Preliminary evidence of the impact of early childhood maltreatment and a preventive intervention on neural patterns of response inhibition in early adolescence

Maltreated youths in foster care often experience negative developmental and psychological outcomes, which have been linked with poor response inhibition. Recent evidence suggests that childhood maltreatment is also associated with alterations in the neural circuitry underlying response inhibition. However, a burgeoning line of research has begun to explore the mitigating effects of preventive interventions on neural functioning. The current study used event‐related functional magnetic resonance imaging to explore the impact of early childhood maltreatment and a preventive intervention on response inhibition in early adolescence. Thirty‐six demographically similar adolescents (ages 9–14 years) completed a Go/NoGo task. The sample included nonmaltreated adolescents (n = 14) and maltreated adolescents who were in foster care as preschoolers and randomly assigned to receive services as usual (n = 11) or a preventive intervention, Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care for Preschoolers (n = 11). The groups demonstrated similar behavioral performance but significantly different neural patterns. The maltreated adolescents who received services as usual demonstrated subcortical hypoactivity during successful response inhibition and subcortical hyperactivity during unsuccessful response inhibition. In contrast, the nonmaltreated adolescents and maltreated adolescents who received the intervention exhibited strikingly similar neural patterns during successful response inhibition, but the maltreated adolescents who received the intervention demonstrated prefrontal hypoactivity during unsuccessful response inhibition. These findings offer preliminary evidence that early childhood maltreatment alters the neural patterns underlying response inhibition in early adolescence and that participating in a preventive intervention could mitigate maltreatment‐related effects on these neural systems.     

Televised sexual content and parental mediation: Influences on adolescent sexuality

Little research has been conducted to examine the influence of exposure to televised sexual content on adolescent sexuality or how parental intervention may reduce negative effects of viewing such content. This study uses self-report data from 1,012 adolescents to investigate the relations among exposure to sexually suggestive programming, parental mediation strategies, and three types of adolescent sexuality outcomes: participation in oral sex and sexual intercourse, future intentions to engage in these behaviors, and sex expectancies. As predicted, exposure to sexual content was associated with an increased likelihood of engaging in sexual behaviors, increased intentions to do so in the future, and more positive sex expectancies. Often, parental mediation strategies were a significant factor in moderating these potential media influences.     

The Impact of Social Threat on Worldview and Ideological Attitudes

Research has shown that social threat correlates with ideological authoritarianism, but the issues of causal direction and specificity of threat to particular ideological attitudes remain unclear. Here, a theoretical model is proposed in which social threat has an impact on authoritarianism specifically, with the effect mediated through social worldview. The model was experimentally tested with a sample of undergraduates who responded to one of three hypothetical scenarios describing a future New Zealand that was secure, threatening, or essentially unaltered. Both threat and security influenced social worldview, but only threat influenced authoritarianism, with differential effects on two factorially distinct subdimensions (conservative and authoritarian social control attitudes) and with the effects of threat mediated through worldview. There was a weak effect of threat on social dominance that was entirely mediated through authoritarianism. The findings support the proposed theoretical model of how personal and social contextual factors causally affect people's social worldviews and ideological attitudes.     

Personality and Spirituality: Christian Prayer and Eastern Meditation Are Not the Same

A random sample of 1,033 adults in an Australian community survey completed a form containing the abbreviated Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire together with questions about the practice of prayer and Eastern meditation. While prayer was associated with low psychoticism scores, Eastern meditation was associated with high psychoticism scores.     

Information-motivation-behavioral skills model-based HIV risk behavior change intervention for inner-city high school youth.

This study assessed the effects of 3 theoretically grounded, school-based HIV prevention interventions on inner-city minority high school students' levels of HIV prevention information, motivation, behavioral skills, and behavior. It involved a quasi-experimental controlled trial comparing classroom-based, peer-based, and combined classroom- and peer-based HIV prevention interventions with a standard-of-care control condition in 4 urban high schools (N = 1,532, primarily 9th-grade students). At 12 months postintervention, the classroom-based intervention resulted in sustained changes in HIV prevention behavior. This article discusses why both of the interventions involving peers were less effective than the classroom-based intervention at the 12-month follow-up and, more generally, suggests a set of possible limiting conditions for the efficacy of peer-based interventions.     

