Experimental Social Innovation and Dissemination: The Promise and Its Delivery

This paper describes the origin of the Experimental Social Innovation and Dissemination model and its contribution to and intersection with community psychology. It also discusses the challenges presented to ESID by community psychology's growing emphasis on cultural diversity and participatory approaches to research and intervention. It concludes with an overview of the papers presented in the special issue.     

History matters: the preview benefit in search is not onset capture

Visual search for a conjunction target is made easier when distractor items are temporally segregated over time to produce two separate old and new groups (the new group containing the target item). The benefit of presenting half the distractors first is known as the preview effect. Recently, some researchers have argued that the preview effect occurs because new stimuli capture attention. This account was tested in the present study by using a novel "top-up" condition that exploits the fact that when previews appear only briefly before the search display, there is minimal preview benefit. We show that effects of a brief preview can be "topped up" by an earlier exposure of the same items, even when the preview disappears between its first and second presentations.This top-up effect demonstrates that the history of the old stimuli is important for the preview benefit, contrary to the account favoring onset capture. We discuss alternative accounts of how the preview benefit arises.     

WITHIN‐SESSION TRANSITIONS IN CHOICE: A STRUCTURAL AND QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS

The present study used within‐session transitions between two concurrent schedules to evaluate choice in transition. Eight female Long‐Evans rats were trained to respond under concurrent schedules of reinforcement during experimental sessions that lasted 22 hr. The generalized matching equation was used to model steady‐state behavior at the end of each session, while transitional behavior that emerged following the change in reinforcement schedules was modeled using a logistic equation. The generalized matching and logistic equations were appropriate models for behavior generated during single‐session transitions. A local analysis of behavior on the two response alternatives during acquisition was used to determine the source of preference as revealed in response ratios. The number of “low‐response” visits, those containing three to five responses, remained stable. Preference ratios largely reflected a sharp increase in the number of visits with long response bouts on the rich alternative and a decrease in the number of such visits to the leaner alternative.     

Effects of a Workplace Intervention on Parent–Child Relationships

This study tested whether effects of a workplace intervention, aimed at promoting employees’ schedule control and supervisor support for personal and family life, had implications for parent–adolescent relationships; we also tested whether parent–child relationships differed as a function of how many intervention program sessions participants attended. Data came from a group randomized trial of a workplace intervention, delivered in the information technology division of a Fortune 500 company. Analyses focused on 125 parent–adolescent dyads that completed baseline and 12-month follow-up home interviews. Results revealed no main effects of the intervention, but children of employees who attended 75 % or more program sessions reported more time with their parent and more parent education involvement compared to adolescents whose parents attended <75 % of sessions, and they tended to report more time with parent and more parental solicitation of information about their experiences compared to adolescents whose parents were randomly assigned to the usual practice condition.     

What Young People Want: A Qualitative Study of Adolescents’ Priorities for Engagement Across Psychological Services

This article examined commonalities in adolescents’ priorities for engagement with psychological support in the context of contemporary youth culture in New Zealand. These were explored across a range of different services including a face-to-face hospital-based mental health service, a face-to-face school-based counseling service, a telephone counseling service and a new form of counseling using mobile phone text. Interviews were conducted with 63 young people aged 13–18 who had used at least one of these services. A thematic analysis identified that there were common priorities for participants across the different services including their need to keep control; not to have their parents involved; to have a relationship with a counselor which was more like a friendship than a professional relationship; to talk freely and be listened to; and to have the service be accessible and flexible enough to fit around their lives. Text and telephone counseling were seen to be particularly appropriate for meeting some of these needs. Professionals working with young people should consider offering a suite of options for psychological support, allowing young people to balance their different needs and priorities and thus facilitate their engagement.     

Choosing Assessment Instruments for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Screening and Outcome Research

Effect‐size results from Erford et al.'s ( 2016 ) meta‐analysis for the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were used to compare 6 instruments' usefulness in measuring counseling treatment outcomes. Effect‐size comparisons indicated equivalent overall effect sizes using the Clinician‐Administered PTSD Scale, the Impact of Event Scale–Revised, the Posttraumatic Stress Diagnostic Scale, the PTSD Checklist, and the Structured Interview for PTSD. The Mississippi Scale for Combat‐Related PTSD yielded significantly more conservative (i.e., lower) effect‐size comparisons.     

A wandering mind is a less caring mind: Daily experience sampling during compassion meditation training

Mind wandering, or the tendency for attention to drift to task-irrelevant thoughts, has been associated with worse intra- and inter-personal functioning. Utilizing daily experience sampling with 51 adults during 9-weeks of a compassion meditation program, we examined effects on mind wandering (to neutral, pleasant, and unpleasant topics) and caring behaviors for oneself and others. Results indicated that compassion meditation decreased mind wandering to neutral topics and increased caring behaviors towards oneself. When collapsing across topics, mind wandering did not serve as an intermediary between the frequency of compassion meditation practice and caring behaviors, though mind wandering to pleasant and unpleasant topics was linked to both variables. A path analysis revealed that greater frequency of compassion meditation practice was related to reductions in mind wandering to unpleasant topics and increases in mind wandering to pleasant topics, both of which were related to increases in caring behaviors for oneself and others.     

Teaching children with autism to engage in peer-directed mands using a picture exchange communication system

We evaluated differential reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA) plus prompting to increase peer-directed mands for preferred items using a picture exchange communication system (PECS). Two nonvocal individuals with autism participated. Independent mands with a peer increased with the implementation of DRA plus prompting for both participants. In addition, peers engaged in brief social interactions following the majority of mands for leisure items. These results suggest that teaching children to use PECS with peers may be one way to increase manding and social interactions in individuals with limited or no vocal repertoire.     

A geo-logical solution to the lottery paradox, with applications to conditional logic

We defend a set of acceptance rules that avoids the lottery paradox, that is closed under classical entailment, and that accepts uncertain propositions without ad hoc restrictions. We show that the rules we recommend provide a semantics that validates exactly Adams?? conditional logic and are exactly the rules that preserve a natural, logical structure over probabilistic credal states that we call probalogic. To motivate probalogic, we first expand classical logic to geo-logic, which fills the entire unit cube, and then we project the upper surfaces of the geo-logical cube onto the plane of probabilistic credal states by means of standard, linear perspective, which may be interpreted as an extension of the classical principle of indifference. Finally, we apply the geometrical/logical methods developed in the paper to prove a series of trivialization theorems against question-invariance as a constraint on acceptance rules and against rational monotonicity as an axiom of conditional logic in situations of uncertainty.     

Students' perceptions of rewards for academic performance by parents and teachers: relations with achievement and motivation in college

In the present study, the authors examined college students' (N= 136) perceptions of the provision of extrinsic rewards given by parents and teachers for academic performance from elementary school through high school. They also examined the relations between reward history and present student motivational orientation. External rewards for students' grades were common at all levels of schooling. Reward history related significantly to students' motivational orientation and performance in college, and these relations were generally stronger for boys than for girls. The authors discuss implications of these findings.