A randomized controlled effectiveness trial of parent management training with varying degrees of therapist support

This study examined the effectiveness of a Swedish parent management training (PMT) intervention for parents of children aged 3 to 10 within the context of regular social service. Self-referred parents of 159 children (aged 3 to 10) with conduct problems were randomly assigned to either 11 practitioner-assisted group sessions (PMT-P), or a single instructional workshop followed by self-administration of the training material (PMT-S), or a waitlist control group. Intent-to-treat analyses showed that both PMT-P and PMT-S improved parent competence and reduced child conduct problems compared to the waitlist at posttest. Both training conditions showed further significant improvements at the 6-month follow-up. In direct comparison, PMT-P was superior to PMT-S on measures of child conduct problems at both posttest and follow-up. Improvement in child conduct was mediated by improvement in parent competencies and homework fidelity. The findings in this study have implications for large-scale dissemination of parent management training through different means of delivery.     

Poetic rhyme reflects cross-linguistic differences in information structure

Identical rhymes (right/write, attire/retire) are considered satisfactory and even artistic in French poetry but are considered unsatisfactory in English. This has been a consistent generalization over the course of centuries, a surprising fact given that other aspects of poetic form in French were happily applied in English. This paper puts forward the hypothesis that this difference is not merely one of poetic tradition, but is grounded in the distinct ways in which information-structure affects prosody in the two languages. A study of rhyme usage in poetry and a perception experiment confirm that native speakers' intuitions about rhyming in the two languages indeed differ, and a further perception experiment supports the hypothesis that this fact is due to a constraint on prosody that is active in English but not in French. The findings suggest that certain forms of artistic expression in poetry are influenced, and even constrained, by more general properties of a language.     

"Good enough stories": helping couples invest in one another's growth

This article utilizes key constructs of the narrative metaphor: that stories organize, structure, and give meaning to events in our lives. When stories are used as a way to understand the lives of couples, they have the potential for enhancing individual and relational growth. It is proposed that knowing both our own and our partner's story and development goals increases the likelihood of making an investment in self/other and relational growth. It is further suggested that helping couples develop narratives with a sense of "We" promotes a more generative perspective. These ideas were developed in a small qualitative pilot study with long-married, middle-class, heterosexual couples, which suggested that the synthesis of each partner's life story into a couple story promoted individual and relational development. Implications for therapeutic work with couples are presented as well as specific recommendations for ways to utilize the life story approach as an aspect of treatment. It is intended to assist clinicians and teachers in translating narrative ideas into therapeutic work with couples.     

True or false: do 5-year-olds understand belief?

In 3 studies (N = 188) we tested the hypothesis that children use a perceptual access approach to reason about mental states before they understand beliefs. The perceptual access hypothesis predicts a U-shaped developmental pattern of performance in true belief tasks, in which 3-year-olds who reason about reality should succeed, 4- to 5-year-olds who use perceptual access reasoning should fail, and older children who use belief reasoning should succeed. The results of Study 1 revealed the predicted pattern in 2 different true belief tasks. The results of Study 2 disconfirmed several alternate explanations based on possible pragmatic and inhibitory demands of the true belief tasks. In Study 3, we compared 2 methods of classifying individuals according to which 1 of the 3 reasoning strategies (reality reasoning, perceptual access reasoning, belief reasoning) they used. The 2 methods gave converging results. Both methods indicated that the majority of children used the same approach across tasks and that it was not until after 6 years of age that most children reasoned about beliefs. We conclude that because most prior studies have failed to detect young children's use of perceptual access reasoning, they have overestimated their understanding of false beliefs. We outline several theoretical implications that follow from the perceptual access hypothesis.     

Life satisfaction in chronic pain patients: the stress-buffering role of the centrality of religion

Chronic pain (CP) is a stressful condition that severely impacts individuals' lives. Researchers have begun to explore the role of religion for CP patients, but the literature is scarce, especially for West European populations. Drawing from the transactional theory of stress, this study examined the associations between the religious meaning system and the life satisfaction for a group of CP patients who were members of a Flemish patients' association. To take into account the religious landscape of West European countries, the centrality of one's religious meaning system, rather than religious content, was the focus. Results from the questionnaires completed by 207 patients suggest that the centrality of a meaning system is an important factor in the promotion of life satisfaction for this group, above and beyond the influence of several control variables. Furthermore, the centrality of the religious meaning system moderated or buffered the detrimental influence of pain severity on life satisfaction.     

