Behavioral and environmental correlates of infant abuse in group- living pigtail macaques

The present study investigated the context of occurrence of infant abuse and the behavior of abusive mothers and their infants in pigtail macaques (Macaca nemestrina). Subjects were 8 abusive mothers with their infants and 8 control mother-infant pairs living in 3 captive social groups. The most common forms of abuse were infant crushing and dragging and the most common context of occurrence was social stress. Severe and mild abuse differed in the frequency but not in the type of abuse patterns. Abusive mothers had controlling parenting styles relative to nonabusive mothers, and abused infants played at a later age and less frequently than controls. This study replicates previous findings on the parenting styles of abusive macaque mothers and provides new evidence on the context of occurrence of abuse and its consequences for infant health and social development.     

Patterns of interprofessional conflict resolution on school child study teams

This study proposes to investigate perceived and desired methods of conflict resolution by school psychologists, social workers, and learning disability specialists. Data were based on responses to a questionnaire which requested information on how decisions were reached or should have been reached when their child study teams were required to classify a child and there were conflicting opinions between professional groups. While majority vote and resolution by the psychologist accounted for the methods most often used in actual resolutions, there were great disagreements between professions as to how resolutions should have been made. Analysis indicates that the school psychologists are generally satisfied because they are the single group most often making final decisions, but they are generating feelings of discontent among other the other groups which suggst that team functioning and decision making, especially during voting, may be overly affected by interprofessional rivalry rather than objective data.     

The effect of difficulty and chance success on correlations between items or between tests

A study is made of the extent to which correlations between items and between tests are affected by the difficulties of the items involved and by chance success through guessing. The Pearsonian product-moment coefficient does not necessarily give a correct indication of the relation between items or sets of items, since it tends to decrease as the items or tests become less similar in difficulty. It is suggested that the tetrachoric correlation coefficient can properly be used for estimating the correlation between the continua underlying items or sets of items even though they differ in difficulty, and a method for correcting a 2 × 2 table for the effect of chance is proposed.The opinions expressed in this article are the private ones of the writer and are not to be construed as official or reflecting the views of the Navy Department or the naval service at large. The writer is indebted to Lt. C. L. Vaughn, H (S) USNR, for critical comments on this paper.     

Reflections on the Reflections

Pastoral Psychology -     

A pilot study of the DBT coach: an interactive mobile phone application for individuals with borderline personality disorder and substance use disorder

Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) has received strong empirical support and is practiced widely as a treatment for borderline personality disorder (BPD) and BPD with comorbid substance use disorders (BPD-SUD). Therapeutic success in DBT requires that individuals generalize newly acquired skills to their natural environment. However, there have been only a limited number of options available to achieve this end. The primary goal of this research was to develop and test the feasibility of the DBT Coach, a software application for a smartphone, designed specifically to enhance generalization of a specific DBT skill (opposite action) among individuals with BPD-SUD. We conducted a quasiexperimental study in which 22 individuals who were enrolled in DBT treatment programs received a smartphone with the DBT Coach for 10 to 14 days and were instructed to use it as needed. Participants used the DBT Coach an average of nearly 15 times and gave high ratings of helpfulness and usability. Results indicate that both emotion intensity and urges to use substances significantly decreased within each coaching session. Furthermore, over the trial period, participants reported a decrease in depression and general distress. Mobile technology offering in vivo skills coaching may be a useful tool for reducing urges to use substances and engage in other maladaptive behavior by directly teaching and coaching in alternative, adaptive coping behavior.     

The effect of mechanical context on attentional cost in unimanual coordination

The purpose of this study was to address the attentional cost of sensorimotor coordination by determining if changes to the mechanical context of movement would influence the ability to attend and respond to an alternate stimulus. Nine right-handed participants performed rhythmic pronation and supination movements of the forearm in time with an auditory metronome. A secondary task, consisting of a pedal response to visual probe stimuli, was employed to infer the attentional cost of the coordination task. When the axis-of-rotation (AOR) was placed below the long axis of the forearm, the average time to react (RT) to the probe stimuli was greater for the supinate-on-the-beat condition than for the pronate-on-the-beat condition. Conversely, with the AOR above the forearm, RT for the pronate-on-the-beat pattern was greater than that for the supinate-on-the-beat pattern. Thus, changing the mechanical context of an upper limb coordination task altered the central processing cost required to maintain pattern stability. This finding provides further evidence that the attentional resources required to produce a particular movement are determined by the ease with which the action is executed by the sensorimotor system.     

Is Optimism Always Best?: Future Outlooks and Preparedness

ABSTRACT— Although people generally appear optimistic about the future, they shift from optimism under certain circumstances. Drawing from a recent review of the literature, we describe how both optimism and shifts from optimism serve the common goal of preparedness, which includes a readiness to deal with setbacks and a readiness to take advantage of opportunities. Shifts from optimism occur in response to available information and to the possibility that things may not turn out as hoped. People tend to shift from optimism when feedback is anticipated in the near future, when the outcome is important, when negative outcomes are easily imagined, and when the outcomes are uncontrollable. In addition, people with low self-esteem shift from optimism more readily than do people with high self-esteem. Finally, both optimism and shifts from optimism have unique benefits in terms of preparedness.