Family therapy with delinquents: a critical review of the literature

A critical review of the theoretical and outcome studies on family therapy with delinquents is presented. Assessment of the theoretical developments reveals that families of delinquents may be distinguishable from other families by their interactional sequences and processes. The available outcome studies within the field indicate that family therapy is viable for interventions with this population, with behavioral, structural, strategic, and communication approaches receiving the most support, but more specific and robust evidence is still needed. Trends in the research and critical issues are identified and used to provide suggestions for future research and practice.     

Programming maintenance after correspondence training interventions with children

Interventions were employed to program maintenance following correspondence training. The use of reinforcement of verbalization and a mixed sequence of procedures designed to establish indiscriminable contingencies was evaluated in multiple-baseline designs across subjects and behaviors. The results indicated that target behaviors were maintained under less intrusive interventions and in the absence of programmed contingencies during extended follow-up conditions. The results are discussed in terms of changes in reinforcement schedules established in maintenance interventions.     

The science of language and the evolution of mind: Max Müller's quarrel with Darwinism

For Darwinism to succeed as a general theory of the development of life, it had to account for at least the rudiments of all human characteristics. Thus Darwin and his colleague G. J. Romanes had to make "mental evolution" the basis for scientific psychology. F. Max Müller, Oxford's professor of comparative philology, drew on Kant's work, Romantic Naturphilosophie, and his views on the history of language and the relation of language to thought to maintain that language showed a difference not in degree but in kind between man and the lower primates. In his debate with Romanes, he argued that the study of language, not Darwinist natural history, should be the basis for a science of human psychology. However, the two authors had such different definitions of the key terms in their discussion that their differences were not only unresolved but irresolvable.     

Comparing the effects of two correction procedures on human acquisition of sequential behavior patterns

Thirty-one college undergraduates learned to touch abstract stimuli on a computer screen in arbitrarily designated “correct” sequential orders. Four sets of seven stimuli were used; the stimuli were arrayed horizontally on the screen in random sequences. A correct response (i.e., touching first the stimulus designated as first) resulted in that stimulus appearing near the top of the screen in its correct sequential position (left to right), and remaining there until the end of the trial. Incorrect responses (i.e., touching a stimulus out of sequence) terminated the trial. New trials displayed either the same sequence as the one on which an error had occurred (same-order correction procedure), or a new random sequence (new-order correction procedure). Whenever all responses occurred in the correct sequence, the next trial displayed a new random sequence. Each phase ended when five consecutive correct response sequences occurred. Initially, the same-order correction procedure increased control by the position as well as by the shape of the stimuli; also, it produced more errors, more total trials, more trials to mastery, and more individual patterns of reacquisition than were produced by the new-order procedure.     

Exemplification: The self-presentation of moral character

How do people come to terms with moral self-presentations and disconfirming behaviors? Subjects were exposed to the self-presentation of either an exemplifier (presenting himself as morally virtuous) or a pragmatist (presenting himself as morally adaptable) and then learned whether the self-presenter had or had not cheated for self-serving reasons in an earlier experiment Subjects clearly distinguished between exploitativeness and hypocrisy in their attributions, and considered a cheating exemplifier more hypocritical and self-deluding, but less exploitative and devious than a cheating pragmatist A second experiment manipulated subjects' involvement with the cheating of an exemplifier and a pragmatist by making half of the subjects its victims As in Experiment 1, uninvolved subjects considered the cheating exemplifier more hypocritical and less exploitative than a cheating pragmatist, however, involved subjects (victims) considered a cheating exemplifier more hypocritical but no less exploitative than a cheating pragmatist The results are discussed in terms of strategic self-presentation and the attribution of moral character     

The Social Relations Model: An integrative method for personality research

As outlined by Snyder and Ickes (1985), the study of personality can be undertaken using one of three research approaches dispositional, situational, and interactive We show how the Social Relations Model provides an integrative method to estimate simultaneously dispositional, situational, and interactive effects Reviewed are component approaches to the study of personality The Social Relations Model is shown to be a component model (a special case of generalizability theory) applied in a social interaction context In the model, dispositional, situational, and interactive effects are termed actor, partner, and relationship effects, respectively The Social Relations Model can be used to answer a number of important issues in personality research The model can be used to assess reliability, measure the validity of self-ratings, and validate self-report inventories The model requires special designs in winch each person interacts with multiple partners Empirical examples are presented in which social anxiety, sex role inventories, and self-disclosure are studied     

The relations between type A behavior, clinically relevant behavior, academic achievement, and IQ in children

The relation of Type A behavior to IQ, academic achievement, and several clinically relevant dimensions of behavior in children was assessed in 873 fourth, fifth, and sixth graders by means of the Matthews Youth Test for Health (MYTH), the Cognitive Abilities Test (CAT), the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITED), and the teachers' form of the Missouri Children's Behavior Checklist (MCBC-T). The MYTH and its competitiveness and impatience-aggression subscales were found to be differentially related to academic achievement and to account for a small but significant portion of the variance in achievement not accounted for by IQ. The subscales of the MYTH were found to be highly correlated with several clinically familiar dimensions of children's behavior. The significance of these findings for the construct validity of the MYTH is discussed.     

Alternative scoring system of repeated items on the MMPI: caveat emptor

There are 16 items in the standard MMPI group forms which are included twice. It was found that a number of computerized scoring services use only the first occurrence of repeated items in scoring the MMPI scales, whereas the handscoring templates use an arbitrary combination of the first and second occurrence of these items. Comparison of these conventions suggested a potential for significant differences in score, particularly on the Sc scale. Scoring a set of 126 MMPIs of chronic pain patients by both of these scoring conventions revealed differences of up to 10 T points on the Sc scale. It is recommended that a single scoring convention for the MMPI be adopted by psychologists. For several reasons we suggest that only the first occurrence of repeated items should be used for scoring purposes. In the absence of a single convention, comparisons between Sc scores on different protocols should not be made without first insuring that the protocols were scored in the same manner.