No need to fake it: reproduction of the Asch experiment without confederates

In the present experiment, we replicated Asch's seminal study on social conformity without using confederates. We adapted a presentation trick in order to present two different stimuli secretly to groups of participants to create minorities and majorities without utilizing confederates. One hundred and four Japanese undergraduates (40 men and 64 women) carried out Asch-equivalent tasks in same-sex groups of four. In each group, we adapted the fMORI Technique to present the tasks such that one person (minority participant) observed different stimuli than the other three people (majority participants). The same nine stimulus sets that Asch had used were carefully reproduced as PowerPoint slides and projected onto a half-transparent screen. As for the critical tasks, the top part of the standard lines appeared in either green or magenta so that two groups of participants would see them differently when they wore two types of polarizing sunglasses that filtered either green or magenta to make the lines appear longer or shorter. A post-experimental questionnaire confirmed that no participant among either the minority or majority viewers noticed the presentation trick. The results showed that, in line with Asch's basic findings, the minority women participants conformed to the majority. However, our study produced two different results: While minority women conformed, minority men did not. Contrary to Asch's findings, the frequency of conformity of minority participants was almost the same regardless of whether the majority answered unanimously or not.     

More than just skin deep? Personality information influences men's ratings of the attractiveness of women's body sizes

This study examined the influence of personality information on perceptions of the physical attractiveness of a range of female body sizes. A sample of 2,157 male university students were randomly assigned to one of 10 groups in which they received personality information about women they were rating, or a control group in which they received no personality information. Controlling for participants' age and body mass index, results showed no significant between-group differences in the body size that participants found most attractive. However, participants provided with positive personality information perceived a wider range of body sizes as physically attractive compared with the control group, whereas participants provided with negative personality information perceived a narrower range of body sizes as attractive. Correlations showed that participants' own Extraversion was associated with their body size ratings. These results suggest that non-physical cues have an influence on the perception of physical beauty.     

Response acquisition and fixed-ratio escalation based on interresponse times in rats

The effectiveness of a fixed‐ratio (FR) escalation procedure, developed by Pinkston and Branch (2004) and based on interresponse times (IRTs), was assessed during lever‐press acquisition. Forty‐nine experimentally naïve adult male Long Evans rats were deprived of food for 24 hr prior to an extended acquisition session. Before the start of the session, three food pellets were placed in the magazine. Otherwise, no magazine training, shaping, nor autoshaping procedure was employed. The first 20 presses each resulted in the delivery of a 45‐mg food pellet. Then, the FR increased (2, 4, 8, 11, 16, 20, 25, 30) when each IRT in the ratio was less than 2 s during three consecutive ratios. Sessions lasted 13 hr or until 500 pellets were earned. On average, rats reached a terminal ratio of 11 (mean) or 16 (median) during the first session. Seven rats reached the maximum value of FR 30 and only one rat did not acquire the response. In most rats, a break‐and‐run pattern of responding characteristic of FR schedules began to develop in this acquisition session. Subsequently, the ratio‐escalation procedure continued during daily 2‐hr sessions. In these sessions, the starting ratio requirement was set at the terminal ratio reached in the previous session. Using this procedure, over half (26) of the rats reached the FR 30 requirement by the fourth session. These data demonstrate that a ratio‐escalation procedure based on IRTs provides a time‐efficient way of establishing ratio responding.     

Evidence for model-based action planning in a sequential finger movement task

In this article, the authors examine whether and how humans use model-free, reflexive strategies and model-based, deliberative strategies in motor sequence learning. They asked subjects to perform the grid-sailing task, which required moving a cursor to different goal positions in a 5 × 5 grid using different key-mapping (KM) rules between 3 finger keys and 3 cursor movement directions. The task was performed under 3 conditions: Condition 1, new KM; Condition 2, new goal position with learned KM; and Condition 3, learned goal position with learned KM; with or without prestart delay time. The performance improvement with prestart delay was significantly larger under Condition 2. This result provides evidence that humans implement a model-based strategy for sequential action selection and learning by using previously learned internal model of state transition by actions.