Specific extreme behaviors of postinstitutionalized Russian adoptees

Behavior problems reported by parents on the Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2001) were studied in 316 children adopted from social-emotionally depriving Russian institutions as a function of age at adoption (18-month cutoff), age at assessment (6-11 and 12-18 years), and gender. Children adopted after 18 months had higher problem scores predominately when assessed at 12-18 years. Although most children had no behavior problems, 59.0% of later adoptees assessed in adolescence had at least 1 subscale score and 48.7% had 2 or more subscale scores in the clinical/borderline range. A factor analysis of items that significantly related to age at adoption for older children revealed 1 broad factor, encompassing different antisocial behaviors, social difficulties, and withdrawal. These results may suggest a somewhat broader deficiency produced by orphanage experience beyond the first 18 months of life that underlies a range of behavioral problems displayed later.     

CBCL Behavior Problems of Post-Institutionalized International Adoptees

With the increase in international adoptions during the last decade, many researchers have investigated the developmental outcomes of these adoptees, including their extreme behaviors. Collectively, these results have not always appeared consistent across studies, perhaps because studies have used children reared in institutions or not, the institutional environments vary in severity, children spend different lengths of time in the institution and are assessed at different ages, and studies use different outcome measures. In an attempt to discern more order in the literature, this review focuses on 18 studies, each of which used the Child Behavior Checklist, and their outcomes are viewed with respect to these parameters. Results suggest that the major factor contributing to extreme behaviors is age at adoption, with those adopted after 6/18 months having more behavior problems, especially Internalizing, Externalizing, and Attention problems. Generally, samples of post-institutional children have more problems than samples of mixed or non-institutional internationally adopted children, and some problems are more likely to be manifest in adolescence, suggesting the effects of deficient early experiences are not simply the persistence of learned behavior but more general dispositions that become more noticeable or severe during adolescence. Findings are discussed in terms of early deficient social–emotional caregiver–child interactions that characterize most institutional environments as a possible major cause of later difficulties in post-institutionalized children.     

Effects of pain acceptance and pain control strategies on physical impairment in individuals with chronic low back pain

Psychosocial treatments for chronic pain are effective. There is a need, however, to understand the processes involved in determining how these treatments contribute to behavior change. Control and acceptance strategies represent two potentially important processes involved in treatment, although they differ significantly in approach. Results from laboratory-based studies suggest that acceptance-oriented strategies significantly enhance pain tolerance and behavioral persistence, compared with control-oriented strategies. There is a need, however, to investigate processes of acceptance and control directly in clinical settings. The present study investigated the effects of three brief instructional sets (pain control, pain acceptance, continued practice) on demonstrated physical impairment in 74 individuals with chronic low back pain using an analogue experimental design. After controlling for baseline performance, the pain acceptance group demonstrated greater overall functioning on a set of 7 standardized physical tasks relative to the other two groups, which did not differ from one another. Further, the acceptance group exhibited a 16.3% improvement in impairment, whereas the pain control group worsened by 8.3% and the continued practice group improved by 2.5%. These results suggest that acceptance may be a key process involved in behavior change in individuals with chronic pain.     

How, When, and Why to Use Digital Experimental Virtual Environments to Study Social Behavior

Over the last decade, researchers have begun using immersive virtual environment technology (IVET; commonly known as virtual reality) to create digital experimental virtual environments (DEVEs) to investigate social psychological processes. Researchers increasingly recognize that IVET provides powerful and cost-effective ways to manipulate theoretical variables and to measure a host of outcome variables, while providing a remarkable level of experimental control and ecological realism. In this article, we discuss IVET, the nature of social influence within DEVEs, and the use of DEVEs to study social behavior.