EMPLOYING TASK ARRANGEMENTS AND VERBAL CONTINGENCIES TO PROMOTE VERBALIZATIONS BETWEEN RETARDED CHILDREN1

This study investigated the effects of arranging task events for interdependence, to increase the probability of social responding. During task interdependence, the subjects, participating in dyads and a four-person group, obtained task materials (a puzzle piece) from their partner before completing their task (appropriately placing the puzzle piece). The verbal contingency required a verbal request to precede a subject's receiving a task material from his partner. The verbal contingency yoked with task interdependence made task completion contingent on the appropriate verbalization. The findings from two experiments suggested that task interdependence was sufficient to increase partner-directed verbalizations for three of the four subjects. When the verbal contingency was added, all subjects increased their requests and other verbalizations to partner. Applied to a four-person group, the verbal contingency yoked with varying levels of task interdependence correspondingly affected the pattern and level of group communications. The greater the task interdependence, i.e., the more members each subject depended on to complete his task, the more complex the social network of verbal contacts, and the higher the level of both requests and other verbalizations for the group.     

Cognitive-behavioral treatment of childhood obsessive-compulsive disorder in community-based clinical practice: clinical significance and benchmarking against efficacy

Objective

To evaluate the feasibility and outcomes of evidence-based (EB) manualized, cognitive-behavioral treatment (CBT) for childhood obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), when delivered in an outpatient community-based specialist clinic.

Method

This study, conducted in an outpatient private clinic in South-East Queensland Australia, involved thirty-three children and adolescents with OCD. Children were assessed at pre- and post-treatment, by means of diagnostic interviews, symptom severity interviews, and self-report. Treatment involved 12 sessions CBT delivered either individually or in small groups and included parental involvement.

Results

Manualized CBT could be transported to the community setting effectively, with 63% of the current sample responding positively, based on post-treatment diagnosis. Significant change was evident across a wide-range of outcomes; including, diagnostic severity, symptom severity, child reported depression and anxiety, and both child and parent reported OCD functional impairment.

Conclusions

This study provides evidence for the transportability of manualized CBT in clinical community practice for pediatric OCD. The next important step is larger community based dissemination and effectiveness studies to advance both research and clinical practice outcomes.     

Reliability of 16 balance tests in individuals with Down syndrome

To assess test-retest reliability scores on 16 balance tests of 21 individuals with Down syndrome whose ages ranged from 5 to 31 yr., participants performed a standing test on firm and soft surfaces with the eyes open and closed, the balance subset of the Bruininks-Oseretsky test, full turn, timed-up-and-go test, forward reach, and sit-to-stand. Each participant completed all 16 tests twice in one day and then again on a subsequent day for a total of 4 sessions. The interclass reliability correlation coefficients (ICC) value for each measure of balance varied considerably by age and sex. Based on having an ICC > .50, only 3 tests were reliable in young males and young females, whereas 5 tests could reliably be used in adult females and 9 tests could reliably be used in adult males. The results of this study raise suspicions as to the reliability of tests commonly used to assess balance and differences in reliability due to age and sex. Results of balance tests should be interpreted with caution in males and females with Down syndrome across the age span.     

The validity of psychotherapy 1

How good is psychotherapy as a tool of research into human nature? There is an orthodox defence of it as a research tool, which relies on showing that interpretations are true of the patient when they satisfy certain criteria. This defence is examined and rejected. The reply is considered that an interpretation which ‘keeps things moving’ is true, or an approximation to the truth. This reply is rejected by comparing and contrasting an interpretation in psychotherapy with one from brainwashing sessions. Two suppositions about psychotherapy (which weaken its discovery powers) are deliberately adopted — the suppositions that the material produced is ‘perspective’ and ‘method’ dependent. An unorthodox defence of psychotherapy is then offered — by means of a watery sense of ‘discover’. This enables us to outline a weak sense in which psychotherapy is a valid enterprise, but one which is still strong enough for research purposes.     

