The Development of a Short Form of an Irrational/Rational Beliefs Scale

Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy - This study developed a short form of the Attitudes and Beliefs Scale-2 (ABS-2), a measure of Ellis’s irrational and rational...     

A randomized clinical trial of three prompting systems to teach tact relations

Prompts are commonly used during discrete trial teaching for individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Three commonly used prompting systems include constant time delay, most-to-least prompting, and flexible prompt fading. Most of the research demonstrating the effectiveness of these three prompting strategies have been completed through the use of single subject experimental designs. Some within the field of behaviorally based approaches to ASD interventions have called for more randomized clinical trials of these approaches. The purpose of the present study was to compare these 3 prompting systems to teach tact relations for 27 individuals diagnosed with ASD through a randomized clinical trial without a control group with respect to pre–post responding, generalization, sessions to mastery, and responding during teaching. Overall, minimal differences were observed across the 3 systems. The results are discussed with respect to future research and clinical application of the methods evaluated.     

Effects of stimulus color, pattern, and practice on sex differences in mental rotations task performance.

Redundant color information improved performance for both sexes on the Shepard Mental Rotations Task (MRT; Shepard & Metzler, 1971). Absolute score gains for women were larger than those for men; therefore, relative improvement was greater. Substantial practice effects, also favoring women, were apparent in both studies. Study 1 showed that redundant color improved performance by 0.25 SD. Study 2 demonstrated that redundant black-and-white pattern information did not have any effect; a second visuospatial channel, redundant color, was a critical factor in improving scores of men and women on difficult mental rotations tasks.     

Measuring Child Mental Health Status for Services Research

Epidemiological studies of the prevalence of mental health disorders typically contain multiple measures of mental health, using different instruments and different informants (child, parent, and interviewer). We used the Methods for the Epidemiology of Child and Adolescents Mental Disorder (MECA) study of U.S. youth to assess the effects of employing a range of these measures in mental health services research. We examined the effect of including various measures of mental health status in regressions of income on mental health service use. The estimated effect of income on service use varied widely, depending on the measure of mental health status used. Some measures of mental health status have little explanatory power in service use regressions. Measures of mental health status based on parental assessment of impairment or need, such as the Columbia Impairment Scale, are less costly to collect and also have good explanatory power, but are more strongly correlated with income. The Non-Clinician Child Global Assessment Scale (NC-CGAS) performs best in terms of explanatory power and correlation with income. Higher income parents appeared to judge behaviors differently from lower income parents, so analyses based on measures derived from parental report may lead to an understatement of the effect of income on service use.     

Instructive feedback embedded within group instruction for children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder

The present study evaluated the effects of instructive feedback embedded within a group discrete trial teaching to teach tact relations to nine children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder using a nonconcurrent multiple‐baseline design. Dependent variables included correct responses for: primary targets (directly taught), secondary targets (taught via instructive feedback), primary observational targets (directly taught to other members of the group), and secondary observational targets (taught via instructive feedback provided to other members of the group). Results showed that all nine participants reached the mastery criterion for the primary targets, as well as acquired the secondary and observational targets without direct teaching. Clinical implications and areas for future research are provided.     

Social projection of transient drive states

The authors hypothesized that people's predictions of how other people feel in emotionally arousing situations are often based on people's predictions of how they themselves would feel in those situations. Indeed, most participants in Study 1 reported predicting hungry hikers' feelings by mentally trading places with them, imagining what their own feelings would be in the hikers' situation. Because people's predictions of their own feelings tend to be biased in the direction of their current drive states, we hypothesized that mentally trading places would lead to social projection of transient drive states. In Study 2, participants' predictions of whether thirst or hunger would be more bothersome to hikers lost without food or water were biased in the direction of participants' own exercise-induced thirst. Furthermore, participants' predictions of how they would feel in the hikers' situation statistically mediated the effect of exercise on their predictions of the hikers' feelings.     

Effects of Stimulus Color,Pattern, and Practice on Sex Differences in Mental Rotations Task Performance

Redundant color information improved performance for both sexes on the Shepard Mental Rotations Task (MRT; Shepard & Metzler, 1971). Absolute score gains for women were larger than those for men; therefore, relative improvement was greater. Substantial practice effects, also favoring women, were apparent in both studies. Study 1 showed that redundant color improved performance by 0.25 SD. Study 2 demonstrated that redundant black-and-white pattern information did not have any effect; a second visuospatial channel, redundant color, was a critical factor in improving scores of men and women on difficult mental rotations tasks.     

Countering Perfectionism in Research on Clinical Practice. III: Implications for Randomized Designs of the Presence of Uncontrolled Interactions and Spontaneous Changes

In a crossover study, we took pre-test, post-first-treatment, and post-second-treatment measures of self-expressiveness (assertiveness) and of acute emotional distress while we successively trained different groups of students in assertiveness and group therapy exercises. Our (unfulfilled) expectations were straightforward: We thought that assertiveness training would produce specific improvement in self-expression measures with little impact on overall distress and that group therapy would produce specific improvement in general distress with little impact on assertiveness. Both treatments improved assertiveness and decreased distress. The fact that our treatments had impure effects enhanced the likelihood of Type II statistical errors and compromised the effectiveness of our design. In addition, quite surprisingly, assertiveness training selectively improved the mental health of women students, and group therapy selectively improved the assertiveness of men students more than the alternative treatment did. This interaction between gender and randomly administered experimental treatment procedures raises serious, generally important questions about the logic of statistically controlled experimentation that relies on randomization to eliminate the effects of uncontrolled, but relevant, variables.