Protective factors and behavioral adjustment in preschool children of Iranian Martyrs

Out of 228 Iranian preschool Martyrs' children whose behaviour adjustment in the nursery settings was screened using the Preschool Behaviour Checklist, 12 well adjusted, zero scorers were compared with 8 poorly adjusted, high scorers. Using the parent's Behaviour Checklist, high scorers showed significantly more problems at home than zero scorers. On the Malaise Inventory, mothers of high scorers showed poorer mental health than mothers of zero scorers. Home observations showed that mother-child interaction was more aversive in high scorers than in zero scorers. More mothers of zero scorers had remarried.     

Can Robert Adams Survive Moral Twin Earth?

Richard Boyd and Robert Adams have both developed semantic accounts of moral terms based on Hilary Putnam's causal regulation theory for natural kind terms, according to which the terms in question refer to the properties which predominantly causally regulated the terms. However, Terence Horgan and Mark Timmons have mounted an objection to Boyd's semantics—their Moral Twin Earth argument. If this argument is successful against Boyd then it might be thought that it should also be successful against Adams, given the similarity between their semantic accounts. I will argue in this essay that Adams's semantics is sufficiently different from Boyd's to enable him to survive Moral Twin Earth, but that he is vulnerable to a modified version of Moral Twin Earth that I describe.     

Extinction of conditioned taste aversions: Effects of concentration and overshadowing

Extinction of conditioned taste aversions was examined as a function of taste concentration and of the presence of an additional taste. The results of Experiment 1 were consistent with previous evidence in that a conditioned aversion to high concentration saline was more persistent in extinction than an aversion to a low concentration. However, when floor effects were avoided the rate of extinction was faster for the higher (1%) concentration than for 0.2% saline (Experiment 2), a result consistent with accounts of extinction in other preparations. Three further experiments examined extinction of a conditioned sucrose aversion. The addition of 1% saline, but not of 0.2% saline, to sucrose during extinction produced overshadowing ("protection from extinction"; Experiment 3). Such overshadowing by saline was detected after two, but not after a single extinction trial (Experiment 4). This last finding suggests that under the conditions of the present experiments sweet and salty tastes function as elemental stimuli competing for loss of associative strength. No overshadowing was found when almond (an aqueous odour) was used in place of saline as the added stimulus, even when high concentrations of almond were used that produced observable neophobia (Experiments 5A and 5B).     

Alliance-Outcome Associations in a Community-Based Social Skills Intervention for Youth With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Although the alliance is a consistent predictor of treatment outcomes in psychosocial interventions, few studies have examined this association among youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In particular, youth-therapist alliance has never been examined in social skills interventions (SSIs), a common modality for this population. In this study, thirty-four youth with ASD (M_age = 12.41; 79% male) participated in a community-delivered, group-based SSI in a summer camp format led by eight Head Therapists (M_age = 32.12; 50% male). Early alliance and change in alliance over the course of the treatment were assessed via self- and observer-reported measures. Both self- and observer-rated alliance were associated with positive treatment outcomes as reported by parents (decreased problem behaviors) and other peers in the group (reciprocated friendship and social preference). These results provide the first evidence of the role of the alliance in an SSI for youth with ASD and add to the growing body of literature that demonstrates the importance of assessing and addressing the alliance in treatment for this population.     

Coping and Mental Health in Early Adolescence during COVID-19

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - The current longitudinal study examines changes in overall mental health symptomatology from before to after the COVID-19 outbreak in youth from...