FUNCTIONAL ASSESSMENT,CURRICULAR REVISION,AND SEVERE BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS

An adolescent female with multiple handicaps and a long history of severely disruptive behavior participated in a functional assessment linked directly to specific revisions in her school curriculum. During Phase 1, reversal designs were used to test hypotheses pertaining to antecedent and auricular influences on problem behavior. During Phase 2, a multiple baseline across afternoon and morning time periods demonstrated that the auricular revisions were effective in eliminating severely disruptive behavior and increasing on-task responding. Data also showed that inappropriate “psychotic” speech was reduced and appropriate social interactions were increased. Follow-up results showed that the changes were maintained throughout the school year. Questionnaire data provided social validation of the procedures and outcomes. The findings are discussed in relation to their implications for functional assessment, individualized curricula, and positive programming for students with disabilities and serious behavior problems.     

Family Processes and Treatment Outcome in the MTA: Negative/Ineffective Parenting Practices in Relation to Multimodal Treatment

To elucidate processes underlying therapeutic change in a large-scale randomized clinical trial, we examined whether alterations in self-reported parenting practices were associated with the effects of behavioral, medication, or combination treatments on teacher-reported outcomes (disruptive behavior, social skills, internalizing symptoms) in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Participants were 579 children with Combined-type ADHD, aged 7–9.9 years, in the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (MTA). We uncovered 2 second-order factors of parenting practices, entitled Positive Involvement and Negative/Ineffective Discipline. Although Positive Involvement was not associated with amelioration of the school-based outcome measures, reductions in Negative/Ineffective Discipline mediated improvement in children's social skills at school. For families showing the greatest reductions in Negative/Ineffective Discipline, effects of combined medication plus behavioral treatment were pronounced in relation to regular community care. Furthermore, only in combination treatment (and not in behavioral treatment alone) was decreased Negative/Ineffective Discipline associated with reduction in children's disruptive behavior at school. Here, children in families receiving combination treatment who showed the greatest reductions in Negative/Ineffective Discipline had teacher-reported disruptive behavior that was essentially normalized. Overall, the success of combination treatment for important school-related outcomes appears related to reductions in negative and ineffective parenting practices at home; we discuss problems in interpreting the temporal sequencing of such process-outcome linkages and the means by which multimodal treatment may be mediated by psychosocial processes related to parenting.     

Conceptual versus Perceptual Priming in Incomplete Picture Identification

This paper examined conceptual versus perceptual priming in identification of incomplete pictures by using a short-term priming paradigm, in which information that may be useful in identifying a fragmented target is presented just prior to the target’s presentation. The target was a picture that slowly and continuously became complete and the participants were required to press a key as soon as they knew what it was. Each target was preceded by a visual prime. The nature of this prime varied from very conceptual (e.g., the name of the picture’s category) to very perceptual (e.g., a similar-shaped pictorial prime from a different category). Primes also included those that combined perceptual and conceptual information (e.g., names or images of the target picture). Across three experiments, conceptual primes were effective while the purely perceptual primes were not. Accordingly, we conclude that pictures in this type of task are identified primarily by conceptual processing, with perceptual processing contributing relatively little.     

Schizophrenia and the Developmental Moratorium

Jay B. Sisun is a Clinical Research Assistant at Taunton State Hospital. Glen A. Eskedal is the Chair and Professor of Education and Human Services at Suffolk University. Of challenge to developmental psychologists and mental health practitioners is the management of positive and negative symptoms associated with schizophrenia and their effects on mastering psychosocial developmental tasks. The intent of this article is to provide specific information pertinent to understanding this disorder, to understand the age-appropriate struggle for individuation, and to offer recommendations for effective treatment.     

Dimensions of impulsivity and aggression associated with suicide attempts among bipolar patients: a preliminary study

Impulsivity and hostility are often thought to be interrelated among depressed patients with suicidal behavior, but few studies have examined this relationship empirically. In this study, we assessed trait impulsivity and hostility among 52 DSM-IV bipolar subjects with and without histories of suicide attempts. Impulsivity and hostility were correlated among attempters (r = .41, p = .03) but not non-attempters (r = .22, p = .28). As compared to non-attempters, attempters had significantly higher levels of overall hostility, more extensive subcomponents of hostility, and a trend toward higher overall impulsivity. Associations between lifetime suicide attempts and overall hostility were significant while controlling for current depression severity and lifetime illness duration. Aggression and impulsivity appear linked among bipolar patients with lifetime suicide attempts but may be independent constructs among non-attempters. The presence of both factors may elevate risk for suicidal behavior.     

