Treatment for Youth in Short-Term Care Facilities: The Impact of a Comprehensive Behavior Management Intervention

We describe a comprehensive program to train emergency shelter staff in effective methods for dealing with youth who have behavioral and emotional problems; assess the degree to which staff implemented the treatment approach; measure the impact of the intervention on shelter-wide incidents such as out-of-control behavior, runaways, and violence against other youth; and examine pre-post changes in staff experiences at the shelter via anonymous surveys. Overall, the short-term shelter staff indicated adequate implementation of the intervention. The rate of youth incidents at the shelter significantly declined from pre to post assessment. Direct-care staff ratings of their satisfaction with their proficiency in behavior management and teaching youth skills increased significantly from pre to post implementation. These findings suggest that it is feasible to deliver an effective staff-training program to improve the behavior management and social skills of youth residing in short-term care facilities within the child welfare system.     

Depression in Women with Heart Disease: The Importance of Social Role Performance and Spirituality

Compared with men, women are more likely to experience depression, and depression increases risk of morbidity and mortality in individuals with heart disease. Psychosocial interventions have been developed for depressed patients with heart disease; however, women's experience of chronic disease differs from men's and women may benefit from interventions tailored to address their difficulties. Spirituality and social roles have been related to depressive symptoms in other populations. To identify the relationship between depression and spirituality and social role performance (i.e., role concerns, role rewards and confidence in ability to fulfill roles) in women with heart disease, we assessed depressive symptoms, spirituality, social role functioning and medical history in 125 women with heart disease. After controlling for age and severity of medical conditions, spirituality, role confidence and role concerns were significantly associated with depressive symptoms. Consideration of spirituality and aspects of social role performance may be important when developing psychosocial interventions for depressed women with heart disease.     

Zur Dynamik der Interaktion in der Supervision

The manifold functions of a supervisor in following the course of complex processes together with the trainee, are: ? to keep the goals of the supervision in view, ? to establish a teaching alliance and to support the wish and ambitions of the candidate to learn, ? to build a platform for the complex interactions with the trainee with regard to the dynamics of the training situation and keeping in mind the institutional influences, ? to lay down the setting for the work, ? to explore and to reflect how transference and counter-transference influence the interaction between patient and analyst as well as between trainee and supervisor, ? to examine these interactions together focussing continuously on the interaction between candidate and patient, and to encourage the candidate to do the same on his own, ? to continuously formulate hypotheses about the core conflict, the transference phenomena and resistance of the patient, ? to explore and reflect on the cooperative work.     

School achievement strongly predicts midlife IQ

The relationship between measures of IQ and standardized school achievement tests is well established at around r ≈ 0.5 when the two are measured in close proximity. The current paper examined the stability of this correlation when comparing elementary school achievement (grades 3–8) and midlife IQ. Iowa Adoption Study participants who had standardized school achievement measures (ITBS) on file were given the WAIS-III. Mean age at IQ testing was 44.01 years (SD 6.65 years). The correlation between school achievement and WAIS-III FSIQ was r = 0.64, suggesting substantial life span stability in this relationship. Furthermore, elementary school achievement was substantially correlated with occupational status and household income at midlife. These findings suggest that standardized school achievement data is a useful measure of premorbid IQ.     

Thinking of things unseen: infants' use of language to update mental representations

One of the most distinctive characteristics of humans is the capacity to learn from what other people tell them. Often new information is provided about an entity that is not present, requiring incorporation of that information into one's mental representation of the absent object. Here we present evidence regarding the emergence of this vital ability. Nineteen- and 22-month-old infants first learned a name for a toy and later were told that the toy had undergone a change in state (it had become wet) while out of view. The 22-month-olds (but not the 19-month-olds) subsequently identified the toy solely on the basis of the property that they were told about but had never seen. Thus, before the end of their 2nd year, infants can use verbal information to update their representation of an absent object. This developmental advance inaugurates a uniquely human and immensely powerful form of learning about the world.     

An ambiguous-race illusion in children's face memory

Adults show better memory for ambiguous faces of their own race than for ambiguous faces of another race, even when the faces are identical and differentiated only by extraneous cues to racial category. We investigated whether similar context effects operate early in development. Young children raised in predominantly White environments were presented with computer-generated White-Black morphed faces, each paired with either the White or the Black face that contributed to its construction, and were told that the two faces in each pair were siblings. The children's subsequent recognition memory was more accurate for faces that had been paired with White siblings than for faces that had been paired with Black siblings. The same effect did not obtain when the ambiguous faces were paired with White or Black faces that did not contribute to their construction and did not look like siblings. These findings suggest that face memory in children is not driven exclusively by visual information present in faces and instead depends on an interplay of categorical and perceptual information about race and relationships.     

Optimally matching support and perceived spousal sensitivity.

Partner sensitivity is an important antecedent of both intimacy (H. T. Reis & P. Shaver, 1988) and attachment (M. D. S. Ainsworth, 1989). On the basis of the optimal matching model of social support (C. E. Cutrona & D. Russell, 1990), support behaviors that "matched" the support goals of the stressed individual were predicted to lead to the perception of partner sensitivity. Predictions were tested with 59 married couples, who engaged in a videotaped self-disclosure task. Matching support was defined as the disclosure of emotions followed by emotional support or a request for information followed by informational support. Partial evidence was found for the predictions. Matching support following the disclosure of emotions was predictive of perceived partner sensitivity. Mismatched support following the disclosure of emotions predicted lower marital satisfaction, through the mediation of partner sensitivity. Matching support following a request for information was not predictive of perceived partner sensitivity, but negative partner responses (e.g., criticism or sarcasm) following a request for information negatively predicted perceptions of partner sensitivity. The importance of considering the context of support transactions is discussed.