Effectiveness Research: Transporting Interpersonal Psychotherapy for Depressed Adolescents (IPT-A) From the Lab to School-Based Health Clinics

This paper describes the process of modifying and transporting an evidence-based treatment, Interpersonal Psychotherapy for Depressed Adolescents (IPT-A), from a university setting to school-based health clinics. It addresses conceptual issues involved in the shift from efficacy to effectiveness research as well as operational issues specific to the transport of IPT-A into school-based health clinics. Consideration is given to the rationale for an IPT-A effectiveness study, methodological concerns, and the timing of the move from the lab to the community. The authors identify challenges and barriers to initiating effectiveness and transportability research and provide suggestions for overcoming these barriers. Recommendations for conducting research in school-based practice settings are provided.     

Haptic processing of the location of a known property: does knowing what you've touched tell you where it is?

The relationship between knowing where a haptic property is located and knowing what it is was investigated using a haptic-search paradigm. Across trials, from one to six stimuli were presented simultaneously to varying combinations of the middle three fingertips of both hands. Participants reported the presence/absence of a target or its location for four perceptual dimensions: rough/smooth, edge/no edge, relative position (right/left), and relative orientation (right/left). Reaction time data were plotted as a function of set size. The slope data indicated no difference in processing load for location as compared to identity processing. However, the intercept data did reveal a cost associated with processing location information. Location information was not obtained for "free" when identity was processed. The data also supported a critical distinction between material and edge dimensions versus geometric dimensions, as the size of the cost associated with processing location was larger for spatial than for intensive stimuli.     

Switching between spatial stimulus-response mappings: a developmental study of cognitive flexibility

Four different age groups (8-9-year-olds, 11-12-year-olds, 13-15-year-olds and young adults) performed a spatial rule-switch task in which the sorting rule had to be detected on the basis of feedback or on the basis of switch cues. Performance errors were examined on the basis of a recently introduced method of error scoring for the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (WCST; Barcelo & Knight, 2002). This method allowed us to differentiate between errors due to failure-to-maintain-set (distraction errors) and errors due to failure-to-switch-set (perseverative errors). The anticipated age differences in performance errors were most pronounced for perseverative errors between 8-9 years and 11-12 years, but for distraction errors adult levels were not reached until 13-15 years. These findings were interpreted to support the notion that set switching and set maintenance follow distinct developmental trajectories.     

An analysis of initial acquisition and maintenance of sight words following picture matching and copy cover, and compare teaching methods

This study compared the copy, cover, and compare method to a picture-word matching method for teaching sight word recognition. Participants were 5 kindergarten students with less than preprimer sight word vocabularies who were enrolled in a public school in the Pacific Northwest. A multielement design was used to evaluate the effects of the two interventions. Outcomes suggested that sight words taught using the copy, cover, and compare method resulted in better maintenance of word recognition when compared to the picture-matching intervention. Benefits to students and the practicality of employing the word-level teaching methods are discussed.     

Reactions to counterstereotypic behavior: the role of backlash in cultural stereotype maintenance

Social and economic sanctions for counterstereotypical behavior have been termed the backlash effect. The authors present a model of the role of backlash in cultural stereotype maintenance from the standpoint of both perceivers and actors. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants lost a competition to either atypical or typical men or women and subsequently showed greater tendency to sabotage deviants. Moreover, undermining deviants was associated with increased self-esteem, suggesting that backlash rewards perceivers psychologically. Experiment 3 showed that gender deviants who feared backlash resorted to strategies designed to avoid it (e.g., hiding, deception, and gender conformity). Further, perceivers who sabotaged deviants (Experiment 2) or deviants who hid their atypicality (Experiment 3) estimated greater stereotyping on the part of future perceivers, in support of the model's presumed role for backlash in stereotype maintenance. The implications of the findings for cultural stereotypes are discussed.     

Brief training to promote the use of less intrusive prompts by nursing assistants in a dementia care unit

We evaluated the efficacy of a brief staff-training procedure to increase the use of graduated prompting by 2 certified nursing assistants (CNAs) while they helped to dress 3 persons with dementia in a seven-bed dementia care unit. The multiple baseline design across participants showed that CNAs dressed residents with minimal resident involvement during baseline observations. Following brief in-service training, CNAs provided graduated prompts and praise appropriately, suggesting that CNAs can promote active involvement in personal care routines by older adults with dementia.     

Mothers' Overreactive Discipline and Their Encoding and Appraisals of Toddler Behavior

The relations of observed overreactive discipline with mothers' tendencies to notice negative, relative to positive, child behavior (preferential negative encoding), and mothers' negative appraisals of neutral and positive child behavior (negative appraisal bias), were examined in mothers of toddlers. The mothers rated both their own children's and unfamiliar children's behavior. Negative appraisal bias with respect to mothers' own (but not unfamiliar) children was related to mothers' overreactivity, independent of child misbehavior. Overreactivity was not related to mothers' preferential negative encoding either of their own or of unfamiliar children's behavior. However, in the case of mothers' own children, preferential negative encoding moderated the relation between negative appraisal bias and overreactive discipline, such that the negative appraisal bias-overreactivity relation was significant only in the context of high preferential negative encoding.