Beyond binary judgments: Prime validity modulates masked repetition priming in the naming task

Bodner and Masson (2001) reported that masked repetition priming of lexical decisions is often greater when the repetition primes appear on a high, rather than a low, proportion of trials. They suggested that processing episodes are constructed for masked primes and that recruitment of those episodes is affected by the probability that the prime will be useful for processing the target. If context-sensitive recruitment of primes is a general mechanism, a similar effect should also occur in a nonbinary response task. In accord with this hypothesis, using the naming task and a 45-msec prime duration, we show that masked repetition priming effects for uppercase words, case-alternated words, and pseudohomophones were greater when .8 rather than .2 of the trials involved repetition (vs. unrelated) primes. Prime validity effects are consistent with a memory recruitment view of priming but may be difficult to explain using activation-based mechanisms.     

Pathways of Economic Influence on Adolescent Adjustment

An important part of a science aimed at the prevention of human dysfunction involves the development of empirically based models that identify processes of risk for or protection from emotional distress or behavioral problems over time. The present study developed and evaluated such a model that proposed two pathways through which family economic pressure was expected to influence change in adolescent internalizing symptoms (depression and anxiety) during the period from the eighth to the tenth grades. A total of 377 rural families in a midwestern state provided data for the analyses. The results were generally consistent with the conceptual model in that family economic pressure increased adolescent perceptions of family economic hardship, which, in turn, reduced the adolescent's sense of control or mastery over time. Lowered mastery was associated with increases in emotional distress. Also consistent with the model, prior levels of mastery appeared to reduce the magnitude of economic stress experienced by the adolescent, whereas prior emotional distress intensified the economic stress process. Although gender differences were found in these processes, the overall pattern of results suggests that girls and boys are both at risk for internalizing problems when families experience economic pressure. Implicatios of the findings for the dvelopment of effective preventive interventions with financially stressed families in rural areas are discussed.     

The tasks of self-managing hepatitis C: the significance of disclosure

The narratives of those with hepatitis C were viewed through the lens of Corbin and Strauss' [Corbin, J., & Strauss, A. (1988). Unending work and care: Managing chronic illness at home. The Jossey-Bass health series and The Jossey-Bass social and behavioral science series. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.] self-management model for chronic illness, using qualitative methodology. Fifteen Australian hepatitis C positive interviewees described the challenges and turning points in adjusting to their diagnosis. The data were analysed using open- and closed-coding methods. Support was found for a self-management model encompassing medical, emotional and life role facets for those adjusting to life with hepatitis C. Unique challenges emerged beyond those described by Corbin and Strauss (1988), namely that disclosure impacted both positively and negatively on the tasks of self-management. It was concluded that self-management may be compromised by disclosure, particularly distress derived from hepatitis C-related stigma. The self-management tasks described contribute to broadening clinicians' understanding of the challenges faced by those living with hepatitis C.     

Test context affects recollection and familiarity ratings: implications for measuring recognition experiences

The binary remember/know task requires participants to dichotomize their subjective recognition experiences into those with recollection and those only with familiarity. Many variables have produced dissociative effects on remember/know judgments. In contrast, having participants make independent recollection/familiarity ratings has consistently produced parallel effects, suggesting the dissociations may be artifacts of using binary judgments. Bodner and Lindsay (2003) reported a test-list context effect with binary judgments: Increased remembering but decreased knowing for a set of critical items tested with a set of less-memorable (vs. more-memorable) items. Here we report a parallel effect of test-list context on recollection and familiarity ratings, induced by a shift in response bias. We argue that independent ratings are preferable to binary judgments because they allow participants to directly report the co-occurrence of recollection and familiarity for each item. Implications for the measurement of self-reported recognition experiences, and for accounts of recognition memory, are discussed.