Examining Subtypes of Behavior Problems among 3-Year-Old Children,Part II: Investigating Differences in Parent Psychopathology,Couple Conflict,and Other Family Stressors

This study examined family stressors among 3-year-old children who were classified as hyperactive (HYP), hyperactive and oppositional defiant (HYP/OD), and non-problem based on mothers' reports of behavior. Children with HYP/OD were found to experience higher levels of family stressors than non-problem children on almost every family stressor variable. Compared to children with HYP, families of children with HYP/OD also tended to report more Axis II maternal psychopathology, Axis I paternal psychopathology, and high intensity couple conflict tactics. However, the HYP and HYP/OD group did not significantly differ on maternal Axis I psychopathology, paternal Axis II psychopathology, parental marital status, negative life events, frequency of couple conflict, or use of lower intensity couple conflict tactics. Parents of children with HYP and HYP/OD reported more negative life events, more maternal adult ADHD symptoms, and more maternal avoidance and verbal aggression during marital conflict than parents of non-problem children. Implications for treatment and etiology are discussed.     

Misunderstanding the affective consequences of everyday social interactions: the hidden benefits of putting one's best face forward

Positive self-presentation may have beneficial consequences for mood that are typically overlooked. Across a series of studies, participants underestimated how good they would feel in situations that required them to put their best face forward. In Studies 1 and 2A, participants underestimated the emotional benefits of interacting with an opposite sex stranger versus the benefits of interacting with a romantic partner. In Study 2B, participants who were instructed to engage in self-presentation felt happier after interacting with their romantic partner than participants who were not given this instruction, although other participants serving as forecasters did not anticipate such benefits. Increasing the generalizability of this self-presentation effect across contexts, the authors demonstrated that participants also underestimated how good they would feel before and after being evaluated by another person (Studies 3 and 4). This failure to recognize the affective benefits of putting one's best face forward may underlie forecasting errors regarding the emotional consequences of the most common forms of social interactions.     

Contextualizing counterintuitiveness: how context affects comprehension and memorability of counterintuitive concepts

A number of anthropologists have argued that religious concepts are minimally counterintuitive and that this gives them mnemic advantages. This paper addresses the question of why people have the memory architecture that results in such concepts being more memorable than other types of concepts by pointing out the benefits of a memory structure that leads to better recall for minimally counterintuitive concepts and by showing how such benefits emerge in the real-time processing of comprehending narratives such as folk tales. This model suggests that memorability is not an inherent property of a concept; rather it is a property of the concept, the context in which the concept is presented, and the background knowledge that the comprehendor possesses about the concept. The model predicts how memorability of a concept should change if the context containing the concept were changed. The paper also presents the results of experiments carried out to test these predictions.     

Clinician Perspectives of Diagnosis and Perceived Client Change in “Real World” Psychotherapy for Youth Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

We investigated the extent to which clinician-assigned diagnoses of emotional and behavioral disorders and clinicians’ perceptions of client change are consistent with structured measures of youth clinical functioning and parent/family characteristics within the context of usual care or “real world” psychotherapy. A total of 54 therapists from two publicly-funded youth outpatient mental health clinics and 128 youths and parents from the therapists’ combined caseloads were included in the study. Clinician-assigned diagnosis and youth and family demographics were collected at the initial visit, clinician-reported perceived client change was collected at 6-month follow-up, and structured measures of youth clinical functioning and parent/family characteristics were collected at both time points. Results indicate some overlap between clinician-assigned diagnosis, clinician-reported perceived client change, and structured measures of youth clinical functioning and parent/family characteristics after controlling for demographic factors. Results are discussed in terms of implications for the implementation of evidence-based practices in real world community settings.     

Adaptive Inferential Feedback Partner Training for Depression: A Pilot Study

Adaptive inferential feedback (AIF) partner training is a cognitive technique that teaches the friends and family members of depressed patients to respond to the patients’ dysfunctional thoughts in a targeted manner. These dysfunctional attributions, which AIF addresses, are a common residual feature of depression amongst remitted patients, and are associated with poor long-term consequences. Thus, an AIF partner training intervention, as a supplement to individual cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), may help to improve clinical outcomes through the continuing reinforcement of the cognitive restructuring that takes place in the context of the patient’s individual treatment. This 10-patient pilot study examines the feasibility and outcome of the augmentation of standard CBT with 4 sessions of AIF partner training. The patients’ depression, anxiety, negative inferences, and perception of social support, and their partners’ knowledge and provision of AIF significantly improved over the course of the study, with gains maintained at 2-month follow-up. Further research is needed to investigate any incremental value of this intervention beyond standard CBT. A detailed case example, illustrating the application of AIF partner training techniques, is included.     

