The distressed family and wounded children

This article addresses the issue of the need for clergy to be better informed regarding the assessment of child abuse and neglect. It provides a quick reference guide to assist clergy in assessing the risk factors in the abusive family with guidelines for the recognition of child maltreatment. In a society that is marked by unprecedented levels of child maltreatment reporting and an ever increasing shortage of mental health services, clergy are increasingly being confronted by situations involving potential child maltreatment that require expert crisis intervention skills. This article provides specific, concrete guidelines for clergy confronted with situations that call for the recognition of child maltreatment.Andrew J. Weaver, Ph.D., United Methodist minister and a licensed marriage, family, and child therapist. He holds a doctorate in clinical psychology and serves as the director of the Pacific Center, Community Counseling Service, sponsored by 11 churches in Central Los Angeles.This article is dedicated to the staff of Alameda County Child Protective Services in Oakland, California, with appreciation for their courage and devotion to the grievous and demanding task of caring for distressed parents and their wounded children.     

Monitoring of comprehension: The role of text difficulty in metamemory for narrative and expository text

The effect of text difficulty on metamemory for narrative and expository text was investigated. In Experiment 1, we found an interaction between type of text and type of question (thematic or detailed). For readers of narrative texts, correlations between predicted and actual performance were highest for detailed questions, but this pattern was reversed for readers of expository texts. Next, text difficulty was explored as a possible factor affecting metamemory accuracy. In Experiments 2 and 3, metamemory accuracy was a nonmonotonic function of text difficulty. Subjects made remarkably accurate predictions of future performance (meanG > .6) for both narrative and expository texts that were of intermediate difficulty (approximately a 12th-grade reading level). We propose anoptimum effort hypothesis, predicting greatest metamemory accuracy when the texts are of intermediate difficulty.     

Effect of rhythmic grouping on stream segregation

Three experiments investigated the role of temporal grouping on auditory stream segregation. For sounds that formed frequency streams (e.g., 400 Hz, 500 Hz, 1600 Hz, and 2000 Hz), the effect of rhythm was minimal. Temporal grouping did not affect judgments of stream segregation and did not affect difficulty of sequence identification. In contrast, for sounds that tended to form one coherent sequence (e.g., 750 Hz, 1500 Hz, 3000 Hz, and 6000 Hz), temporal grouping affected judgments of stream segregation as well as difficulty of identification. The temporal grouping could space the three lower or three higher pitch tones equally in time and this induced isochronous stream segregation. Subjects could not interleave the resulting streams, and identification became far more difficult. The role of rhythmic grouping is therefore contextual, depending on the relationships between the elements as well as the order of the elements.     

Classifying ℵ0-categorical theories

Among the complete ₀-categorical theories with finite non-logical vocabularies, we distinguish three classes. The classification is obtained by looking at the number of bound variables needed to isolated complete types. In classI theories, all types are isolated by quantifier free formulas; in classII theories, there is a leastm, greater than zero, s.t. all types are isolated by formulas in no more thanm bound variables: and in classIII theories, for eachm there is a type which cannot be isolated inm or fewer bound variables. ClassII theories are further subclassified according to whether or not they can be extended to classI theories by the addition of finitely many new predicates. Alternative characterizations are given in terms of quantifier elimination and homogeneous models. It is shown that for each primep, the theory of infinite Abelian groups all of whose elements are of orderp is classI when formulated in functional constants, and classIII when formulated in relational constants.     

Use of Out-of-Home Care Among a Statewide Population of Children and Youth Enrolled in Medicaid

System-wide research on the use of out-of-home care among children and youth is needed to inform the development of policies and services. We used Medicaid claims from North Carolina to examine patterns of out-of-home care, identify demographic and diagnostic differences between those who received care in residential treatment, psychiatric hospitals, or general hospitals, and determine whether demographic or diagnostic characteristics were associated with having more than one out-of-home stay during the year. Among those who received out-of-home care during a 1 year period, 36% received care in residential treatment only, 32.4% in general hospitals only, and 17.6% in psychiatric hospitals only, while 14.0% used more than one sector of out-of-home care. Boys, teenagers, and youth in foster care or diagnosed with emotional disturbance or hyperkinetic syndrome had higher odds of receiving care in residential treatment only whereas girls, youth age 19–21, and those with depressive and stress and adjustment disorders had higher odds of receiving care from hospitals only. Teenagers and youth in foster care had higher odds of having more than one stay. Among those with more than one stay, there were 300 patterns of care and nearly half received care from more than one service sector. The implications for services and policy are discussed. Further research is needed to understand patterns of out-of-home care and the factors that influence placement decisions.