Teaching a simple meal preparation skill to adults with moderate and severe mental retardation using video modeling

We evaluated whether adults with mental retardation in the moderate or severe range would acquire simple meal preparation skills via video modeling. Training was conducted in the kitchen of the participants' day treatment setting. The intervention consisted of (i) watching a video of an adult with a developmental disability making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and (ii) receiving verbal praise for each step of the task that was performed correctly. All three participants mastered the task and demonstrated generalization across settings. All three participants also demonstrated maintenance of the skill one month following mastery. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The family career development project in Chinese Canadian families

Based on an action-theoretical conceptualization, this research examined the family career development project in Chinese Canadian families. Six families, each composed of a parent and adolescent, participated in a videotaped conversation to determine a family career development project that was subsequently monitored over a 6-month period and followed up with a second videotaped conversation. The further analysis of these data from a larger data set of 20 Chinese Canadian and European Canadian families resulted in the delineation of several properties of the career development project in Chinese Canadian families, including the importance of the parental agenda, the adolescent’s involvement, parental communication of convincing reasoning, and the adolescent’s withholding and withdrawing response. The findings also indicated that a family career development was central to other higher order projects in the family, including the relationship and cultural projects. The data supported the understanding of project as joint goal-directed action over time and as the basis on which career development influence was organized in these families.     

Conservative Christians' Expectations of Non‐Christian Counselors

In this study of conservative Christians' expectations of counseling, 100 participants rated their expectations of the behaviors and attitudes of a non‐Christian counselor. Results suggest that highly religious Christians expected more in‐session religious behaviors from a non‐Christian counselor than did moderately religious Christians. Both moderately and highly conservative Christians expected a non‐Christian counselor to display attitudes of acceptance and tolerance for Christian beliefs.     

Spiritual and Religious Competencies: A National Survey of CACREP‐Accredited Programs

In this study of 94 Counsel for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP)‐accredited counselor education programs, 69% of respondents reported their programs addressed spiritual and religious issues; however, only 46% of CACREP liaisons perceived themselves as prepared or very prepared to integrate material related to spirituality and religion in counseling into their teaching and supervision activities. In addition, only 28% of respondents viewed their colleagues as similarly capable of addressing these issues as a component of counselor preparation. The authors discuss implications for training and practice.     

What is the shape of developmental change?

Developmental trajectories provide the empirical foundation for theories about change processes during development. However, the ability to distinguish among alternative trajectories depends on how frequently observations are sampled. This study used real behavioral data, with real patterns of variability, to examine the effects of sampling at different intervals on characterization of the underlying trajectory. Data were derived from a set of 32 infant motor skills indexed daily during the first 18 months. Larger sampling intervals (2-31 days) were simulated by systematically removing observations from the daily data and interpolating over the gaps. Infrequent sampling caused decreasing sensitivity to fluctuations in the daily data: Variable trajectories erroneously appeared as step functions, and estimates of onset ages were increasingly off target. Sensitivity to variation decreased as an inverse power function of sampling interval, resulting in severe degradation of the trajectory with intervals longer than 7 days. These findings suggest that sampling rates typically used by developmental researchers may be inadequate to accurately depict patterns of variability and the shape of developmental change. Inadequate sampling regimes therefore may seriously compromise theories of development.     

Class, race, and the face: social context modulates the cross-race effect in face recognition

The current research investigates the hypothesis that the well-established cross-race effect (CRE; better recognition for same-race than for cross-race faces) is due to social-cognitive mechanisms rather than to differential perceptual expertise with same-race and cross-race faces. Across three experiments, the social context in which faces are presented has a direct influence on the CRE. In the first two experiments, middle-class White perceivers show superior recognition for same-race White faces presented in wealthy but not in impoverished contexts. The second experiment indicates this effect is due to the tendency to categorize White faces in impoverished contexts as outgroup members (e.g., "poor Whites"). In the third experiment, this effect is replicated using different ingroup and outgroup categorizations (university affiliation), with ingroup White faces being recognized better than outgroup White faces. In line with a social-cognitive model of the CRE, context had no influence on recognition for cross-race Black faces across the three experiments.     

