Systems change as an outcome and a process in the work of community collaboratives for health

The widespread development of comprehensive community initiatives that aim to improve community health is driven by the need to change the systems charged with delivering the services and creating the policies related to a variety of health outcomes. Georgia's Family Connection initiative is the nation's largest statewide network of community collaboratives for health, with collaboratives operating in 159 counties. Data on community context, collaborative processes, engagement in systems change, and changes in programs and activities implemented, gathered consistently at the collaborative level over 3 years, will be used to answer the following questions. How do community contexts and the structure and processes of collaboratives affect implementation of systems change? How do systems changes affect intermediate outcomes such as the type of programs offered in a community? Longitudinal change in systems change and program implementation is described and significant predictors of between‐collaborative variation in longitudinal change for each outcome are identified.     

I See Your Point: Infants Under 12 Months Understand That Pointing Is Communicative

Do young infants understand that pointing gestures allow the pointer to change the information state of a recipient? We used a third-party experimental scenario to examine whether 9- and 11-month-olds understand that a pointer's pointing gesture can inform a recipient about a target object. When the pointer pointed to a target, infants subsequently looked longer when the recipient selected the nontarget rather than the target object. In contrast, infants looked equally long whether the recipient selected the target or nontarget object when the pointer used a noncommunicative gesture, a fist. Finally, when the recipient had no perceptual access to the pointing gesture, infants looked longer when the recipient selected the target rather than the nontarget object. Young infants understand a fundamental aspect of the communicative function of pointing: Pointing, but not all gestures, can transfer information. Gestures may thus be one of the tools infants use for an early understanding of communication.     

Multiracial and Biracial Individuals: A Content Analysis of Counseling Journals, 1991–2013

This content analysis examines the counseling literature on multiracial individuals using the top journals. The authors conducted an exhaustive search for research articles and identified 10 published articles that addressed biracial and multiracial individuals from the years 1991 to 2013 in top‐tier counseling journals. Of the 10 counseling journals, 4 journals addressed multiracial individuals (Journal of Counseling & Development, Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, Journal of Humanistic Counseling, and Journal of College Counseling). Recommendations for counselors and researchers are provided. Este análisis de contenido examina las investigaciones en el campo de la consejería sobre individuos multirraciales publicadas en las revistas académicas más importantes. Los autores llevaron a cabo una búsqueda exhaustiva de artículos de investigación e identificaron 10 artículos publicados en revistas académicas de consejería de alto nivel que trataban sobre individuos birraciales y multirraciales entre los años 1991 y 2013. Cuatro de las 10 revistas académicas de consejería trataban sobre individuos multirraciales (Journal of Counseling & Development, Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, Journal of Humanistic Counseling y Journal of College Counseling). Se ofrecen recomendaciones para consejeros e investigadores.     

Facial expressions of emotion: a cognitive neuroscience perspective

Facial expressions are one example of emotional behavior that illustrate the importance of emotions to both basic survival and social interaction. Basic facial responses to stimuli such as sweet and bitter taste are important for species fitness and governed by simple rules. Even at this basic level, facial responses have communicative value to other species members. During evolution simple facial responses were extended for use in more complex nonverbal communications; the responses are labile. The perception and production of facial expressions are cognitive processes and numerous subcortical and cortical areas contribute to these operations. We suggest that no specific emotion center exists over and above cognitive systems in the brain, and that emotion should not be divorced from cognition.     

Olfactory Reference Syndrome: A Case Report and Screening Tool

Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings - Olfactory reference syndrome (ORS) is a lesser known disorder that is related to obsessive–compulsive disorder. ORS is the obsessional and...     

Christian Churches and the Prevention of Preadolescent Aggression and Violence in Puerto Rico: Regional Leaders’ Perspective

Journal of Religion and Health - Preadolescents’ involvement in religious congregations may serve as a distal protective factor against aggression. Interviews were conducted to...     

Performance gains from directed training do not transfer to untrained tasks

Given the increasing complexity of the tasks and skills needed in modern society, developing effective training strategies is of tremendous practical importance. Furthermore, training that improves performance of both trained and untrained tasks would be highly efficient. In the present study, we examined how directed training contributes to skill acquisition, and more importantly, to engendering transfer of training to untrained tasks. Participants learned a complex video game for 30 h (Space Fortress, Donchin, Fabiani, & Sanders, 1989) using one of two training regimens: Hybrid Variable-Priority Training (HVT), with a focus on improving specific skills and managing task priority, or Full Emphasis Training (FET) in which participants simply practiced the game to obtain the highest overall score. We compared game performance, retention of training gains, and transfer of training to untrained tasks as a function of the training regimen. Compared to FET, HVT learners reached higher levels of mastery on the game and HVT was particularly beneficial for initially poor performing participants. This benefit persisted seven months after training. However, contrary to expectation, both HVT and FET were unsuccessful in producing transfer to untrained tasks compared to a group that received limited game experience, suggesting that directed training and practice can produce task-specific improvements, but improvements do not necessarily transfer from trained to untrained tasks.     

Who is good at this game? Linking an activity to a social category undermines children's achievement

Children's achievement-related theories have a profound impact on their academic success. Children who adopt entity theories believe that their ability to perform a task is dictated by the amount of natural talent they possess for that task--a belief that has well-documented adverse consequences for their achievement (e.g., lowered persistence, impaired performance). It is thus important to understand what leads children to adopt entity theories. In the experiments reported here, we hypothesized that the mere act of linking success at an unfamiliar, challenging activity to a social group gives rise to entity beliefs that are so powerful as to interfere with children's ability to perform the activity. Two experiments showed that, as predicted, the performance of 4- to 7-year-olds (N = 192) was impaired by exposure to information that associated success in the task at hand with membership in a certain social group (e.g., "boys are good at this game"), regardless of whether the children themselves belonged to that group.     

A Comparison of Children with Epilepsy to an Age- and IQ-Matched Control Group on the Children's Memory Scale

Past research has found that children with epilepsy exhibit decreased memory skills. In addition, some studies have found that children with epilepsy obtain significantly lower IQ scores than controls. In an effort to examine whether children with epilepsy have specific memory weaknesses versus global cognitive difficulties, the present study compared the performance of 62 children (age range = 6–16 years). Thirty-one children with epilepsy were compared to 31 age- and IQ-matched controls on the Children's Memory Scale (CMS) to determine whether differences in memory skills persist when IQ is matched. An independent t-test comparing index and scaled scores was performed. The results indicated that with the exception of the Word Pairs subtest (p < .01), children with epilepsy did not differ significantly on the CMS subtests when IQ was matched. This suggests that list-learning paradigms may be particularly sensitive to memory impairments in children with epilepsy and/or that children with epilepsy have more global cognitive impairments.