Development of a Family-based Program to Reduce Risk and Promote Resilience Among Families Affected by Maternal Depression: Theoretical Basis and Program Description

Depression is a family matter. It not only diminishes the quality-of-life of the depressed person, but also strains the resources of the family unit and increases the children's risk of developing significant problems that start early and persist into adulthood. Although treatment of a parent's depression is critical, many families also need professional intervention to reduce children's risk. This article reviews the evidence on needs of these families and shows that the theoretical and clinical evidence exists to support the design of interventions for families affected by maternal depression. A preventive intervention developed from this foundation is described, the Keeping Families Strong (KFS) program, that is designed to promote resilience and reduce the risk for psychological disorders in children of parents with depression. The pilot study on the KFS program, conducted in adult mental health outpatient settings, is described. Families participate in 10 meetings 90 min each, with a group for parents and for children (10 years and older) conducted concurrently. The program structure and content are described, the challenges of implementing a family preventive intervention in actual clinical settings are discussed, and a case example is provided, as well as preliminary outcome data on ten families. In sum, we provide a strong rationale for the potential of preventive interventions for families affected by maternal depression.     

Tuning in to another person's action capabilities: perceiving maximal jumping-reach height from walking kinematics

Three experiments investigated the ability to perceive the maximum height to which another actor could jump to reach an object. Experiment 1 determined the accuracy of estimates for another actor's maximal reach-with-jump height and compared these estimates to estimates of the actor's standing maximal reaching height and to estimates of the perceiver's own maximal reaching and reach-with-jump height. Perception of another actor's maximum reach-with-jump height was less accurate than the other estimates, but still accurate to within 8% error. The actor's reach-with-jump height was modified in Experiment 2 by attaching weights around the actor's ankles. Perceivers, who were explicitly aware of the manipulation, adjusted their maximum reach-with-jump estimates for the actor accordingly. In Experiment 3, perceivers were not explicitly aware of the weight manipulation, but provided significantly lower maximum reach-with-jump estimates after watching the actor walk while wearing the weights compared to estimates obtained after watching the actor walk while not wearing the weights. The results suggest that the actor's walking pattern was informative about the actor's capacity to produce a different action, jumping to reach an object.     

Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment: Organizational Change and Quality of Care

Substance abuse treatment agencies serving youth face unique barriers to providing quality care. Interviews with 17 adolescent programs found that family engagement, community involvement, and gender and diversity issues affected treatment delivery. Programs report organizational change efforts with implications for future process improvement initiatives.     

The WIG (weighted individual and group) shrinkage estimator

Regularization, or shrinkage estimation, refers to a class of statistical methods that constrain the variability of parameter estimates when fitting models to data. These constraints move parameters toward a group mean or toward a fixed point (e.g., 0). Regularization has gained popularity across many fields for its ability to increase predictive power over classical techniques. However, articles published in JEAB and other behavioral journals have yet to adopt these methods. This paper reviews some common regularization schemes and speculates as to why articles published in JEAB do not use them. In response, we propose our own shrinkage estimator that avoids some of the possible objections associated with the reviewed regularization methods. Our estimator works by mixing weighted individual and group (WIG) data rather than by constraining parameters. We test this method on a problem of model selection. Specifically, we conduct a simulation study on the selection of matching‐law‐based punishment models, comparing WIG with ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, and find that, on average, WIG outperforms OLS in this context.     

Psychometric properties of the Sutter-Eyberg Student Behavior Inventory with rural middle school and high school children

This study examined the psychometric properties of the Sutter-Eyberg Student Behavior Inventory (SESBI) in a rural sample of children and adolescents. Thirty-eight 5th- through 12th-grade teachers completed the SESBI on 726 children in their classrooms. High Cronbach's alphas supported the reliability of the SESBI scales in this population. Higher SESBI scores were obtained by boys than girls and by African American students than Caucasian students, more so at lower grades. Teacher's race did not affect SESBI scores. In contrast to children with developmental delay, children with learning disabilities obtained higher scores than others on the SESBI Intensity scale but not on the Problem scale. This suggests that teachers of children with learning disabilities recognize the higher frequency of problem behaviors in their students but do not consider these behaviors to be problems for themselves. On both SESBI scales, children with developmental delay were not distinguishable from peers without developmental delays.     

Selective attention in animal discrimination learning

The traditional approach to the study of selective attention in animal discrimination learning has been to ask if animals are capable of the central selective processing of stimuli, such that certain aspects of the discriminative stimuli are partially or wholly ignored while their relationships to each other, or other relevant stimuli, are processed. A notable characteristic of this research has been that procedures involve the acquisition of discriminations, and the issue of concern is whether learning is selectively determined by the stimulus dimension defined by the discriminative stimuli. Although there is support for this kind of selective attention, in many cases, simpler nonattentional accounts are sufficient to explain the results. An alternative approach involves procedures more similar to those used in human information-processing research. When selective attention is studied in humans, it generally involves the steady state performance of tasks for which there is limited time allowed for stimulus input and a relatively large amount of relevant information to be processed; thus, attention must be selective or divided. When this approach is applied to animals and alternative accounts have been ruled out, stronger evidence for selective or divided attention in animals has been found. Similar processes are thought to be involved when animals search more natural environments for targets. Finally, an attempt is made to distinguish these top-down attentional processes from more automatic preattentional processes that have been studied in humans and other animals.     

Prism aftereffects disrupt interlimb rhythmic coordination

The authors examined effects of prism-induced proprioceptive aftereffects on coordination of 95 participants and compared interlimb rhythmic coordination performed before versus after exposure to prisms of varying optical displacements. The observed steady states of relative phase for postprism exposure coordination were shifted by a small but significant amount, but not across all prism conditions. Phase-shift direction was not specific to the direction of optical displacement and was not, across all conditions, proportional to the magnitude of optical displacement. Prism exposure was associated with increased relative phase variability for all prism conditions. A no-prism control group showed no changes in interlimb rhythmic coordination. The results suggest that prism-induced proprioceptive aftereffects have general, disruptive effects on interlimb rhythmic coordination.     

Social incentives for gender differences in the propensity to initiate negotiations: Sometimes it does hurt to ask

Four experiments show that gender differences in the propensity to initiate negotiations may be explained by differential treatment of men and women when they attempt to negotiate. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants evaluated written accounts of candidates who did or did not initiate negotiations for higher compensation. Evaluators penalized female candidates more than male candidates for initiating negotiations. In Experiment 3, participants evaluated videotapes of candidates who accepted compensation offers or initiated negotiations. Male evaluators penalized female candidates more than male candidates for initiating negotiations; female evaluators penalized all candidates for initiating negotiations. Perceptions of niceness and demandingness explained resistance to female negotiators. In Experiment 4, participants adopted the candidate’s perspective and assessed whether to initiate negotiations in same scenario used in Experiment 3. With male evaluators, women were less inclined than men to negotiate, and nervousness explained this effect. There was no gender difference when evaluator was female.     

A randomised controlled trial of cognitive-behaviour therapy for clinical perfectionism: a preliminary study

Perfectionism can be a problem in its own right and it can impede the progress of treatment of Axis I disorders. This study reports on a preliminary randomised controlled trial of cognitive-behaviour therapy (CBT) for "clinical perfectionism". Twenty participants were randomly assigned to either immediate treatment (IT) (n=10) or a wait list (NL) (n=10). Treatment consisted of ten sessions of CBT over eight weeks. Two participants did not complete the follow-up assessments (10%). Fifteen of the original 20 participants (75%) were clinically significantly improved after treatment and the effect size was large (1.8). Treatment gains were maintained at 8-week and 16-week follow-up.