Finding groups using model-based cluster analysis: heterogeneous emotional self-regulatory processes and heavy alcohol use risk

Model-based cluster analysis is a new clustering procedure to investigate population heterogeneity utilizing finite mixture multivariate normal densities. It is an inferentially based, statistically principled procedure that allows comparison of nonnested models using the Bayesian information criterion to compare multiple models and identify the optimum number of clusters. The current study clustered 36 young men and women on the basis of their baseline heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV), chronic alcohol use, and reasons for drinking. Two cluster groups were identified and labeled the high alcohol risk and normative groups. Compared to the normative group, individuals in the high alcohol risk group had higher levels of alcohol use and more strongly endorsed disinhibition and suppression reasons for use. The high alcohol risk group showed significant HRV changes in response to positive and negative emotional and appetitive picture cues, compared to neutral cues. In contrast, the normative group showed a significant HRV change only to negative cues. Findings suggest that individuals with autonomic self-regulatory difficulties may be more susceptible to heavy alcohol use and use of alcohol for emotional regulation.     

Parenthood and productivity: A study of demands, resources and family-friendly firms

We examine how the presence of children is related to women’s and men’s productivity. We hypothesize family demands, family resources, and family-friendly workplaces are also related to productivity. Productivity for 670 Alberta law firm lawyers is analyzed using a standardized measure of productivity referred to as billable hours. The results suggest that mothers with school-aged children are less productive than non-mothers, whereas fathers with preschool-aged children are more productive than non-fathers. While time spent on household and childcare tasks significantly reduces women’s productivity, we find little support for the benefits of family resources or working in a family-friendly firm for women. Rather, fathers seem to benefit more: family resources are positively related to their productivity and family-friendly benefits allow them more time for leisure. These results support the assumption that having children is negatively related to women’s productivity but challenges the belief that family-friendly policies are primarily beneficial only to mothers trying to balancing work and family.     

The effect of verb semantic class and verb frequency (entrenchment) on children's and adults' graded judgements of argument-structure overgeneralization errors

Participants (aged 5-6 yrs, 9-10 yrs and adults) rated (using a five-point scale) grammatical (intransitive) and overgeneralized (transitive causative)(1) uses of a high frequency, low frequency and novel intransitive verb from each of three semantic classes [Pinker, S. (1989a). Learnability and cognition: The acquisition of argument structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press]: "directed motion" (fall, tumble), "going out of existence" (disappear, vanish) and "semivoluntary expression of emotion" (laugh, giggle). In support of Pinker's semantic verb class hypothesis, participants' preference for grammatical over overgeneralized uses of novel (and English) verbs increased between 5-6 yrs and 9-10 yrs, and was greatest for the latter class, which is associated with the lowest degree of direct external causation (the prototypical meaning of the transitive causative construction). In support of Braine and Brooks's [Braine, M.D.S., & Brooks, P.J. (1995). Verb argument strucure and the problem of avoiding an overgeneral grammar. In M. Tomasello & W. E. Merriman (Eds.), Beyond names for things: Young children's acquisition of verbs (pp. 352-376). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum] entrenchment hypothesis, all participants showed the greatest preference for grammatical over ungrammatical uses of high frequency verbs, with this preference smaller for low frequency verbs, and smaller again for novel verbs. We conclude that both the formation of semantic verb classes and entrenchment play a role in children's retreat from argument-structure overgeneralization errors.     

Do brief personalized feedback interventions work for mandated students or is it just getting caught that works?

Studies evaluating the efficacy of brief interventions with mandated college students have reported declines in drinking from baseline to short-term follow-up regardless of intervention condition. A key question is whether these observed changes are due to the intervention or to the incident and/or reprimand. This study evaluates a brief personalized feedback intervention (PFI) for students (N = 230) who were referred to a student assistance program because of infractions of university rules regarding substance use to determine whether observed changes in substance use are attributable to the intervention. Half the students received immediate feedback (at baseline and after the 2-month follow-up), and half received delayed feedback (only after the 2-month follow-up). Students in both conditions generally reduced their drinking and alcohol-related problems from baseline to the 2-month follow-up and from the 2-month to the 7-month follow-up; however, there were no significant between-group differences at either follow-up. Therefore, it appears that the incident and/or reprimand are important instigators of mandated student change and that written PFIs do not enhance these effects on a short-term basis but may on a longer term basis.