Virtue blindness and hegemony: qualitative evidence of negotiated ethical frameworks in the social language of university research administration

The study used critical discourse analysis (CDA) to elucidate normative structures of ethical behavior in university research administration which may be useful for knowledge transference to future studies of research integrity. Research administration appears to support integrity in the research environment through four very strong normative domains: (1) respect for authority structures; (2) respect for institutional boundaries; (3) professionalism; and (4) a strong sense of virtue. The strong norm structure of research administration, however, appears to be threatened by the fifth domain, (5) political power, which is inhabited by prestigious faculty with tenure, top-down authority misalignment, and the power for some institutional members to circumvent the system. The strong normative structure also appears threatened by the overall consequentiality of the regulatory environment, and shifting contexts that threaten personal virtue. In the end, the normative structure is fluid, politically acquiescent to power, and ambiguous. Although the professional core of the norm structure is strong, the strengths and weaknesses in the overall system can be connected to poorly constructed elements of the institutional environment.     

Octopuses (Octopus bimaculoides) and cuttlefishes (Sepia pharaonis, S. officinalis) can conditionally discriminate

In complex navigation using landmarks, an animal must discriminate between potential cues and show context (condition) sensitivity. Such conditional discrimination is considered a form of complex learning and has been associated primarily with vertebrates. We tested the hypothesis that octopuses and cuttlefish are capable of conditional discrimination. Subjects were trained in two maze configurations (the conditions) in which they were required to select one of two particular escape routes within each maze (the discrimination). Conditional discrimination could be demonstrated by selecting the correct escape route in each maze. Six of ten mud-flat octopuses (Octopus bimaculoides), 6 of 13 pharaoh cuttlefish (Sepia pharaonis), and one of four common cuttlefish (S. officinalis) demonstrated conditional discrimination by successfully solving both mazes. These experiments demonstrate that cephalopods are capable of conditional discrimination and extend the limits of invertebrate complex learning.     

Contingency judgements on the fly

The present research was conducted to establish the validity of a novel procedure for measuring human contingency judgements aimed at shortening the length of conventional procedures. Cues and outcomes were simple geometric shapes that were presented in a rapid streaming fashion, reducing the length of a block of trials from several minutes to a few seconds. We establish the reliability of the procedure by replicating two central findings in the contingency judgement literature, and we elaborate on the importance of this method for future research.     

Health-Related Quality of Life Among Substance Abusers in Residential Drug Abuse Treatment

Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in substance abusers remains an area of inquiry in need of investigation. The few studies on the topic have found substance abuser HRQOL less than that of the general population. The present research compared 303 substance abusers in long-term residential therapeutic community treatment in New York with a general non-institutionalized adult sample from New York (N = 27,465) whose data were collected between 2002 and 2006 during the yearly administrations of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), a state-based system of health surveys gathering data from upwards of 350,000 adults per year across all 50 states. One sample t-tests found that the in-treatment substance abusers reported significantly more physically and mentally unhealthy days over the past 30 days, as well as significantly more inactive days over the past 30 days due to illness.     

Improving intergroup relations between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland via E-contact

Northern Ireland is characterised by extensive segregation between its predominantly Catholic and Protestant communities. With the aim of overcoming this segregation, the current study experimentally evaluated the effectiveness of electronic or E-contact as a novel indirect contact and prejudice-reduction strategy. Here, Catholic and Protestant participants were not required to meet physically but were involved in a collaborative and goal-orientated online interaction with a member of the other community. As predicted, E-contact improved both Catholics’ and Protestants’ outgroup attitudes via improved contact expectancies and reduced intergroup anxiety. These findings provide support for the contemporary role of online interactions in actively overcoming the physical and psychological barriers that often prevent prejudice reduction in segregated communities.