AIDS/HIV in the work of family therapy trainees

A group of family therapy trainees were asked about their experience at work and knowledge of AIDS/HIV. The majority had already encountered AIDS-related issues in the context of their work. On the whole, they were well informed about AIDS/HIV, although specific gaps in their knowledge were identified. It is recommended that provision be made for the training of family therapists in this area.     

Does Drawing Attention to the Referent Constrain the Way in Which Children Construct Verbal Messages?

Tasks which assess children's speaker skills in the referential communication paradigm frequently mark the target item in some way to indicate which picture should be described. It was hypothesized that this procedure would interfere with effective scanning of the visual array (comparison processing) assumed to be necessary for the production of accurate messages. It was also predicted that, when one item was highlighted, more redundant features would be included in messages. An experiment which compared a marked with an unmarked target condition across three age ranges (6, 8, 10 years) found that message accuracy was not affected by highlighting. But significantly more redundant features were reported in the marked condition, indicating that, where redundancy is the focus of interest, a highlighting procedure should be avoided. Two age effects were also found: Message accuracy improved with age, while redundancy reduced with age.     

Raising standards of practice in school psychology through the use of field-based training

A model is presented for upgrading school psychology practice in an entire state by raising the level of entry for school psychology certification. A central feature of the plan is that it permits those who currently do not meet the revised standards to participate in a field-based program. This allows them to increase their knowledge and skills so that they may continue to hold positions, but at a higher level of competence. The development of the program, its implementation, and an evaluation of its efforts over a five-year period are presented.     

Investigating Friendship Difficulties in the Pathway from ADHD to Depressive Symptoms. Can Parent–Child Relationships Compensate?

Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is associated with friendship difficulties. This may partly account for the increasingly recognised association between ADHD and subsequent depression. Little is known about the types of friendship difficulties that could contribute to the association between ADHD and depressive symptoms and whether other relationships, such as parent–child relationships, can mitigate against potential adverse effects of friendship difficulties. In a representative UK school sample (n?=?1712), three main features of friendship (presence of friends, friendship quality and characteristics of the individual’s classroom friendship group) were assessed in a longitudinal study with two assessment waves (W1, W2) during the first year of secondary school (children aged 11-12 years). These friendship features (W1) were investigated as potential mediators of the prospective association between teacher-rated ADHD symptoms (W1) and self-rated depressive symptoms (W2) seven months later. Parent–child relationship quality (W1) was tested as a moderator of any indirect effects of ADHD on depression via friendship. ADHD symptoms were inversely associated with friendship presence, friendship quality and positive characteristics of classroom friendship groups. Depressive symptoms were inversely associated with presence and quality of friendships. Friendship quality had indirect effects in the association between ADHD and subsequent depressive symptoms. There was some evidence of moderated mediation, whereby indirect effects via friendship quality attenuated slightly as children reported warmer parent–child relationships. This highlights the importance of considering the quality of friendships and parent–child relationships in children with ADHD symptoms. Fostering good quality relationships may help disrupt the link between ADHD symptomology and subsequent depression risk.

     

Self-reported parental abuse relates to autobiographical memory style in patients with eating disorders

Previous research has shown a relationship between levels of self-reported childhood abuse and overgeneral memory style. This relationship was further clarified in patients with an eating disorder (ED). Patients and healthy controls completed a task in which they had to generate specific autobiographical memories to emotional cue words. The results showed that first, the ED group, relative to the controls, produced more first memories that were "overgeneral" and fewer first memories that were specific. Second, in the ED group, the level of self-reported parental abuse was positively correlated with the tendency to produce overgeneral memories to negative cues. This effect remained significant even after levels of depressed mood were controlled for.     

