Assessment of Behavioral and Emotional Problems in Infancy: A Systematic Review

Behavioral and emotional problems are highly prevalent in early childhood and represent an important focus of practice for clinical child and pediatric psychologists. Although psychological or psychiatric disorders are not typically diagnosed in children under the age of 2 years, recent research has demonstrated the appropriateness of assessing behavioral and emotional problems during the first 2 years of life (defined throughout as “infancy”). The current paper provides a systematic review of assessment procedures used to identify behavioral and emotional problems during infancy. Existing assessment procedures for infants take the form of parent- or caregiver-report questionnaires, observational coding procedures, and diagnostic classification systems. The questionnaires and observational coding procedures both had substantial psychometric evidence for use with infants, although observational coding may have limited utility in clinical practice. The classification systems have less empirical support for use with infants, and further research is necessary to demonstrate the appropriateness of these procedures with infants. Utilizing the reviewed procedures to assess behavioral and emotional problems in infants can have a substantial impact in research and practice settings, and further research is needed to determine the usefulness of these procedures in developing, testing, and implementing preventive and early intervention programs for infants and their families.     

Affiliative stimuli as primers to prosocial predispositions

Affiliative stimuli are pleasant and highly biologically relevant. Affiliative cues are thought to elicit a prosocial predisposition. Here affiliative and neutral pictures were exposed prior to a reaction time task which consisted in responding to a visual target. Half the participants responded with finger-flexion, a movement frequently involved in prosocial activities. The other half responded with finger extension, a less prosocially compatible movement. Results showed that under the exposure to affiliative pictures, as compared to neutral ones, participants who used finger flexion were faster, while those using finger extension were slower. Performance benefits to the task, when flexing the finger, together with performance costs, when extending it, indicate the relevance of movement compatibility to the context. These findings put forward a possible link between affiliative primers and motor preparation to facilitate a repertoire of movements related to prosocial predispositions including finger flexion.     

Successful adaptation of gait in healthy older adults during dual-task treadmill walking

Dual-task methods have been used to demonstrate increased prioritization of walking performance over cognition in healthy aging. This is expressed as greater dual-task costs in cognitive performance than in walking. However, other research shows that older adults can prioritize cognitive performance over walking when instructed to do so. We asked whether age-related cognitive prioritization would emerge by experimentally manipulating cognitive difficulty. Young and older adults performed mental arithmetic at two levels of difficulty, alone or while walking. Electromyography and footswitches were used to measure muscle activity and stride parameters. Under high cognitive load, older adults increased their stride time, stride length, and hamstring activity, while maintaining their cognitive performance. Young adults showed negligible dual-task costs in each domain. The older adults appeared to successfully adapt their stride in response to high cognitive demands. The results have implications for neural models of gait regulation, and age differences in task emphasis.     

Musicians' working memory for tones, words, and pseudowords

Studies investigating factors that influence tone recognition generally use recognition tests, whereas the majority of the studies on verbal material use self-generated responses in the form of serial recall tests. In the present study we intended to investigate whether tonal and verbal materials share the same cognitive mechanisms, by presenting an experimental instrument that evaluates short-term and working memories for tones, using self-generated sung responses that may be compared to verbal tests. This paradigm was designed according to the same structure of the forward and backward digit span tests, but using digits, pseudowords, and tones as stimuli. The profile of amateur singers and professional singers in these tests was compared in forward and backward digit, pseudoword, tone, and contour spans. In addition, an absolute pitch experimental group was included, in order to observe the possible use of verbal labels in tone memorization tasks. In general, we observed that musical schooling has a slight positive influence on the recall of tones, as opposed to verbal material, which is not influenced by musical schooling. Furthermore, the ability to reproduce melodic contours (up and down patterns) is generally higher than the ability to reproduce exact tone sequences. However, backward spans were lower than forward spans for all stimuli (digits, pseudowords, tones, contour). Curiously, backward spans were disproportionately lower for tones than for verbal material-that is, the requirement to recall sequences in backward rather than forward order seems to differentially affect tonal stimuli. This difference does not vary according to musical expertise.     

Diagnosenübergreifende Psychoedukation: ?Notbehelf“ oder ?Mittel der Wahl“?

Despite evidence for its efficacy, diagnosis-specific psychoeducation is not routinely applied because the patient numbers per diagnosis are often too low. In an exploratory randomized and controlled trial the efficacy of a bifocal diagnosis-independent group program was tested on inpatients of the Psychiatric Hospital of the University of Basel (N?=?82) regarding clinical variables, readmission and compliance as well as course-relevant subjective attitudes over a follow-up period of 12 months by means of quantitative as well as qualitative methods. Significant group differences were found regarding compliance at 3 months and the suicide rate, both in favour of the intervention group. For most other outcome variables clear advantages for psychoeducation could be shown. A first analysis of qualitative data revealed a more favourable development in the psychoeducation group, which was statistically significant. The to date sole findings on diagnosis-independent psychoeduation justify its clinical application and further investigation.     

