Flexible Manualized Treatment for Pediatric Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder: A Case Study

The following case study describes the treatment of an 8 year-old girl with early-onset obsessive compulsive disorder using a manualized cognitive-behavioral therapy with exposure and response prevention (CBT/EPR) protocol, implemented using a “flexibility within fidelity” approach. The case study focuses on how the treatment manual was successfully implemented in a flexible manner to address unique aspects of the case. These unique factors included the child’s extreme shyness at the beginning of treatment (with implications for rapport building), the primarily obsessional presentation of this child’s symptoms, the child’s avoidance of discussing the content of her obsessive thoughts, and secondary depressive symptoms (excessive guilt, frequent crying, and sadness) that contributed to the child’s impairment and distress. Assessment of progress indicated improvement in symptoms after four sessions of cognitive skill building and again in the last five sessions after implementing increased exposure to obsessive thoughts using narrative techniques. The implications for clinicians and student therapists, including the importance of rapport building, developmentally tailoring treatment, and flexibly implementing treatment to address the unique characteristics of the individual patient are discussed.     

A Preliminary Analysis of Counseling Students' Attitudes Toward Counseling Women and Women of Color: Implications for Cultural Competency Training

In this study, 56 counseling students responded to peer‐generated presentations on counseling women and counseling women of color. Qualitative methodology was used to identify students' racial, ethnic, and gender attitudes in counseling contexts. Implications for cultural competency training are provided.     

Exploring the Relationships Between Racial/Cultural Identity and Ego Identity Among African Americans and Mexican Americans

Relationships between collective identity and ego identity were examined among 299 African American and Mexican American university students. Participants completed scales measuring racial or cultural identity and ego identity. Regression analyses indicated that ego identity was significantly related to racial identity for African Americans and cultural identity for Mexican Americans.     

Linkages between violence-associated attitudes and psychological,physical, and sexual dating abuse perpetration and victimization among male and female adolescents

Attitudes about violence and sex in dating relationships were related to psychological, physical, and sexual teen dating abuse perpetration and victimization. Data from Wave 4 of the national, randomly selected, Growing up with Media cohort (n = 876 adolescents aged 14-19 years), collected in 2011, were analyzed. Dating youth perceived more peer pressure to have sex and were more accepting of sex in brief or nonmarital relationships than pre-dating youth. Boys had higher levels of rape-supportive attitudes than girls. Among dating youth, the relative odds of involvement in teen dating abuse as a perpetrator or a victim were generally associated with greater acceptance of relationship violence, perceived peer pressure to have sex, and acceptance of sex in brief and/or nonmarital relationships. Rape-supportive attitudes were not significantly associated with any type of teen dating abuse involvement. Programs aimed at preventing dating abuse might benefit from targeting attitudes associated with sexual activity as well as relationship violence.     

Association between substance use disorders and self- and other-directed aggression: An integrated model approach

Our study's objective is to determine whether substance use disorders’ association with aggression differs according to the type of substance and/or the form of aggression, within the same population. We used data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health across 2008–2014, with a pooled sample of 270,227 adult respondents. We used regression models to estimate the odds ratios for those having alcohol and/or drug use disorder(s) perpetrating (a) each form of aggression compared with no aggression and (b) other-directed compared with self-directed aggression. Alcohol use disorder alone and drug use disorder(s) alone were both associated with significantly increased odds of committing self-directed, other-directed, and combined aggression. Individuals with drug use disorder(s) alone were more likely to commit other-directed than self-directed aggression (adjusted odds ratio = 1.46, 95% CI = 1.04–2.05). Individuals with alcohol use disorder alone were not likely to commit one over the other (adjusted odds ratio = 1.20, 95% CI = 0.90–1.61). In conclusion, the integrated model of aggression based on the stress–diathesis model is a relevant framework to study risk factors for aggression. Further research is needed to identify longitudinal predictors of directionality of aggression.     

Middle School Teachers' Perceptions of Computer-Assisted Reading Intervention Programs

Middle schools often turn to computer-assisted reading intervention programs to improve student reading. The questions guiding this study are (a) in what ways are computer-assisted reading intervention programs utilized, and (b) what are teachers' perceptions about these intervention programs? Nineteen secondary reading teachers were interviewed regarding their perceptions of one of three programs. Emerging themes fell into three major categories: teaching experiences, program use, and technology. Findings focused on the need for programs to engage students in actual reading, to move instruction beyond a decoding focus, to provide books that match student interests, and to increase motivation to read.     

Testing the accuracy of timing reports in visual timing tasks with a consumer-grade digital camera

This study tested the accuracy of a visual timing task using a readily available and relatively inexpensive consumer grade digital camera. A visual inspection time task was recorded using short high-speed video clips and the timing as reported by the task’s program was compared to the timing as recorded in the video clips. Discrepancies in these two timing reports were investigated further and based on display refresh rate, a decision was made whether the discrepancy was large enough to affect the results as reported by the task. In this particular study, the errors in timing were not large enough to impact the results of the study. The procedure presented in this article offers an alternative method for performing a timing test, which uses readily available hardware and can be used to test the timing in any software program on any operating system and display.