Substitution and the explanation of action

This paper examines a potential problem area for theories of direct reference: that of the substitution of co-referential names within the belief context of a belief attribution used to explain an action. Of particular interest are action explanations which involve cases of repetition — wherein beliefs are held which, though about one (other) individual, are mistakenly thought to concern two different people. It is argued that, despite the commonly held view to the contrary, no problem is posed by substitution in such circumstances to theories of direct reference.     

Family interaction styles of children with depressive disorders, schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, and normal controls

Family interaction processes during a problem-solving task were examined in children with depressive disorders, children with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, and a normal control group of community children screened for the absence of psychiatric disorder. Major findings were: a) children with depressive disorders were more likely than children with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders and children with no psychiatric disorder to direct guilt-inducing comments toward their parents; and b) parents of children with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders were more likely to direct harsh critical comments toward the child than were parents of depressed children or parents of normal controls. In addition, children's and mothers' use of benign criticism was linked, while children's harsh criticism was associated with intrusion from the father, and children's self-denigrating comments were related to specific paternal criticism. Implications of these results for understanding transactional processes associated with childhood-onset depressive and schizophrenia-spectrum disorders are discussed.     

If It's Offered,Will They Come? Influences on Parents' Participation in a Community-Based Conduct Problems Prevention Program

This study examined influences on the rate and quality of parent participation in the Fast Track Program, a multi-system, longitudinal preventive intervention for children who are at risk for conduct problems. A theoretical model of the relations among family coordinator characteristics, parent characteristics, the therapeutic engagement between family coordinator and parent, and rate and quality of parent participation was the basis for this study. Family coordinators are the Fast Track program personnel who conduct group-based parent-training sessions and home visits. Participants in this study included 12 family coordinators (42% were African American, 58% European American) and 87parents (55% were African American, 45% European American). The level of therapeutic engagement between the parent and the family coordinator was positively associated with the rate of parent attendance at group training sessions. The extent of family coordinator-parent racial and socioeconomic similarity and the extent of the family coordinator's relevant life experiences were highly associated with the level of therapeutic engagement. The quality, but not the rate, of participation was lower for African American parents. Implications of these findings for preventive intervention with this population are discussed.     

Relations between infant irritability and maternal responsiveness in low-income families

Relations between infant irritability and maternal responsiveness at 12 and18 months were investigated in low-income mother-infant dyads. Emphasis was placed on whether results varied according to measurement strategies, infant gender, or level of maternal social support and satisfaction with that support. Irritability was measured separately through observation and maternal report, responsiveness was measured observationally, and maternal social support and satisfaction were self-reported via questionnaire. Concurrent relations between irritability and responsiveness were, in general, negative and were larger when irritability was measured observationally rather than by maternal report. Correlations were similar across gender. No longitudinal relations were found between irritability and responsiveness. Amount of maternal social support was weakly related to responsiveness and to responses to infant irritability, and the nature of these relations was unexpected. Irritability-responsiveness relations varied as a function of measurement strategies, which may in part explain mixed findings in the empirical literature.     

The Development of Early Externalizing Problems Among Children from Low-Income Families: A Transformational Perspective

The present study examined pathways leading to early externalizing problems from age 1 to 31/2 in a design that took advantage of our knowledge of normative progression and normative socialization as well as findings from research on risk. A sample of 130 low-income participants was followed longitudinally from 12 to 42 months using observational measures of developmentally salient parenting and child disruptive behavior to predict early externalizing problems. Results are best accommodated by concepts such as transformation and transaction from developmental psychology. For boys, both child and parent variables predicted later externalizing. For girls and boys, the interaction between child noncompliance and maternal rejection was significant.     

Cultural tensions in strategic marital therapy

Whether the elements of a good marital relationship are universal is the question addressed in this case study of therapy with a couple who were culturally different from the therapist. The conflicts between the therapeutic strategies, which were based on a strategic therapy model, and the customs of the couple from a foreign culture, made it difficult to evaluate whether the therapist was on target with interventions. On one hand, therapists need to guard against being misled into believing that customs are cultural imperatives which never can be changed. On the other hand, they need to be aware of the impact and possible ramifications of challenging long-held, culturally-based beliefs and behaviors. The following case study details the dilemmas faced by a therapist working with an Asian-Indian couple who presented themselves as being bound by their cultural background and heritage.Grateful acknowledgement is made by the author to Etienne Phipps, PhD, whose comments give direction and substance to all my work.     

Fragmenting pictures on the apple macintosh computer for experimental and clinical applications

A set of procedures implemented in Microsoft BASIC is described that creates fragmented versions of pictures scanned into the Apple Macintosh, stores them as resource files, and presents them in a computerized perceptual memory test. A total of 150 pictures were selected from the Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980) set for fragmentation. The perceptual memory test provides for five forms of 30 pictures each, divided into two sets of 15 that serve alternately as the training or old set and the new set. A training set of 15 pictures is presented for identification during the first (training) phase of the test. The second (test) phase presents the training pictures again, randomly mixed with 15 new pictures for identification. The performance of 100 subjects on the memory test is presented, along with results for each form. Overall, subjects showed improvement on the task with practice (skill learning), indexed by a decrease in thresholds from the training set to the new set. Subjects also showed large savings for the repeated pictures (perceptual learning), indexed by a decrease in thresholds from the new to the old set.     

Depression in child psychiatric inpatients: Cognitive and attributional patterns

Cognitive and learned helplessness models of depression view maladaptive cognitive and attributional patterns as core features of depressive disorders. This study examined cognitive and attributional patterns in depressed children, nondepressed children, and a subgroup of remitting depressives who had histories of depression but were not reporting depressive symptoms when evaluated during the first 2 weeks of hospitalization. When compared with nondepressed controls, depressed children reported significantly more hopelessness, more negative self-perceptions, and negative self-perceptions across a wider variety of domains, and they displayed more dysfunctional attributional styles. While 55% of depressed children displayed pervasive maladaptive cognitive patterns, the other 45% of depressed children scored more similarly to nondepressed children, suggesting that childhood depressive disorders may be heterogeneous with respect to cognitive patterns. Contrary to the notion of traitlike depressive cognitive and attributional patterns that persist after the remission of depressive episodes, children with remitting depressions scored similarly to nondepressed children.Partial support for this project was provided by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation as part of their Network on Risk and Protective Factors in the Major Mental Disorders. I wish to thank Donald Guthrie for providing statistical consultation, Gwen Gordon for her computer assistance, and Niels Mueller and Jean Keller for their help with data collection.