The efficacy of mnemonic components of the cognitive interview: towards a shortened variant for time‐critical investigations

The cognitive interview utilizes mnemonic instructions and social facilitative techniques to increase correct recall from eyewitnesses without concomitant increases in errors. Recent studies however have suggested that police may neglect this technique in time‐critical situations. The present study investigated mnemonic components to determine whether a shorter, but still effective, technique was possible. Forty‐five participants viewed a film of a simulated crime and were interviewed with one of three techniques: the cognitive interview; a modified version that replaced the change order and change perspectives techniques with additional free recall attempts; or a structured interview. It was hypothesized that the modified technique would be as effective as the cognitive interview, while both would be superior to the structured interview. Results supported these hypotheses. Further analysis suggested that a shortened version, with the two mnemonics removed, may substantially reduce interviewing time while still offering an effective interview strategy in time‐critical situations. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Drinking trajectories following an initial lapse.

Relapse following alcohol treatment is a major problem for individuals who are alcohol dependent, yet little is known about the course of drinking after the initial lapse. In the current study, discrete-time survival analysis and latent growth mixture modeling were used to evaluate the time to first lapse and the trajectories of postlapse drinking in a sample of 563 individuals who received community alcohol treatment. Results showed a decreasing risk of lapsing over time. After the initial lapse, 3 trajectory subgroups provided a parsimonious representation of the heterogeneity in postlapse drinking frequency and quantity, with the majority of individuals reporting light, infrequent drinking. Covariate analyses incorporating demographics, distal risk factors, time to first lapse, and coping behavior as predictors of time to lapse and postlapse drinking trajectories indicated that alcohol dependence and coping behavior were the strongest predictors of lapsing and postlapse drinking behavior.     

Patients’ Initial Doubts, Reservations and Objections to the ABC’s of REBT and their Application

This exploratory research set out to develop an initial framework and categorization scheme for understanding patients’ initial doubts, reservations and objections to the ABC’s of REBT and their application. 60 patients were asked to write down their doubts following a pre-therapy “Introduction to REBT” session. Subsequently, an emergent content analysis was carried out to identify main themes. The content analysis revealed five general categories, of which the two largest ones concerned theoretical doubts about the ABC model, and doubts about putting the ABC model into practice. Further sub-categorization revealed a variety of concerns that related to these categories. For example, a large proportion of doubts about putting the ABC model into practice were sub-categorized as concerning the perceived difficulty of doing so. In turn, this sub-category contained further sub-categories of difficulty-related beliefs.

Preventing Serious Conduct Problems in School-Age Youth: The Fast Track Program

Children with early-starting conduct problems have a very poor prognosis and exact a high cost to society. The Fast Track project is a multisite, collaborative research project investigating the efficacy of a comprehensive, long-term, multicomponent intervention designed to prevent the development of serious conduct problems in high-risk children. In this article, we (a) provide an overview of the developmental model that serves as the conceptual foundation for the Fast Track intervention and describe its integration into the intervention model; (b) outline the research design and intervention model, with an emphasis on the elementary school phase of the intervention; and (c) summarize findings to date concerning intervention outcomes. We then provide a case illustration, and conclude with a discussion of guidelines for practitioners who work with children with conduct problems.     

Older siblings influence younger siblings' motor development

Evidence exists for two competing theories about the effects of having an older sibling on development. Previous research has found that having an older sibling has both advantages and disadvantages for younger siblings' development. This study examined whether and how older siblings influenced the onset of their own younger siblings' motor milestones, a heretofore unstudied developmental domain in the sibling literature. Parents of 51 sibling pairs reported their children's crawling and walking onset dates. In keeping with imitation theories, in families where younger siblings crawled or walked earlier than their own older sibling, they did so significantly earlier. Moreover, in keeping with limited parental resource theories, in families where older siblings crawled or walked earlier than their own younger sibling, they did so significantly earlier. Older siblings did influence younger siblings' motor development, but how they did so may have depended on unique family characteristics. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Resourceful Dialogues: Eliciting and Mobilizing Client Competencies and Resources

Within the social constructionist (narrative, solution-focused and collaborative language systems) therapies, therapists have increasingly focused on identifying and mobilizing clients’ resources and competencies. How such client resources and competencies are identified and elaborated can be considered empirical matters for analysts of therapeutic discourse. The present paper examines resourceful sequences of dialogue in 12 single session lifestyle consultations for how counsellors conversationally engaged consultees, and for what transpired within these sequences of dialogue. These sequences were micro-analyzed using conversation analysis and retrospective comments from consultees and therapists involved in these sequences were solicited using a videotaped replay procedure known as comprehensive process analysis [Elliott (1989). In M. Packer & R. B. Addison (Eds.), Entering the circle: Hermeneutic investigation in psychology (pp. 165–184). Albany, NY: SUNY Press]. The combined conversation analyses and related comments for three of the 23 videotaped passages analyzed are reported with the aim of enhancing therapists’ conversational practices in hosting resourceful dialogues with clients.

Maternal and child contributions to cortisol response to emotional arousal in young children from low-income, rural communities

Relations of maternal and child characteristics to child cortisol reactivity to and recovery from emotional arousal were examined prospectively at approximately 7 months of age (infancy) and then again at approximately 15 months of age (toddlerhood). The sample was diverse and population based (N = 1,292 mother-infant dyads) and included families from predominantly low-income, rural communities. Maternal behavior, family income-to-need ratio and social advantage, and child temperament, attention, and mental development were assessed, and children's saliva was sampled before and after standardized procedures designed to elicit emotional arousal. Maternal engagement in infancy was associated with greater cortisol reactivity at the infancy assessment and with reduced overall cortisol level at the toddler assessment. Also at the toddler assessment, child attention, mental development, and temperamental distress to novelty were associated with increased cortisol reactivity and regulation, whereas temperamental distress to limitations and African American ethnicity were associated with reduced cortisol reactivity. Findings are consistent with prior work linking early caregiving to the development of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis stress response system and with a conceptual model in which developing temperament is characterized by the interplay of emotional reactivity and the emergence of the ability to effortfully regulate this reactivity using attention.     

Pictorial superiority effects in oldest-old people

We examined memory for pictures and words in middle-age (45-59 years), young-old (60-74 years), old-old (75-89 years), and the oldest-old adults (90-97 years) in the Louisiana Healthy Aging Study. Stimulus items were presented and retention was tested in a blocked order where half of the participants studied 16 simple line drawings and the other half studied matching words during acquisition. Free recall and recognition followed. In the next acquisition/test block a new set of items was used where the stimulus format was changed relative to the first block. Results yielded pictorial superiority effects in both retention measures for all age groups. Follow-up analyses of clustering in free recall revealed that a greater number of categories were accessed (which reflects participants' retrieval plan) and more items were recalled per category (which reflects participants' encoding strategy) when pictures served as stimuli compared to words. Cognitive status and working memory span were correlated with picture and word recall. Regression analyses confirmed that these individual difference variables accounted for significant age-related variance in recall. These data strongly suggest that the oldest-old can utilise nonverbal memory codes to support long-term retention as effectively as do younger adults.