Risk Versus Effort in the Assessment of Motor Fatigue

The choice of probability leffort (COPE) devices require fatigued subjects to choose between risk and effort. In a first experiment, where fatigue was induced by an intense or by a prolonged motor task and where the required effort was perceptual, the fatigue did not generalize to the test mode. A second experiment used motor fatigue of the arm or leg, and tested with arm muscle effort, showing that subjects fatigued with either limb chose riskier alternatives in order to avoid the effort. The data correlated with self-rated fatigue, and closely paralleled earlier work using perceptual fatigue and perceptual effort.     

Response suppression contributes to recency in serial recall

Serial recall is often assumed to involve response suppression: the removal or inhibition of items already recalled so that they are not recalled again. Evidence for response suppression includes repetition inhibition and the separation of erroneous repetitions. Some theorists have suggested that response suppression, by eliminating competing responses, also contributes to recency in forward serial recall. We present experiments in which performance on the final item was examined as a function of whether or not the preceding retrievals entailed suppression of potential response competitors. In line with the predictions of response suppression, recency was found to be reduced when the earlier recall errors consisted of intrusion errors (which leave list items unsuppressed) rather than transposition errors (which involve suppression).     

Visual crowding: a fundamental limit on conscious perception and object recognition

Crowding, the inability to recognize objects in clutter, sets a fundamental limit on conscious visual perception and object recognition throughout most of the visual field. Despite how widespread and essential it is to object recognition, reading and visually guided action, a solid operational definition of what crowding is has only recently become clear. The goal of this review is to provide a broad-based synthesis of the most recent findings in this area, to define what crowding is and is not, and to set the stage for future work that will extend our understanding of crowding well beyond low-level vision. Here we define six diagnostic criteria for what counts as crowding, and further describe factors that both escape and break crowding. All of these lead to the conclusion that crowding occurs at multiple stages in the visual hierarchy.     

The impact of task-irrelevant emotional stimuli on attention in three domains

Whether task-irrelevant emotional stimuli facilitate or disrupt attention performance may depend on a range of factors, such as emotion type, task difficulty, and stimulus duration. Few studies, however, have systematically examined the influence of these factors on attention performance. Sixty-three adults, scoring within a normative range for mood and anxiety symptoms, completed either an easy or difficult version of an attention task measuring three aspects of attention performance: alerting, orienting, and executive attention. Results showed that in the easy task only, threatening versus nonthreatening task-irrelevant emotional faces facilitated orienting regardless of stimulus duration. These effects were no longer significant during the difficult condition. When the easy and difficult conditions were examined together, duration effects emerged such that stimuli of longer durations lead to greater interference, although effects were nonlinear. Findings illustrate that threat-relevant emotional stimuli facilitate attention during tasks with low cognitive load, but underscore the importance of considering a range of task parameters. Results are discussed in the context of adaptive and maladaptive emotion-attention interactions.     

The Good Behavior Game: a best practice candidate as a universal behavioral vaccine

A behavioral vaccine provides an inoculation against morbidity or mortality, impacting physical, mental, or behavior disorders. An historical example of a behavioral vaccine is antiseptic hand washing to reduce childbed fever. In current society, issues with high levels of morbidity, such as substance abuse, delinquency, youth violence, and other behavioral disorders (multiproblems), cry out for a low-cost, widespread strategy as simple as antiseptic hand washing. Congruent research findings from longitudinal studies, twin studies, and other investigations suggest that a possibility might exist for a behavioral vaccine for multiproblem behavior. A simple behavioral strategy called the Good Behavior Game (GBG), which reinforces inhibition in a group context of elementary school, has substantial previous research to consider its use as a behavioral vaccine. The GBG is not a curriculum but rather a simple behavioral procedure from applied behavior analysis. Approximately 20 independent replications of the GBG across different grade levels, different types of students, different settings, and some with long-term follow-up show strong, consistent impact on impulsive, disruptive behaviors of children and teens as well as reductions in substance use or serious antisocial behaviors. The GBG, named as a best practice for the prevention of substance abuse or violent behavior by a number of federal agencies, is unique because it is the only practice implemented by individual teachers that is documented to have long-term effects. Presently, the GBG is only used in a small number of settings. However, near universal use of the GBG, in major political jurisdictions during the elementary years, could substantially reduce the incidence of substance use, antisocial behavior, and other adverse developmental or social consequences at a very modest cost, with very positive cost-effectiveness ratios.