Maternal expressed emotion predicts children's antisocial behavior problems: using monozygotic-twin differences to identify environmental effects on behavioral development

If maternal expressed emotion is an environmental risk factor for children's antisocial behavior problems, it should account for behavioral differences between siblings growing up in the same family even after genetic influences on children's behavior problems are taken into account. This hypothesis was tested in the Environmental Risk Longitudinal Twin Study with a nationally representative 1994-1995 birth cohort of twins. The authors interviewed the mothers of 565 five-year-old monozygotic (MZ) twin pairs and established which twin in each family received more negative emotional expression and which twin received more warmth. Within MZ pairs, the twin receiving more maternal negativity and less warmth had more antisocial behavior problems. Qualitative interviews were used to generate hypotheses about why mothers treat their children differently. The results suggest that maternal emotional attitudes toward children may play a causal role in the development of antisocial behavior and illustrate how genetically informative research can inform tests of socialization hypotheses.     

The psychometrics of photographic cropping: the influence of colour, meaning, and expertise

Cropping is the central act of photography, the viewfinder of a camera being used to crop a portion of the visual world which is then surrounded with a frame. Six studies are described which show that the act of cropping is carried out reliably and confidently by both expert and non-expert participants. Two studies confirm that some croppers are better croppers than others, their cropped images being preferred aesthetically over the croppings of less-good croppers. Colour had little impact on cropping decisions, whereas thresholded monochrome images ('Mooney images') dramatically altered crop positions. That suggests that cropping can be driven top-down, by the meaning of objects in photographs, but the fact that the Mooneyised images are still cropped consistently, suggests that image structure, perhaps in the form of low-level image properties, may still be important. Experts crop pictures differently from non-experts, and they take longer, viewing a wider range of possible crops, pausing longer to assess crops, and using more formal terminology when reflecting on their cropping decisions. Experts' crops are not, however, preferred more, either by non-expert viewers or by expert viewers. Cropping, it is suggested, is an ideal paradigm for experimental aesthetics, allowing precise experimental control with Fechner's Method of Production, a technique which normally is not easy to use.     

What can What-When-Where (WWW) binding tasks tell us about young children's episodic foresight? Theory and two experiments

We analyze theoretical differences between conceptualist and minimalist approaches to episodic processing in young children. The ‘episodic-like’ minimalism of Clayton and Dickinson (1998) is a species of the latter. We asked whether an ‘episodic-like’ task (structurally similar to ones used by Clayton and Dickinson) in which participants had to bind What (kind of object), to Where (location of object) to When (temporal duration from present) - WWW-binding - would produce the often-found developmental trajectory in episodic foresight performance of failure at 3 years, transitional performance at 4 and success at 5. Although failure at 3 years was reproduced, the performance of 4 and 5 year olds was likely affected by the executive challenge of inhibiting reference to the currently preferable item.     

Grey squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) show a feature-negative effect specific to social learning

Previous laboratory studies on social learning suggest that some animals can learn more readily if they first observe a conspecific demonstrator perform the task unsuccessfully and so fail to obtain a food reward than if they observe a successful demonstrator that obtains the food. This effect may indicate a difference in how easily animals are able to associate different outcomes with the conspecific or could simply be the result of having food present in only some of the demonstrations. To investigate we tested a scatter-hoarding mammal, the eastern grey squirrel, on its ability to learn to choose between two pots of food after watching a conspecific remove a nut from one of them on every trial. Squirrels that were rewarded for choosing the opposite pot to the conspecific chose correctly more frequently than squirrels rewarded for choosing the same pot (a feature-negative effect). Another group of squirrels was tested on their ability to choose between the two pots when the rewarded option was indicated by a piece of card. This time, squirrels showed no significant difference in their ability to learn to choose the same or the opposite pot. The results add to anecdotal reports that grey squirrels can learn by observing a conspecific and suggest that even when all subjects are provided with demonstrations with the same content, not all learning occurs equally. Prior experience or expectations of the association between a cue (a conspecific) and food influences what can be learned through observation whilst previously unfamiliar cues (the card) can be associated more readily with any outcome.