Extreme thinking in clinically depressed adolescents: Results from the Treatment for Adolescents with Depression Study (TADS)

The purpose of this report is to examine relations between extreme thinking, as measured by the Dysfunctional Attitudes Scale, and the maintenance of gains among adolescents who participated in the Treatment for Adolescents with Depression Study (TADS). We examine extreme thinking among 327 adolescents (mean age = 14.56, 57% female, 75% White) who received cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), fluoxetine (FLX), or a combination of CBT and FLX (COMB). Among those who met remission status on the Children’s Depression Rating Scale - Revised (CDRS-R ≤ 28; 56 at week 12, 79 at week 18) extreme thinking did not predict failure to maintain remission. This is in contrast to findings with depressed adults. Treatment influenced level of extreme thinking, and this appeared to be driven by greater endorsement of positively valenced beliefs as opposed to a decrease in negatively valenced beliefs. Developmental or investigation characteristics may account for the discrepancy in findings.     

Magnitude effects for experienced rewards at short delays in the escalating interest task

A first-person shooter video game was adapted for the study of choice between smaller sooner and larger later rewards. Participants chose when to fire a weapon that increased in damage potential over a short interval. When the delay to maximum damage was shorter (5–8 s), people showed greater sensitivity to the consequences of their choices than when the delay was longer (17–20 s). Participants also evidenced a magnitude effect by waiting proportionally longer when the damage magnitudes were doubled for all rewards. The experiment replicated the standard magnitude effect with this new video game preparation over time scales similar to those typically used in nonhuman animal studies and without complications due to satiation or cost.     

Getting narced: Neutralization of undercover identity discreditation

“Communicative work directed to transforming an individual's total identity into an identity lower in the group's social types is called a ‘status degradation ceremony'” (Garfinkel 1956, p. 420). Status degradation ceremonies are particularly troublesome for undercover narcotics agents. In this context, they act as the mechanism by which agents’ dissembled identities are questioned and their real police ones revealed. This process, what officers call “getting narced,” is the topic of the present paper. Explored here are both its causes and the responses officers proffer to neutralize full identity exposure. Causes are tactical in nature and involve transactional overaggressiveness. Neutralization responses are dramaturgical in nature and involve sarcastic admission, evidential refutation, and belligerent denial/threatening retort. Discussion focuses on the conceptual implications of officers’ counteruncovering moves (Goffman 1969) as these relate to the sociology of accounts (Scott and Lyman 1968). Data were drawn from ethnographic interviews with 30 high school undercover officers operating out of a large U.S. city.     

First Year Post-Katrina: Changes in Occupational Performance and Emotional Responses

The purpose of this retrospective study was to determine whether Hurricane Katrina affected the occupational performance and emotional states of New Orleans area residents affected by the hurricane over the first year post-Katrina. A purposeful sample of 143 adults who lived in the New Orleans area just prior to Katrina completed a questionnaire one year after Katrina. Participants were asked to rate their satisfaction with their occupational performance and emotional states at four time periods: August 2005, before Katrina; September 2005, one month after Katrina; March 2006, six months post-Katrina; and September 2006, one year post-Katrina. The most notable findings were that both satisfaction with occupational performance and emotional states showed marked declines during the month immediately following Katrina, with some recovery six months post-Katrina, and further recovery a year after Katrina. At one year post-Katrina however, the recovery of satisfaction with occupational performance and emotional states approached, but did not quite reach pre-Katrina baseline responses. Further, women did not fare as well as men post-Katrina, on both variables. Limitations of the study, implications of findings for the theory and practice of occupational therapy in the area of disaster responses, and possible future research are discussed.     

Investigating the Efficacy of CoMeT,a New Mediation Model for High-Conflict Separating Parents

Although mediation has been effective for a large number of separating couples, it does not share the same effectiveness for highly conflicted couples, estimated to represent approximately twenty per cent of all separating couples. Twenty-three highly conflicted separating couples were recruited to investigate the impact of a new model that combines mediation with therapy (CoMeT). Comparing pre- and post-intervention scores, significant improvements were found in parent well-being and reductions in parent conflict, acrimony, and attachment. No gender differences were found. Results support this new, gender-neutral CoMeT model which significantly enhances the mediation process for high-conflict separating parents.     

Flexibility of cue use in the fox squirrel (Sciurus niger)

Recent work on captive flying squirrels has demonstrated a novel degree of flexibility in the use of different orientation cues. In the present study, we examine to what extent this flexibility is present in a free-ranging population of another tree squirrel species, the fox squirrel. We trained squirrels to a rewarded location within a square array of four feeders and then tested them on transformations of the array that either pitted two cue types against one cue type, the majority tests, or all cue types against each other, the forced-hierarchy test. In Experiment 1, squirrels reoriented to the two-cue-type location in all majority tests and to the location indicated by the visual features of the feeders in the forced-hierarchy test. This preference for visual features runs contrary to previous studies that report the use of spatial cues over visual features in food-storing species. In Experiments 2-5 we tested squirrels with different trial orders (Experiments 2 and 3), a different apparatus (Experiment 4) and at different times of the year (Experiment 5) to determine why these squirrels had chosen to orient using visual features in the first experiment. Like captive flying squirrels, free-ranging fox squirrels showed a large degree of flexibility in their use of cues. Furthermore, their cue use appeared to be sensitive both to changes in the test apparatus and the season in which we tested. Altogether our results suggest that the study of free-ranging animals over a variety of conditions is necessary for understanding spatial cognition.