Child and adolescent psychopathology research: Problems and prospects for the 1990s

In November 1990 the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) convened a special conference of over 100 scientists and leaders to outline specific strategies and research initiatives that should be developed to implement the recently released National Plan for Research on Child and Adolescent Mental Disorders.Participants included journal editors, educators from psychology and psychiatry, representatives from private foundations, and leaders of research program areas in public funding agencies. Critical knowledge gaps were identified in five areas of child and adolescent psychopathology, including depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, conduct disorder, the anxiety disorders, and the developmental disorders. For each of these areas, special emphasis was placed on developing new ideas and obtaining critical input from other areas of investigation. This report summarizes the identified research gaps and recommends research initiatives to implement the National Plan, as outlined by the conference participants.     

Medical expertise asa function of task difficulty

This paper is concerned with factors that disrupt the pattern of forward reasoning characteristic of experts with accurate performance. Two experiments are described. In the first, the performances of cardiologists, psychiatrists, and surgeons in diagnostic explanation of a clinical problem in cardiology were examined. In the second, the performances of cardiologists and endocrinologists in diagnostic explanation of clinical problems within and outside their domains of expertise were examined. The performances of researchers and practicing physicians are also compared. The results of Experiment 1 replicated earlier results regarding the relationship between forward reasoning and accurate diagnosis. There were no differences in recall as a function of expertise. Experts did not show any bias toward using specific knowledge from their own areas of expertise. The results of Experiment 2 showed that the breakdown of forward reasoning was related to the structure of the task. In particular, nonsalient cues induced some backward reasoning even in subjects with accurate diagnoses. Some differences were also found between the types of explanation used by researchers and practitioners. The practitioners referred more to clinical components in their explanations, whereas the researchers focused more on the biomedical components.     

Late Adolescents' Experiences With and Attitudes Toward Videogames1

A total of 229 late adolescents (a large majority 15 to 19 years of age) completed a questionnaire that assesses a broad range of videogame-relevant experiences, preferences, and attitudes. Videogame playing was found to be a more popular, and a more highly regarded, activity among males than females. Gender differences were also found in participants' ratings of their motivations for playing videogames, their evaluations of particular characteristics of videogames, and their selection of their “most favorite” videogame. The differences between frequent and infrequent videogame players appeared to be limited to differences in the extent to which videogame playing is pursued and evaluated as a positive leisure activity, rather than reflecting broad differences in interest or personality. Some relations were found between participants' self-reported personality characteristics (i.e., self-esteem, empathy, conscientiousness, and introversion) and their attitudes toward videogames.     

A Legacy of Silence: Bioethics and the Culture of Pain

For over 20 years the medical literature has carefully documented the undertreatment of all types of pain by physicians. During this same period, as the field of bioethics came of age, the phenomenon of undertreated pain received almost no attention from the bioethics literature. This article takes bioethicists to task for failing to recognize the undertreatment of pain as a major ethical, and not merely a clinical, failing of the medical profession. The nature and extent of the problem of undertreated pain is examined, as well as possible reasons for its disregard by bioethicists. The factors contributing to undertreated pain in the clinical setting are considered, as well as the hazards posed by recent failures to address ethically questionable clinical practices. Finally, suggestions are offered for refocusing the attention of bioethicists to this significant problem.     

Evidence that blocking is due to associative deficit: Blocking history affects the degree of subsequent associative competition

Rats were trained on an appetitive discriminated operant procedure according to a blocking design, in which training with a compound stimulus (A + B) was given with or without prior training with A alone. Stimulus B was then presented in compound with a new stimulus (B + C compound). The ability of Stimulus B to block acquisition of control by Stimulus C was decreased by B having itself been blocked by A during the prior training. The results imply that the mechanism of blocking during the initial blocking procedure was a reduced association between Stimulus B and the reinforcer, and not a performance deficit such as that postulated by comparator models of learning.     

Sensation-seeking and selection of entertainment

The relationship between entertainment activity preference and sensation-seeking was investigated by survey and actual movie selection and viewing. Cardiac rate and rate change was monitored during movie selection and viewing. High sensation-seeking (HSS) females reported preferences for activities centered about alcohol, sexually-explicit materials and ‘rock’ music. HSS males reported preferences for sexually-explicit materials and news/documentary reports. Low sensation-seeking (LSS) males and females reported preferences for the musical stage, theatrical drama and comedy, and romantic/dramatic novels. HSS males and HSS females allotted high proportions of viewing time to an ‘action’ movie, and changed channels more frequently than LSS. The indices of cardiac response utilized in this study were unrelated to movie viewing activities, a result which does not support the ‘optimal level of arousal’ view of sensation-seeking proposed by Zuckerman (1979).     

The changing pattern of perceptual analytic strategies and response selection with practice in a two-choice reaction time task

In the experiment reported here the primary hypothesis proposed, which was supported by the data, was that subjects performing a two-choice self-paced serial RT task would learn to change their strategy of perceptual analysis of signals presented to them as they became progressively more practised. Early in practice each signal is identified as a particular state of the display and an appropriate response is then made. Well practised subjects, however, select their responses by reference to the change or constancy between successive displays. This strategy implies that the assumptions made by the generally accepted simple S-R connectionist model of two-choice serial RT may be quite misleading, since the choice of any particular response must be determined not only by the display state but also by what the previous response had been.     

Locus of control and self-esteem as correlates of role orientation in traditional and nontraditional women

This research attempted to establish relationships between locus of control, self-esteem, and traditional-nontraditional behavior. It was hypothesized that (1) women tending toward internality and high self-esteem should be more likely to manifest nontraditional behaviors, as evidenced through career-oriented roles, and to rank these roles as their primary source of satisfaction; and (2) women tending toward externality and low self-esteem should be more likely to manifest traditional behavior, as evidenced through family-oriented roles, and to rank these roles as their primary source of satisfaction. The sample consisted of 91 White females in a southern metropolitan area. The data were collected using a survey design. As expected, high self-esteem internals were more likely to manifest nontraditional behavior. Contrary to expectation, low self-esteem externals were more nontraditional in role orientation.     

An instrumented method for assessment and remediation of stuttering: A single-subject case study

A single-subject experimental design was used to investigate the feasibility of applying non-invasive laboratory instrumentation for examining speech physiology to assessment and biofeedback-based remediation of stuttering. Physiologic assessment facilitated the development of behavioral goals directed at changing respiratory and phonatory behaviors for this subject. Visual biofeedback therapy produced reduction in respiratory discontinuities and increased phonatory continuity, concomitant with reduced perceivable molar dysfluency. Methods used in this case illustrate a variety of options and problems related to clinical use of instrumentation. Results suggest that signals which represent respiratory, phonatory, and articulatory physiologic events may be clinically practical for evaluating and altering perceivable dysfluency.