A comparison of general and specific instructions to promote task engagement and completion by a young man with Asperger syndrome

Previous research has suggested that the topography of instructions (general vs. specific) may influence the likelihood that young children comply with instructions. The purpose of the current study was to compare the rates of task completion of a young man diagnosed with Asperger syndrome when provided with general and specific instructions pertaining to the task. The results showed that specific instructions occasioned higher levels of task completion, even when no differential reinforcement contingencies were in place.     

Contextual interference effect: elaborative processing or forgetting-reconstruction? A post hoc analysis of transcranial magnetic stimulation-induced effects on motor learning

The elaborative-processing and forgetting-reconstruction hypotheses are the 2 principal explanations for the contextual interference (CI) effect. The present authors' purpose was to identify which of these 2 hypotheses better accounts for the CI effect. They synchronized single transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) pulses to each intertrial interval to modulate information processing during Blocked and Random Practice conditions. Participants practiced 3 arm tasks with either a Blocked or Random Practice order. The 3 stimulation conditions (No TMS, TMS, Sham TMS) by 2-practice order (Blocked, Random) between-participant design resulted in 6 experimental groups. Without TMS, motor learning increased under Random Practice. With TMS, this learning benefit diminished. These results support the elaborative-processing hypothesis by showing that perturbing information processing, evoked by Random Practice, deteriorates the learning benefit. Unlike the prediction of the forgetting-reconstruction hypothesis, adding perturbation during Blocked Practice did not significantly enhance motor learning.     

Evidence against a speed limit in multiple-object tracking

Everyday tasks often require us to keep track of multiple objects in dynamic scenes. Past studies show that tracking becomes more difficult as objects move faster. In the present study, we show that this trade-off may not be due to increased speed itself but may, instead, be due to the increased crowding that usually accompanies increases in speed. Here, we isolate changes in speed from variations in crowding, by projecting a tracking display either onto a small area at the center of a hemispheric projection dome or onto the entire dome. Use of the larger display increased retinal image size and object speed by a factor of 4 but did not increase interobject crowding. Results showed that tracking accuracy was equally good in the large-display condition, even when the objects traveled far into the visual periphery. Accuracy was also not reduced when we tested object speeds that limited performance in the small-display condition. These results, along with a reinterpretation of past studies, suggest that we might be able to track multiple moving objects as fast as we can a single moving object, once the effect of object crowding is eliminated.     

Train‐the‐trainer: Methodology to learn the cognitive interview

Research has indicated that police may not receive enough training in interviewing cooperative witnesses, specifically in use of the cognitive interview (CI). Practically, for the CI to be effective in real‐world investigations, police investigators must be trained by law enforcement trainers. We conducted a three‐phase experiment to examine the feasibility of training experienced law enforcement trainers who would then train others to conduct the CI. We instructed Federal Bureau of Investigation and local law enforcement trainers about the CI (Phase I); law enforcement trainers from both agencies (n = 4, 100% male, mean age = 50 years) instructed university students (n = 25, 59% female, mean age = 21 years) to conduct either the CI or a standard law enforcement interview (Phase II); the student interviewers then interviewed other student witnesses (n = 50, 73% female, mean age = 22 years), who had watched a simulated crime (phase III). Compared with standard training, interviews conducted by those trained by CI‐trained instructors contained more information and at a higher accuracy rate and with fewer suggestive questions.     

Establishing initial auditory‐visual conditional discriminations and emergence of initial tacts in young children with autism spectrum disorder

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often display impaired listener skills, and few studies have evaluated procedures for establishing initial auditory‐visual conditional discrimination skills. We developed and evaluated a treatment package for training initial auditory‐visual conditional discriminations based on the extant research on training such discriminations in children with ASD with at least some preexisting skills in this area. The treatment package included (a) conditional‐only training, (b) prompting the participant to echo the sample stimulus as a differential observing response, (c) prompting correct selection responses using an identity‐match prompt, (d) using progressively delayed prompts, and (e) repeating trials until the participant emitted an independent correct response. Results indicated all participants mastered all listener targets, and the two participants for whom we tested the emergence of corresponding tacts showed mastery of most tacts without direct training. We discuss these results relative to prior research on listener skills and tacts.