Suicide Attempts in Preadolescent Child Psychiatry Inpatients

This paper describes a preliminary study examining the relative power of measures of perceived family support, hopelessness, and depression for the classification of suicide attempters and nonattempters in a series of 8- to 13-year-old psychiatric inpatients. Results of a stepwise discriminant-function analysis indicated that a measure of a child's perceived family support discriminated between suicide attempters and nonattempters with an 88% accuracy rate. The addition of measures of hopelessness and depression at later steps did not lead to improved classification. The results are interpreted as providing strong support for a link between suicide attempts in children and perceptions of low family support.     

Depth of Field: Using photographs and narratives to explore and reflect on ageing

The learning landscape of the higher education environment is changing, with an increased focus over the past decade on how educators might begin to cultivate reflective skills in health professions students. In addition, changing professional requirements demand that health professionals are adequately prepared to practise in today’s complex healthcare systems, including responding to changing demographics of population ageing. In this educational case study, we will share how we (a group of education, medical and nursing academics) developed ‘Depth of Field: Exploring Ageing’ a digital, consumer-driven, interprofessional reflective learning resource that uses photographs, narrative and small-group work to strengthen reflective capacity in current and/or future health professionals.     

Promoting Preschoolers’ Emotional Competence Through Prosocial TV and Mobile App Use

This study explored the relationship between preschoolers’ exposure to Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood television programming and its accompanying mobile app and preschoolers’ emotion knowledge and use of emotion regulation strategies. An experiment involving 121 parent-child dyads from 3 US metro areas found that children who played with the Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood app, and those who both played with the app and watched episodes of the program, employed the emotion regulation strategies taught by Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood media more frequently 1 month later than children in a control condition. Preschoolers (3- and 4-year-olds) also exhibited higher levels of emotion knowledge 1 month after playing with the app. In addition, watching Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood TV episodes in the home led to increases in parents’ provision of active mediation. Implications for families, educators, and producers of educational media content are discussed.     

Using intraverbal prompts to increase divergent intraverbal responses by a child with autism

We examined the effectiveness of intraverbal prompts to increase the number of divergent responses to categorical questions composed of compound stimuli (e.g., Name some red things) for a 6‐year‐old child with autism. The intraverbal prompts involved providing the function, feature, and class of the target responses. A multiple probe across behaviors design was used. Results indicated that the child's total number of divergent responses was increased and maintained during 2‐week follow‐up probe trials. Novel responses were observed across conditions.     

Fear Develops to the Conditioned Stimulus and to the Context during Classical Eyeblink Conditioning in Rats

In classical eyeblink conditioning, non-specific emotional responses to the aversive shock unconditioned stimulus (US), which are presumed to coincide with the development of fear, occur early in conditioning and precede the emergence of eyeblink responses. This two-process learning model was examined by concurrently measuring fear and eyeblink conditioning in the freely moving rat. Freezing served as an index of fear in animals and was measured during the inter-trial intervals in the training context and during a tone conditioned stimulus (CS) presented in a novel context. Animals that received CS-US pairings exhibited elevated levels of fear to the context and CS early in training that decreased over sessions, while eyeblink conditioned responses (CRs) developed gradually during acquisition and decreased during extinction. Random CS-US presentations produced a similar pattern of fear responses to the context and CS as paired presentations despite low eyeblink CR percentages, indicating that fear responding was decreased independent of high levels of learned eyeblink responding. The results of paired training were consistent with two-process models of conditioning that postulate that early emotional responding facilitates subsequent motor learning, but measures from random control animals demonstrate that partial CS-US contingencies produce decrements in fear despite low levels of eyeblink CRs. These findings suggest a relationship between CS-US contingency and fear levels during eyeblink conditioning, and may serve to clarify further the role that fear conditioning plays in this simple paradigm.     

Just the facts or just for fun? Children's understanding of and sensitivity to retelling contexts

Adults appear to recognize that different memory sharing contexts, such as telling a story to a friend at a party versus providing eyewitness testimony, vary in their accuracy demands and adjust their retellings accordingly. There is less evidence that children are able to make the same distinctions. In the present two‐part experiment, we first tested 6–8‐year‐old children's beliefs about the accuracy requirements of different memory sharing contexts that varied on the listener's implicit expectation about accuracy. Children were then read a short story and were given retelling instructions that emphasized accuracy or entertainment. Results from the first task indicated that children evidence a significant truth bias, suggesting that they believe accurate retellings are preferred regardless of context. Despite this, children did appear to adjust their retellings as a function of context, with retellings in the high accuracy condition including more verbatim and less error statements. Finally, children who evidenced a stronger truth bias were less likely to employ the language of storytelling by producing lower‐quality narratives. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Peer Observed Interaction and Structured Evaluation (POISE): A Canadian Experience with Peer Supervision for Genetic Counselors

Peer observation, while often used in other professions, has not been formally applied in genetic counseling. The objective of this study was to pilot a method of peer evaluation whereby genetic counselors observed, and were observed by, each other during patient interaction. All of the available genetic counselors participated in both rounds of the pilot study (six in round one, seven in round two). The genetic counselors that observed the session used an observation room. Most participants reported learning a new skill. Sensitivity to, and comfort with, the feedback process improved. We conclude that Peer-Observed Interaction and Structured Evaluation (POISE) provides an opportunity to refresh counseling approaches and develop feedback skills without causing undue team discord. This new approach to peer supervision in genetic counselling offers a live observation approach for genetic counsellor supervision.     

The tooth,the whole tooth and nothing but the tooth: how belief in the Tooth Fairy can engender false memories

To examine how children's fantasy beliefs can affect memory for their experiences, 5‐ and 6‐year‐olds with differing levels of belief in the reality of the Tooth Fairy were prompted to recall their most recent primary tooth loss in either a truthful or fun manner. Many of the children who fully believed in the existence of the Tooth Fairy reported supernatural experiences consistent with the myth under both sets of recall instructions, whereas those who realized the fictionality of the myth recalled mainly realistic experiences. However, those children with equivocal beliefs evidenced a different pattern under each set of instructions, recalling mainly realistic experiences when asked to be truthful and reporting many fantastical experiences when prompted to relate the tooth loss in a fun manner. These findings suggest that children's beliefs in the reality of fantastic phenomena can give rise to genuine constructive memory errors in line with their fantasies. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Resurgence Following Higher or Lower Quality Alternative Reinforcement

Resurgence is a temporary increase in a previously suppressed target behavior following a worsening in reinforcement conditions. Previous studies have examined how higher rates or magnitudes of alternative reinforcement affect suppression of the target behavior and subsequent resurgence. However, there has been no investigation of the effects of higher versus lower qualities of alternative reinforcement on resurgence. Using a three-phase resurgence preparation with rats, the present experiments examined the effects of an alternative reinforcer that was of higher (Experiment 1) or lower (Experiment 2) quality than the reinforcer that had previously maintained the target behavior. The results of both experiments showed greater reductions in target behavior with a higher quality alternative reinforcer and larger increases in target responding when a higher quality alternative reinforcer was removed. Along with prior findings with higher rates and magnitudes of alternative reinforcement, these findings suggest that variations in reinforcer dimensions that increase the efficacy of alternative reinforcement also tend to increase resurgence when alternative reinforcement is removed. The results are discussed in terms of the resurgence as choice in context model and in terms of potential clinical implications.