Caregiver preference for reinforcement‐based interventions for problem behavior maintained by positive reinforcement

Social validity of behavioral interventions typically is assessed with indirect methods or by determining preferences of the individuals who receive treatment, and direct observation of caregiver preference rarely is described. In this study, preferences of 5 caregivers were determined via a concurrent‐chains procedure. Caregivers were neurotypical, and children had been diagnosed with developmental disabilities and engaged in problem behavior maintained by positive reinforcement. Caregivers were taught to implement noncontingent reinforcement (NCR), differential reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA), and differential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO), and the caregivers selected interventions to implement during sessions with the child after they had demonstrated proficiency in implementing the interventions. Three caregivers preferred DRA, 1 caregiver preferred differential reinforcement procedures, and 1 caregiver did not exhibit a preference. Direct observation of implementation in concurrent‐chains procedures may allow the identification of interventions that are implemented with sufficient integrity and preferred by caregivers.     

The Interaction Between Conscientiousness and General Mental Ability: Support for a Compensatory Interaction in Task Performance

Journal of Business and Psychology - We propose a compensatory interactive influence of conscientiousness and GMA in task performance such that conscientiousness is most beneficial to performance...     

Cultural Values Influence Relations Between Parent Emotion Socialization and Adolescents’ Neural Responses to Peer Rejection

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - Adolescents’ responses to negative social experiences can be influenced by parenting behaviors. This includes how parents react to their...     

Judgments of reachability are independent of visuomotor adaptation

The furthest distance that is judged to be reachable can change after participants have used a tool or if they are led to misjudge the position of their hand. Here we investigated how judged reachability changed when visual feedback about the hand was shifted. We hoped to distinguish between various ways in which visuomotor adaptation could influence judged reachability. Participants had to judge whether they could reach a virtual cube without actually doing so. They indicated whether they could reach this virtual cube by moving their hand. During these hand movements, visual feedback about the position of the hand was shifted in depth, either away from or toward the participant. Participants always adapted to the shifted feedback. In a session in which the hand movements in the presence of visual feedback were mainly in depth, perceived reachability shifted in accordance with the feedback (more distant cubes were judged to be reachable when feedback was shifted further away). In a second session in which the hand movements in the presence of visual feedback were mainly sideways, for some participants perceived reachability shifted in the opposite direction than we expected. The shift in perceived reachability was not correlated with the adaptation to the shift in visual feedback. We conclude that reachability judgments are not directly related to visuomotor adaptation.     

Gender Comparisons of Fat Talk in the United Kingdom and the United States

This study compared different forms of body talk, including ??fat talk,?? among 231 university men and women in central England (UK; n?=?93) and the southeastern United States (US; n?=?138). A 2 (gender) by 2 (country) repeated measures ANOVA across types of body talk (negative, self-accepting, positive) and additional Chi-square analyses revealed that there were differences across gender and between the UK and US cultures. Specifically, UK and US women were more likely to report frequently hearing or perceiving pressure to engage in fat talk than men. US women and men were also more likely to report pressure to join in self-accepting body talk than UK women and men.     

Muscularity Beliefs of Female College Student-Athletes

Female athletes in the United States face the paradoxical challenge of acquiring a degree of muscularity to be successful in their sport, yet they also endure pressure from societal expectations of femininity that often don??t conform with the notion of muscularity. To address research questions about how female student-athletes balance muscularity and femininity, we conducted a mixed-methods study to examine muscularity beliefs among female student-athletes, female college students, and male college student-athletes. We quantitatively examined Drive for Muscularity Scale (DMS) scores from 221 participants attending college in the Midwestern US. Results indicated that female student-athletes reported significantly higher DMS scores than female students, but male student-athletes reported the highest DMS scores in the sample. Qualitative results indicated that female student-athletes wanted to be muscular for these reasons: functionality (45%), health (42%), external gratification (21%), and internal gratification (18%). Only 16% of female student-athletes did not want to be muscular, whereas every male student-athlete reported a desire to be muscular. The results of this study can be used to better understand the unique drive for muscularity among athletes, particularly female college student-athletes who live the paradox of negotiating societal standards of femininity with this desire to be muscular. This enhanced understanding can help create more nuanced interventions for coaches, administrators, and mental health professionals to use to help female student-athletes create space to resist constraining societal gender ideologies. Doing so can help these student-athletes actualize their athletic potential on the field as well as their interpersonal and intrapersonal potential off the field.     

Overvaluation of shape and weight among overweight children and adolescents with loss of control eating

Little is known about the phenomenology of pediatric loss of control (LOC) eating. Overvaluation of shape and weight, however, appears to be diagnostically meaningful among binge eating adults. We explored the significance of shape and weight overvaluation among children and adolescents with LOC eating. Participants (n = 526) included 149 overweight youth with LOC eating and 377 overweight controls (CON). Participants were categorized as those reporting at least moderate overvaluation (LOC-Mod, n = 74; CON-Mod, n = 106) or less than moderate overvaluation (LOC-Low, n = 75; CON-Low, n = 271), and compared on measures of eating-related and general psychopathology. LOC-Mod evidenced lower self-esteem than CON-Low, and greater behavioral problems than CON-Mod and CON-Low, but did not differ from LOC-Low in these domains. With the exception of LOC-Low and CON-Mod, all groups differed on global eating-disorder severity, with LOC-Mod scoring the highest. Overvaluation of shape and weight appears to be of questionable importance in defining subtypes of youth with LOC eating. However, as overvaluation and LOC eating each independently predicts eating-disorder onset, their confluence may confer even further risk for eating-disorder development. Longitudinal studies should address this possibility. Developmentally appropriate discussion about body image disturbance may be indicated in interventions targeting pediatric LOC eating and/or obesity.     

Emotional granularity and borderline personality disorder

This study examined the affective dysregulation component of borderline personality disorder (BPD) from an emotional granularity perspective, which refers to the specificity in which one represents emotions. Forty-six female participants meeting criteria for BPD and 51 female control participants without BPD and Axis I pathology completed tasks that assessed the degree to which participants incorporated information about valence (pleasant-unpleasant) and arousal (calm-activated) in their semantic/conceptual representations of emotions and in using labels to represent emotional reactions. As hypothesized, participants with BPD emphasized valence more and arousal less than control participants did when using emotion terms to label their emotional reactions. Implications and future research directions are discussed.