Evaluation of a Family Systems Intervention for Managing Pediatric Chronic Illness: Mastering Each New Direction (MEND)

Family systems play a crucial, albeit complex, role in pediatric chronic illness. Unfortunately, very few psychosocial interventions are available to help these stressed families navigate the developmental steps of chronic illness. A new intervention (MEND) addresses the needs of these families and applies to a broad range of chronic illnesses. This article presents this family systems intervention as well as includes preliminary program evaluation data on 22 families that graduated from the program. Results show consistently strong effects across an array of psychosocial measures. Conclusions from this preliminary study suggest that families entering MEND present with high levels of stress due to the child's chronic illness, but after MEND, the level of stress and other functioning measures are comparable to those seen in healthy families, suggesting that the program offers a significant benefit to families with pediatric chronic illness.     

What does doodling do?

Doodling is a way of passing the time when bored by a lecture or telephone call. Does it improve or hinder attention to the primary task? To answer this question, 40 participants monitored a monotonous mock telephone message for the names of people coming to a party. Half of the group was randomly assigned to a ‘doodling’ condition where they shaded printed shapes while listening to the telephone call. The doodling group performed better on the monitoring task and recalled 29% more information on a surprise memory test. Unlike many dual task situations, doodling while working can be beneficial. Future research could test whether doodling aids cognitive performance by reducing daydreaming. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

South African Serial Homicide: Offender and Victim Demographics and Crime Scene Actions

There is an abundance of literature on serial homicide from a Western perspective that outlines operational definitions, types of offenders and how they prey upon their victims. However, currently, there is a lack of studies that compare serial homicide in different countries. The current study aims to give an overview of the demographics of serial homicide offenders and victims in South Africa and compare these to the demographics of offenders and victims from other currently available empirical studies of other countries. The sample consisted of 33 out of the total 54 solved series in South Africa between 1936–2007, which includes a total of 33 offenders, 302 victims, and 254 crime scenes. Results of the sample as a whole showed that South African serial homicide offenders are similar to offenders in other countries in terms of their actions at the crime scene and victim choice, with some notable exceptions. Additional analysis looked at the offender's consistency of targeting certain types of victims across their homicide series in comparison with the patterns of serial homicide offenders in other countries. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

HelexKids: A word frequency database for Greek and Cypriot primary school children

In this article, we introduce HelexKids, an online written-word database for Greek-speaking children in primary education (Grades 1 to 6). The database is organized on a grade-by-grade basis, and on a cumulative basis by combining Grade 1 with Grades 2 to 6. It provides values for Zipf, frequency per million, dispersion, estimated word frequency per million, standard word frequency, contextual diversity, orthographic Levenshtein distance, and lemma frequency. These values are derived from 116 textbooks used in primary education in Greece and Cyprus, producing a total of 68,692 different word types. HelexKids was developed to assist researchers in studying language development, educators in selecting age-appropriate items for teaching, as well as writers and authors of educational books for Greek/Cypriot children. The database is open access and can be searched online at www.helexkids.org.     

Using stimulus variation to increase reinforcer efficacy of low preference stimuli

Recent research findings suggest that low preference stimuli can be effective reinforcers. This study compared responding to high preference and low preference stimuli under continuous reinforcement. Results demonstrated that responding was greater when a high preference stimulus was presented. Other research findings suggest that stimulus variation increases the potency of reinforcers perceived to be of high preference. This study extended this line of research by evaluating whether stimulus variation would increase the potency of low preference stimuli. Results demonstrated that when three low preference stimuli were presented in a varied fashion, responding corresponded with the levels obtained when a high preference stimulus was presented. Furthermore, a varied reinforcer presentation of low preference stimuli was found to increase and maintain high percentages of correct responding and on‐task behavior to levels equal to those obtained with a high preference stimulus during a discrete trial preparation. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Enacting national concerns: Anglo‐British accounts of the 2002 Royal Golden Jubilee

Although the study of national identity in social psychology has examined the various ways in which the national group is ‘imagined’, little attention has been paid to the many collective national commemorations, celebrations and rituals of state assumed to unite the nation. This is surprising given the number of celebrations and commemorations which fill the calendars of modern nations throughout the world and which are assumed by social scientists to play some part in the reproduction of the national community. Taking the British Royal Golden Jubilee celebrations of 2002, the present study examines how understandings of Anglo‐British national identity are manifest in conversational interviews during and after these events. In line with previous examinations of Anglo‐Britishness, our respondents typically resisted imagining the national community as a homogenous whole and distanced themselves from depictions of the Jubilee as a nationalistic event. Support for the Jubilee was contingent upon the event being apolitical and inclusive. We suggest that such collective national events could potentially facilitate ways of imagining the national community in terms of diversity and inclusivity rather than homogeneity and exclusivity. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The moderating effects of purchase importance in customer satisfaction process: An empirical investigation

Customer satisfaction continues to draw the interest of researchers and practitioners because it can lead to long term benefits including customer loyalty. Purchase importance plays a role in pre‐purchase process, yet little is known about how it may influence customer satisfaction formation process and loyalty intentions. This study examines the moderating effect of purchase importance in the customer satisfaction formation process and in loyalty intentions. A survey was conducted with customers in a restaurant setting, and structural equation analysis via LISREL was performed. The results show that perceived performance has a stronger influence on satisfaction when purchase importance is low, whereas satisfaction seems to be influenced both by disconfirmation and perceived performance when purchase importance is high. Post‐consumption expectations were found to influence on loyalty intentions under both high and low importance purchase conditions. The implications of these findings are discussed and suggestions for future research are made. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Changes in alcohol intake in response to transdiagnostic cognitive behaviour therapy for eating disorders

Objective

The aim of this study was to examine how alcohol intake changes during and after transdiagnostic cognitive behaviour therapy for eating disorders (CBT-E). Additionally, the paper considers the relationship between alcohol consumption, eating disorder diagnosis and current major depressive episode at the time of first assessment.

Method

One hundred and forty nine outpatients with an eating disorder (body mass index over 17.5) were divided into high or low alcohol intake groups (HIG and LIG) according to their intake at pre-treatment assessment. Their alcohol intake and eating disorder psychopathology were examined over the course of treatment and follow-up.

Results

There was no difference between the groups on response of the eating disorder to treatment. The HIG significantly reduced their alcohol intake following treatment whilst the intake of the LIG remained stable over the course of treatment and follow-up. There were no group differences in major depression and overall severity of eating disorder at baseline.

Conclusions

The response to CBT-E was not influenced by baseline level of alcohol use. The mean alcohol intake of the heavy drinking subjects decreased without being specifically addressed by the treatment.