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.     

A comparison of response interruption and redirection and competing items on vocal stereotypy and appropriate vocalizations

The current study compared the reductive effects of response interruption and redirection (RIRD) and competing items (including sound-producing and nonsound-producing toys) on the vocal stereotypy exhibited by two children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Sound-producing toys reduced vocal stereotypy relative to nonsound-producing toys and RIRD reduced stereotypy and increased rates of appropriate vocalizations to a greater extent than providing competing items. These findings replicate and extend previous literature suggesting that RIRD and sound-producing competing items are effective methods to treat vocal stereotypy.     

Sustainable Tourism as Emergent Discourse

Paradoxical images and understandings inherent in sustainable tourism discourses are identified as relating to two undergirding incongruities where (1) humans and the environment are seen as discrete entities and inherently interrelated, and where (2) humans and the environment are viewed as evolving over time, and as static and unchanging. To resolve these tensions, it is suggested that rather than taking an essentialist perspective, it is more useful to treat sustainable tourism as an aspiring evolving discourse. Recognition of human complicity in discourse construction is proposed as necessary for fostering greater circumspection: thoughtful attention to the circumstances that reciprocally give rise to our own evolving consciousness and existential circumstances.     

Concepts of kinship relations and inheritance in childhood and adolescence

This paper examines the development and consistency of children's (4, 7, 10, and 14 years) naïve concepts of inheritance using three tasks. A modified adoption task asked participants to distinguish between biological and social parentage in their predictions and explanations of the origins of different feature types (physical characteristics, disabilities, and personality traits). The causal mechanisms task asked participants to rate their preference for various mechanisms of inheritance for physical features. The family relatedness task required participants to provide judgements on the relatedness of family members and explain their understanding of kinship terms. Developmental trends were revealed in all three tasks. There was a trend towards increased consistency in judgements across tasks with age, but low correlations between explanations given in different task contexts. Findings are discussed with reference to the onset and variability of inheritance concepts and the implications for education and future research.     

Intensive Home Based Services Within a Comprehensive System of Care for Youth

Within a comprehensive mental health service array for youth, Intensive Home Based Services (IHBS) are designed to meet the needs of youth with significant emotional and behavioral problems in their home communities, avoiding the need for out-of-home services, particularly residential care. We examined youth receiving IHBS as their first service in the state of Hawaii system of care (N = 163) to determine how successful IHBS were in preventing the need for more restrictive services within 12 months of intake. Subsequently, we investigated characteristics that might be predictive of a youth’s need for service intensification within 12 months. Logistic regression analyses found that greater age, level of service need, and functional impairment at intake predicted use of more restrictive services within 12 months of intake, whereas gender, ethnicity, diagnosis, service intensity, and clinician credentials did not. Overall, our findings suggested that IHBS were reasonably successful in preventing residential placements, and provided some basis for determining characteristics of youth likely to require more restrictive placements within a one year period.     

How do individuals with Williams syndrome learn a route in a real‐world environment?

Individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) show a specific deficit in visuo‐spatial abilities. This finding, however, derives mainly from performance on small‐scale laboratory‐based tasks. This study investigated large‐scale route learning in individuals with WS and two matched control groups (moderate learning difficulty group [MLD], typically developing group [TD]). In a non‐labelling and a labelling (verbal information provided along the route) condition, participants were guided along one of two unfamiliar 1‐km routes with 20 junctions, and then retraced the route themselves (two trials). The WS participants performed less well than the other groups, but given verbal information and repeated experience they learnt nearly all of the turns along the route. The extent of improvement in route knowledge (correct turns) in WS was comparable to that of the control groups. Relational knowledge (correctly identifying spatial relationships between landmarks), compared with the TD group, remained poor for both the WS and the MLD group. Assessment of the relationship between performance on the large‐scale route‐learning task and that on three small‐scale tasks (maze learning, perspective taking, map use) showed no relationship for the TD controls, and only a few non‐specific associations in the MLD and WS groups.     

Effects of Social Conditions on the Expression of Sex-role Stereotypes

In this study, 129 female and 83 male undergraduates were asked to make judgments about identical male and female law school applicants. Evaluations of the candidate employed two types of measures: (a) direct measures set up to assess judgments based upon objective criteria such as GPA and aptitude test scores, and (b) indirect measures designed to provide more opportunity for subjective factors and subtle ways for stereotyping to operate. It was hypothesized that increased social awareness of sex discrimination would reduce more blatant types of stereotyping expressed in the direct measures and force stereotyping into more subtle forms, measurable through the construction of the indirect indices. The results revealed no differences between male and female candidates on the direct measures. However, stereotyping appeared on indirect measures associated with personality characteristics and employment alternatives. The investigators concluded that prejudicial attitudes toward women continue to exist and are expressed in more subtle or „hidden” forms. Suggestions for developing means for measuring these attitudes as well as practical considerations for reducing discrimination in employment settings were presented.     

Patterns in Father Presence and Engagement in Mongolia: A Historical Cross-Sectional Study

Journal of Child and Family Studies - Many households in Mongolia are facing increased livelihood and financial insecurity due to rapid social, economic, political, and climate changes. There is...