Summer Treatment Program for Preschoolers with Externalizing Behavior Problems: a Preliminary Examination of Parenting Outcomes

Within an at-risk sample of preschoolers with externalizing behavior problems (EBP), the current study examined the initial promise of a multimodal intervention, the Summer Treatment Program for Pre-Kindergarteners (STP-PreK), in improving parenting outcomes. Using an open trial design, 154 parents and their preschool children (73% male; M _age = 5.06 years; 82% Hispanic/Latino background) with at-risk or clinically elevated levels of EBP (57% of which were referred by schools or mental health/medical professionals) completed a baseline and post-treatment assessment. A subsample of 90 families completed a follow-up assessment approximately 6 to 9 months after treatment completion. Parental measures of parenting stress and discipline strategies were collected across all three assessments. Observational data were also collected across all assessments during a 5-min standardized child-led play situation and a 5-min parent-led clean up task. The parenting component of the STP-PreK included a School Readiness Parenting Program (SRPP) of which the behavioral management component was implemented via a Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) adaptation (8 weekly group sessions with 15–20 parents in each group, lack of requirement of “mastery” criteria). All parenting outcomes (both ratings and observed) significantly improved after the intervention (Cohen’s d mean effect size across measures 0.89) with all effects being maintained at the 6–9 month follow-up. These findings highlight the initial promise of our SRPP’s PCIT adaptation in targeting multiple aspects of parenting while yielding comparable parenting skills acquisition compared to traditional individual PCIT.     

Exploring and measuring differences in person-thing orientations

Individuals differ in their orientation toward aspects of the environment. Previous work suggests that some individuals orient primarily toward people, whereas others orient toward things. Women generally orient towards people more than men, and men orient towards things more than women. Person-thing orientation is related to occupational choices. This research examined the structure of person-thing orientation using a combination of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and structural equation modeling. Analyses suggested that thing orientation and person orientation can be measured (1) with a few items; (2) separately from each other; and (3) person orientation and thing orientation are not necessarily bipolar opposites.     

Individual differences in the strength of taxonomic versus thematic relations

Knowledge about word and object meanings can be organized taxonomically (fruits, mammals, etc.) on the basis of shared features or thematically (eating breakfast, taking a dog for a walk, etc.) on the basis of participation in events or scenarios. An eye-tracking study showed that both kinds of knowledge are activated during comprehension of a single spoken word, even when the listener is not required to perform any active task. The results further revealed that an individual's relative activation of taxonomic relations compared to thematic relations predicts that individual's tendency to favor taxonomic over thematic relations when asked to choose between them in a similarity judgment task. These results indicate that individuals differ in the relative strengths of their taxonomic and thematic semantic knowledge and suggest that meaning information is organized in 2 parallel, complementary semantic systems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Agreeableness: Dimension of Personality or Social Desirability Artifact?

Agreeableness is linked to socially valued traits and prosocial motives, so self-reported Agreeableness may be distorted by self-favoring biases (SFB). A three-study multimethod research program explored links between the Big Five dimension of Agreeableness and SFB from three perspectives. First, we examined zero-order relations between Agreeableness and SFB measures (N = 316). Next, we used a round robin design (N = 351) and the Social Relations Model analyses (Kenny, 1994) to partition perceptions of Agreeableness into target and perceiver effects. These effects then were related to SFB concerns, and differential responsiveness to a manipulation of the social desirability of Agreeableness. Study 3 (N = 312) examined a manipulation of Agreeableness as a moderator of the relation between dispositional Agreeableness and interpersonal conflict tactics. Overall, results indicate that Agreeableness is not easily manipulated nor distorted by SFB. Results are discussed in terms of Agreeableness as a substantive system of motives.     

Deciding to defect: the effects of video-game violence on cooperative behavior

This experiment examined the effect of video-game violence on cooperative decision making. Participants (N= 48) were randomly assigned to play either a violent or a nonviolent version of the video game Doom in dyads. Following the video-game task, participants were separated and given an opportunity to choose to cooperate with their partner for mutual gain, withdraw from the interaction, or exploit their partner for their own benefit. Participants in the violent condition were significantly more likely to choose to exploit their partners than participants in the nonviolent condition. These findings suggest that playing violent video games may undermine prosocial motivation and promote exploitive behavior in social interactions.     

Personality development: an introduction toward process approaches to long-term stability and change in persons

This special issue is concerned with the systematic transformation of persons and personalities as they move through their lives. The focus is on developmental processes early in the life course that influence both long-term stability and change. Contributors represent diverse topics and viewpoints, but offer new data on classical issues of personality, including trait structure, self-regulation and internalization, self-evaluation, and self-efficacy. In addition, the issue includes empirical contributions on newer approaches to bullying, developmental processes in psychopathology, the influence of racial and ethnic discrimination on subsequent adjustment, and cultural influences on personality development. The issue also includes a special contribution addressing methodological and statistical advances in dealing with prospective longitudinal data assessing personality over time.     

August Knoblauch and amusia: a nineteenth-century cognitive model of music

Early models of human cognition can be traced to nineteenth-century investigations of brain and behavior. Influential neurologists such as Wernicke, Kussmaul, and Lichtheim constructed diagrammatic models to illustrate current theories of cognition. Language was the most commonly studied cognitive function during this time; however, investigators also studied other cognitive functions, such as music and visual processing. While a number of nineteenth-century neurologists made observations about music abilities in aphasic patients, August Knoblauch, a German physician and anatomist, was the first to propose a diagrammatic model of music (1888/1890). He described a detailed cognitive model of music processing, hypothesized the existence of nine disorders of music production and perception, and coined the term "amusia." Knoblauch's model is the earliest cognitive model of music and is largely unrecognized as an important part of the history of neurology, neuropsychology, and music cognition.     

Failed back surgeries and minnesota multiphasic personality inventory (MMPI) profiles

MMPI profiles were evaluated for 105 prospective surgical patients who had previously undergone surgery or other procedures for treatment of back pain. Patients were classified into groups having undergone zero, one, two, three, or four or more previous surgeries. While all groups demonstrated a characteristicsomatogenic profile, none of the MMPI validity or clinical scales significantly differentiated the groups and there was no relationship between increased number of surgeries and MMPI scale characteristics. These results support the nonoptimistic prognostication of thesomatogenic MMPI profile for surgical intervention for back pain but show no clear relationship of MMPI profile characteristics to degree of experience of previously failed surgery.     

Height and attraction: Do men and women see eye-to-eye?1

Two experiments were conducted to examine the influence of male height on interpresonal attraction. In Experiment 1, short, medium, and tall women evaluated pictures of men whom they believed to be either short, medium, or tall. On the basis of previous research, it was predicted that women's attraction to the men would be an increasing linear function of the men's height. This prediction was not confirmed; men of medium height were seen to be significantly more socially desirable than either short or tall men. This was true whether the female evaluator was short, medium, or tall; women did not differ in their evaluations. In Experiment 2, short, medium, and tall men evaluated the same male stimuli the women had evaluated in Experiment 1. These men not only gave their own evaluation of the male stimuli, but they also estimated how socially desirable the males pictured were to women. While men showed no evidence that they believed height was important to women, their own evaluations revealed that they liked and rated short men more positively than they did tall men. This was true regardless of the height of the male rater. These results were discussed in terms of social stereotypes and the importance of specifying situational context in the prediction of attraction.