Assessing the acceptability of staff management procedures to direct care and supervisory staff

Direct care and supervisory staff in five residential training programs for persons with mental retardation in North Dakota rated the acceptability of six staff management procedures. Overall, staff rated “Instructions”, “Instructions and Modeling”, “Feedback and Praise”, and “Instructions, Feedback, and Praise”, as significantly more acceptable than “Self-Management” and “Self-Management, Feedback and Praise”. There was a significant group by treatment interaction in which supervisors and direct care staff had significantly different acceptability rating for four of the six procedures. The results were further analyzed by group and implications and future research are discuessed.     

Should a school honor a student's DNR order? A physician/ethicist responds: a student's rights are not so simple.

...S.A. has a right to refuse treatment, but the school has a responsibility to others as well as S.A. By insisting on activating 911, the school risks violating her rights. But by agreeing to a rigid demand not to call 911, the school risks harming S.A., her schoolmates, and teachers. S.A. could be harmed in two ways: by having to endure a prolonged and painful death or by not being treated for an acute, reversible event that further compromises her life without ending it. Her fellow schoolmates and teachers could be harmed by being put in a position to exercise judgments and accept responsibilities for which they are neither professionally nor emotionally equipped....     

Influence of Family Support on Men in a Minimum Security Detention Center

The authors explored the relationship between family support and adjustment for adult men in a detention center, as measured by a staff rating scale completed by the appropriate counselor.     

Family interaction and child psychopathology: A comparison of two observation strategies

We examined two systems of assessing family interactions that are in common usage: a home based observation of free parent-child interaction and a clinic based observation of a structured mother-child problem solving discussion. Participants were 18 depressed, 27 conduct disordered and 16 comparison children and their mothers. Results indicated that: 1) these observations may yield very different data about child, and to a lesser extent, parent behavior, 2) parental affect in the clinic was related to their level of aversive behaviour in the home, 3) levels of both aversive and positive behavior for children and their mothers were correlated within each setting, 4) accuracy of diagnostic classifications made on the basis of the observational data were highest for comparison and conduct disordered children, but lowest for depressed children observed in the clinic, and 5) the inclusion of data on mothers' behavior increased classification accuracy for conduct disordered children only.     

Multilevel models in developmental psychological research: Rationales and applications

The armoury of statistical techniques has recently been enhanced with the multilevel model for longitudinal data. The present article explains the multilevel model for longitudinal data to the statistically non-sophisticated reader. It shows how the model relates to the five rationales of longitudinal research, as they were put forward by Baltes and Nesselroade (1979). In addition, it shows how the model matches Wohlwill's methodology of developmental functions. To elucidate the model further, three applications are given. The applications pertain to the development of children's sleeping duration during the first 18 months of life, the effects of early hospitalization on the daily frequency of crying, and the developmental relationship between social and solitary play.     

A tether system for cardiovascular studies with the behaving micropig

A tether system has been developed for continuous monitoring of blood pressure in the micropig. The micropig is a suitable model for blood-pressure research because of the similarity of its cardiovascular system to that of humans and because of its sensitivity to high sodium intake. The system consists of a metal boom, attached via a universal joint to a wall 6 ft above floor level, that extends horizontally to the center of the enclosure. A fluid and electronic swivel affixed to the boom is connected to a flexible, hollow, metal tether that descends to a vest worn by the micropig. The vest contains a pressure transducer to which an indwelling arterial catheter is connected via a stopcock. The transducer cable and an infusion line ascend through the interior of the tether to the swivel. The system remains in equilibrium through a system of pulleys and counterweights. Continuous, 24-h recording shows a diurnal variation characterized by higher heart rate but lower blood pressure during the day than at night. The system has been found to be effective for continuous studies over intervals of a month or more.     

Shaw’s stored information as a quantitative measure of sequential structure

In this paper, we describe a method to study the sequential structure in interevent times. The technique uses the stored information of an iterative map developed by-Shaw (1984). The stored information is a quantitative measure of the sequential organization or predictability in data. This paper discusses the concept of stored information and provides a FORTRAN routineto compute the stored information of interevent time data. Several synthetic data sets with known sequential structures are examined. Finally, we present some initial results from computing the stored information of experimental interresponse time data.     

Conditional reflexes as related to hypnosis and hypnotic techniques

Hypnosis has never been adequately explained in terms of conceptual framework of most schools of psychotherapy. The psychoanalytic concept that it consists of submission and surrender of important ego functions to the therapist does not explain all observed facts. During my wartime studies and since, I have been impressed by the observation that the patient’s ego is by no means powerless and defenseless, even during a deep state of trance, i.e., in states of trance sufficiently deep to eliminate awareness of painful body injuries (1965). Erickson (1954) has shown on many occasions that in resistant subjects one of the best ways to induce trance is to encourage the patient to resist as much as he can. Haley (1963) has pointed out in detail that at the beginning of any hypnotic relationship there evolves a subtle battle for “one-upmanship.” These observations certainly show that surrender in the psychological sense is by no means an aspect of even the most successfully induced trance states.