Parent Training Outcomes Among Young Children with Callous–Unemotional Conduct Problems with or at Risk for Developmental Delay

School-aged children with conduct problems and high levels of callous–unemotional (i.e., lack of empathy, guilt, and lack of caring behaviors) traits (CP + CU) tend to yield less benefit from traditional interventions than do their low-CU counterparts, particularly with respect to conduct problem (CP) outcomes. To date, little is known about treatment response among young children with CP + CU, particularly those with or at risk for developmental delay. Components of parent–child interaction therapy (PCIT), a parent training program effective at reducing CP in young children, have compelling theoretical support for addressing core deficits unique to children with CP + CU and have been used successfully with young children with developmental delay. Our first aim was to test the psychometric properties of a measure of CU traits in preschool children with and without developmental delay. Our second aim was to test whether CU traits predicted post-treatment CP after controlling for initial levels of CP. Participants were 63 families of young children (mean age = 3.87 years), with or at risk for developmental delay, who presented with elevated CP and were treated in a hospital-based outpatient clinic. Results indicated that developmentally delayed children with high levels of CU traits, but not children at risk for delay due to premature birth, showed significantly poorer CP outcomes following treatment with PCIT than did children scoring low on CU traits, even after controlling for initial CP severity. The implications of these findings with regard to treating and preventing severe disruptive behaviors among young children with CP + CU are discussed.     

Parent–Child Cultural Value Gaps and Depressive Symptoms Among Mexican American Youth

Cultural value gaps between Mexican American parents and their children are hypothesized to place youth at risk for poor mental health outcomes. While most studies examine these gaps on broad measures of acculturation, the present study examined value gaps in affiliative obedience, a cultural value that has at its core the belief that respect and deference must be shown to parents and adults. The present study hypothesized that adolescents would exhibit greater depressive symptoms when youth demonstrated lower levels of affiliative obedience than their mothers. Moreover, we examined whether gender, nativity status, and age predicted cultural value gaps and moderated the relationship between gaps and depressive symptoms. These questions were evaluated in a school-based sample of 159 Mexican American families whose children were either US born (n = 82) or foreign-born (n = 77). Twenty-five percent of the sample demonstrated a cultural value gap where youth endorsed lower levels of affiliative obedience than their parents, and this group reported the greatest depressive symptoms. Age moderated this relationship, and the greatest association between cultural value gaps and depression was found among the older group of early adolescents.     

Problematic eating behaviors and nutritional status in 7 to 12 year-old Chilean children

Overweight and obesity are medical conditions that require a multidisciplinary analysis of their causes and treatment. In Chile a sustained increase in the presence of obesity and excess weight has been observed in children. However, the amount and the dynamics of the aforementioned problematic eating behaviours in Chilean children are unknown. The aim of this study was to assess the relationship between restrained, external, and emotional eating, and variations in body mass index (BMI) in Chilean children. Consequently, 453 children from 7 to 12 years of age responded to the Children's Dutch Eating Behaviour Questionnaire, Spanish version. In addition, their anthropometric data were obtained. A positive association was found between restrained eating and BMI, and a negative correlation between external eating and BMI. Emotional eating demonstrated a modest inverse relationship with BMI. A significant interaction between problematic behaviour and nutritional status (normal-weight, overweight, obese) was revealed. Restrained eating was characteristic of obese children whereas external eating of normal-weight children. These results suggest that problematic eating behaviours and their relationship with body weight are similar to those described in studies in Europe.     

Fuzzy Identities for an Inclusive Anglohispanic Dialogue

When constructed in linear terms, cultures and identities misrepresent other people, constructing crisp boundaries that separate groups as if completely different. To demonstrate the negative impact of such views, I analyze cultural texts such as songs, films, and Web pages, showing the intercultural complexity existing in different constructions of Mexicanness as part of the dialogue arising in the political, social, and cultural interaction between Mexico and the United States. I emphasize the contrast between examples that reinforce identities that can be interpreted as fuzzy and inclusive, against those promoting and generating discrimination and exclusion.     

Effect of Nonspecific Chronic Low Back Pain on Walking Economy: An Observational Study

The authors investigated the effects of chronic low back pain (LBP) and walking speed (WS) on metabolic power and cost of transport (CT). Subjects with chronic nonspecific LBP (LBP group [LG]; n = 9) and healthy (control group [CG]; n = 9) were included. The test battery was divided into 3 blocks according to WS as follows: preferred self-selected speed (PS), and lower and higher than the PS. In each block, the volunteers walked 5 min, during which oxygen consumption was measured. Although without differences between groups, the LG had CT lower in slower speeds than in faster speeds. Walking speed affected CT only in the LG, which the group had the greatest walking economy at slower speeds.