate in extended transfer trials.     

Religiosity, values, and horizontal and vertical individualism-collectivism: a study of Turkey, the United States, and the Philippines

The authors examined the links between two dimensions that have been useful in understanding cross-cultural differences and similarities, namely, individualism-collectivism (I-C) and value orientations. The authors examined the relations and parallels between the two variables by directly relating them and examining the patterns of relations that both have with a third variable, religiosity. Participants were 475 college students from the Philippines, the United States, and Turkey who responded to measures of horizontal and vertical I-C, value orientations, and religiosity. The authors found partial support for the parallels between I-C and value types, particularly for collectivism and conservative values. Moreover, religiosity was associated positively with conservative values and collectivism, across all three cultures. The authors found individualism to also relate to openness-to-change values, though the patterns were not as consistent as those that they found between collectivism and conservation. Differences and similarities emerged in links of I-C-values to religiosity across the three samples.     

Agrammatic Broca's aphasia is not associated with a single pattern of comprehension performance

One influential hypothesis posits that the brain regions implicated in Broca's aphasia are responsible for specific syntactic operations that are necessary for the comprehension and production of sentences (Grodzinsky, 1986, 1990, in press). The empirical basis of this hypothesis is the claim that Broca's aphasics have no difficulty understanding sentences in the active voice (and other "canonical" sentence types, such as subject relatives and clefts with negative predicates), but perform at chance level with passive voice constructions (and other "noncanonical" sentences such as object-gap relatives and object clefts). In the face of well-established results indicating that Broca's aphasics can exhibit several different performance patterns on these sentence types, Grodzinsky, Pi?ango, Zurif, and Drai (1999) argued that these conflicting results do not challenge the theory when the data are analyzed appropriately. They carried out a creative statistical analysis of the comprehension performance of published cases of Broca's aphasia and concluded that all of these cases are in agreement with the predicted pattern: chance on passives and 100% correct on actives. Here we show that the statistical reasoning adopted by Grodzinsky et al. (1999) is flawed. We also show that the comprehension performance of a substantial number of the Broca's aphasics in their own sample does not conform to the pattern required. Rather, contrary to these authors' claim, Broca's aphasia is not associated with a consistent pattern of sentence comprehension performance, but allows for a number of distinct patterns in different patients.     

Schleiermacher and Spirit Christology: Unexplored Horizons of The Christian Faith

One of the more recent efforts at christological construction has focused on Spirit christology, issuing in sometimes opposing constructions. At first sight, considering Schleiermacher's synthetic approach to the doctrine of the Trinity, one would suspect the irrelevance of his christology for these present efforts. However, an analysis of the convergence between christology and pneumatology in the Glaubenslehre could contribute significantly to this debate. By interpreting the God-consciousness of Jesus as the presence of the Spirit in him and correlating this with the communication of this consciousness as the work of Christ in regeneration and sanctification we achieve an identity between Christ as Spirit-bearer and Spirit-sender (viz. the Redeemer understood according to his 'peculiar activity' and 'exclusive dignity'). By lending a stronger pneumatological bearing to Schleiermacher's theological discourse (picking up the suggestion of Karl Barth) Schleiermacher helps illuminate some of the issues that have arisen in debate over Spirit christology.     

Variables associated with the nature of sexual abuse to minors

This study analyzes the prevalence and characteristics of childhood and adolescence sexual abuse suffered by a sample of university students, as well as the variables associated with the nature of abuse. Participants anonymously completed the Questionnaire on Child Sexual Abuse, in order to obtain information about experience of sexual abuse. Of a total of 2,375 students, 289 (12.2%) declared having suffered sexual abuse before the age of 18. The invasiveness, continuity, and severity of abuse was related to the location where the abuse took place (the more severe cases were committed in the homes of the victim and perpetrator) and to the circumstances of abuse (relationships with partners/at a party or while caring for a child predicted more severe abuse). The age of the victim (preschool) and an intrafamilial relationship between victim and perpetrator were also related to more invasive, continuous, and severe sexual abuse. The knowledge of characteristics of perpetrator and victim and the context in which sexual abuse occurs can help to better comprehend the nature and correlates of sexual abuse. The results of the present study may contribute to the design of programs for the prevention of sexual abuse to minors.