Training Parents in Forgiving and Reconciling

Teaching parents how to forgive transgressions of parenting partners may reduce negative emotions, increase positive emotions, and, thus, decrease parenting stress. We implemented a waiting-list design to investigate the efficacy of a 9-hour psychoeducational group intervention, Forgiveness and Reconciliation through Experiencing Empathy (FREE), presented to 27 parents and caregivers of children 0–9 years old. Participants receiving FREE exhibited increased forgiveness of a target offense by the parenting partner and increased forgiveness of all parenting offenses. This study offers initial evidence that an intervention to promote forgiveness and reconciliation in parents could be beneficial and might improve parenting relations.     

Foster Children Caught in Loyalty Conflicts: Implications for Mental Health Treatment Providers

Fifty-two foster parents participated in a two-hour training on the topic of children caught in loyalty conflicts. Prior to and following the training attendees completed measures including one in which they rated their foster children's exposure to 15 different family situations which research indicates are likely to induce feelings of loyalty conflict in children. Analyses of these data indicate that each of the situations was endorsed by between one fourth and one half of the sample. Three-fourths of the foster parents endorsed at least one of the situations, with the average number 5.5. Implications for clinicians working with this population are discussed.     

How not to be a metaethical naturalist –Jesse Prinz on the emotional construction of morals

This paper is an analysis of the performance of one reading of Charles Taylor's general criticisms of naturalist accounts of morality (excluding the issue of moral realism) when measured against a specific naturalist account, in this case J.L. Mackie's moral theory. It is argued that Taylor's criticisms, read in this way, fail to find purchase, despite his singling out of Mackie's theory as a prime example of a theory that exhibits the flaws Taylor believes are inherent in this kind of approach to moral theory. This points the supporter of Taylor's position towards an alternative reading of his challenge to naturalist accounts of morality.     

Suitability Screening During Basic Military Training

Results are presented for suitability screening conducted by the United States Air Force during basic military training. The Lackland Behavioral Questionnaire has been used operationally since 2007, and its use has led to an increase in predictive validity. For the prediction of outcomes during the first 4 years of service, one can identify trainees with a 49% likelihood of being separated for unsuitability and a 56% likelihood of being diagnosed with a mental disorder. A formal suitability screening program allows referrals and recommendations to be made using a combination of empirical evidence and clinical judgment.     

Prospective Memory and Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury: Effects of Cognitive Demand

This study investigated the effects of pediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI) on prospective memory. Fourteen children and 14 adolescents with TBI were compared with 25 and 23 noninjured children and adolescents, respectively. Based on a prefrontal model, the cognitive demand on the ongoing component of a prospective-memory task was manipulated. Overall, those with TBI had poorer prospective-memory performance than their noninjured peers. Performance was worse in a high cognitive-demand condition than a low, and younger children performed worse than adolescents. Decreases in performance from the low- to high-demand conditions were not significantly different between the two children's groups but were between the two adolescents' groups. Furthermore, the age and injury effects were reflected in the performances on executive function tests: the Self-ordered Pointing Task (SOPT), and the Stroop Color Word Interference Test. The Tower of London (TOL), which did not produce age or injury effects, was nevertheless found to be an important predictor of performance on the high-demand task in those with TBI. Although previous research has demonstrated impaired prospective memory performance in children with TBI, this study attempted to explain why this might occur, specifically that the prefrontal regions might be implicated.     

Music and Language Skills of Children with Williams Syndrome

We examined music and language abilities in a group of children with Williams syndrome (WS, n = 19) and a comparison group of normal children (n = 19) equivalent for receptive vocabulary. Consistent with previous reports and the model of Nonverbal Learning Disabilities (Rourke, 1989), the children with WS scored better on verbal than performance measures of the WISC-III, and performance on simpler verbal tasks (e.g., receptive vocabulary) was superior to performance on more complex verbal tasks (e.g., comprehension). Performance on music tests was relatively good, being comparable to mental age based on receptive vocabulary and similar to that of the comparison group. Music and language abilities were moderately correlated for both groups of children. Compared to normal children, the WS group expressed greater liking of music and a greater range of emotional responses to music.     

Detecting performance invalidity in children: Not quite as easy as A,B, C, 1, 2, 3 but automatized sequences appears promising

In adult populations, embedded performance validity indicators are well established, as they are time efficient, resistant to coaching, and allow for more continuous monitoring of effort than standalone measures. Although several recent studies have demonstrated the appropriateness of using standalone validity tests with school-age children, a paucity of pediatric work has examined embedded indicators. The present study investigated the value of a simple automatized sequences task to detect performance invalidity in 439 clinically referred patients with mild head injury aged 8 through 17 years. Sixteen percent of the participants failed the Medical Symptom Validity Test (MSVT). Thirteen percent failed the MSVT and also performed below established cutoffs on either the Test of Memory Malingering or Wechsler Digit Span subtest. The group classified as providing invalid data performed significantly worse than the group passing the MSVT across all sequencing conditions. Sensitivity and specificity for the total time on the sequencing task compared favorably to data produced for many respected adult-based embedded indicators (i.e., sensitivity around 50% when specificity ≥ 90%). Classification statistics for any embedded performance validity test can be expected to be worse in more severely affected populations; however, the current sequencing task appears to have value in detecting invalid performance in relatively high-functioning older children and adolescents. The fact that the task takes less than a couple of minutes to administer makes it especially appealing.     

Eek! A Mickey mouse! The post‐Fuddist recomposition of urban space

Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space, by Michael Sorkin, ed., New York: Noonday Press, 1992, 252 pages, pb $15     

False memories in music listening: exploring the misinformation effect and individual difference factors in auditory memory

ABSTRACT

The study of false memory has had a profound impact on our understanding of how and what we remember, as shown by the misinformation paradigm [Loftus, E. F. (2005). Planting misinformation in the human mind: A 30-year investigation of the malleability of memory. Learning & Memory, 12(4), 361–366. doi:10.1101/lm.94705]. Though misinformation effects have been demonstrated extensively within visual tasks, they have not yet been explored in the realm of non-visual auditory stimuli. Thus, the present study aimed to investigate whether post-event information can create false memories of music listening episodes. In addition, we explored individual difference factors potentially associated with false memory susceptibility in music, including age, suggestibility, personality, and musical training. In two music recognition tasks, participants (N?=?151) listened to an initial music track, which unbeknownst to them was missing an instrument. They were then presented with post-event information which either suggested the presence of the missing instrument or did not. The presence of misinformation resulted in significantly poorer performance on the music recognition tasks (d?=?.43), suggesting the existence of false musical memories. A random forest analysis indicated that none of the individual difference factors assessed were significantly associated with misinformation susceptibility. These findings support previous research on the fallibility of human memory and demonstrate, to some extent, the generality of the misinformation effect to a non-visual auditory domain.