Parent management training for conduct problems in children: Enhancing treatment to improve therapeutic changeCapacitación en entrenamiento de padres para problemas de conducta en niños: mejorar el tratamiento para mejorar el cambio terapéutico

Background/Objective: The study evaluated two variations of Parent Management Training (PMT) for children referred to treatment for oppositional, aggressive, and antisocial behavior. The goal was to evaluate the impact of multiple enhancements to optimize common and placebo factors to augment therapeutic change. Method: The families of all children (N=138, 39 girls and 99 boys, ages 6-13) received PMT. One half of the families were assigned to receive an enhanced version with multiple additions designed to increase bonding of the parent to the therapist, professionalism of treatment and setting, credibility of the intervention, and expectancies for therapeutic change. Assessment included multiple treatment outcome measures of the child (problem behaviors, psychiatric symptoms, social competence, and adaptive functioning) and parents (depression, stress, and family relations) showed marked improvements over the course of treatment, and several process measures (therapeutic alliance, credibility of the procedures, expectancy for change). Results: The results indicated that children and parents made marked improvement in all the treatment outcome measures. The vast majority of children fell within the normative range at posttreatment on problem and prosocial behaviors. The two treatment conditions were no different in outcomes for children or parents. Conclusion: PMT led to marked changes in treatment outcome.     

Haptic recognition of static and dynamic expressions of emotion in the live face

If humans can detect the wealth of tactile and haptic information potentially available in live facial expressions of emotion (FEEs), they should be capable of haptically recognizing the six universal expressions of emotion (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise) at levels well above chance. We tested this hypothesis in the experiments reported here. With minimal training, subjects' overall mean accuracy was 51% for static FEEs (Experiment 1) and 74% for dynamic FEEs (Experiment 2). All FEEs except static fear were successfully recognized above the chance level of 16.7%. Complementing these findings, overall confidence and information transmission were higher for dynamic than for corresponding static faces. Our performance measures (accuracy and confidence ratings, plus response latency in Experiment 2 only) confirmed that happiness, sadness, and surprise were all highly recognizable, and anger, disgust, and fear less so.     

Effects of caffeine on persuasion and attitude change: The role of secondary tasks in manipulating systematic message processing

Two experiments are reported that examine the effects of caffeine consumption on attitude change by using different secondary tasks to manipulate message processing. The first experiment employed an orientating task whilst the second experiment employed a distracter task. In both experiments participants consumed an orange‐juice drink that either contained caffeine (3.5 mg/kg body weight) or did not contain caffeine (placebo) prior to reading a counter‐attitudinal communication. The results across both experiments were similar. When message processing was reduced or under high distraction, there was no attitude change irrespective of caffeine consumption. However, when message processing was enhanced or under low distraction, there was greater attitude change in the caffeine vs. placebo conditions. Furthermore, attitudes formed after caffeine consumption resisted counter‐persuasion (Experiment 1) and led to indirect attitude change (Experiment 2). The extent that participants engaged in message‐congruent thinking mediated the amount of attitude change. These results provide evidence that moderate amounts of caffeine increase systematic processing of the arguments in the message resulting in greater agreement. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Understanding the weapon focus effect: The role of threat,unusualness, exposure duration,and scene complexity

We examined the role of exposure duration and scene complexity on the weapon focus effect (WFE). Memory for the mock crime was affected more by a weapon than an unusual but nonthreatening object. Threat reduced correct identifications when the event was short but not long; duration of the event did not interact with unusualness. Additionally, we found a WFE for target‐absent lineup decisions, but only for the accomplice lineup, not the object‐wielding perpetrator's lineup. We discuss the implications of these results for illuminating the mechanisms that elicit the WFE.