Professional and Provider Perspectives on Family Involvement in Therapeutic Foster Care

Therapeutic foster care (TFC) offers a promising community-based treatment option for children with serious emotional and behavioral disorders in the child welfare system. Family involvement is believed to contribute to achieving the goal of family reunification in TFC, but there has been little attention to family involvement in TFC. I present findings of a qualitative study of child welfare professionals' and TFC providers' perspectives on family involvement. Respondents' views of parent-child contact, parent-professional communication and information sharing, and family involvement in decision making were examined. Values and attitudes toward family involvement, practices related to family involvement, barriers to involvement, and strategies to promote involvement emerged as themes. Professionals in this study believed in the value of family involvement, but there were challenges at the organizational level and related to some TFC providers' lack of training to work with families.     

Preference for modes of dispute resolution as a function of process and decision control

Research on procedural justice has suggested that the distribution of control among participants can be used to classify dispute-resolution procedures and may be an important determinant of preference for such procedures. This experiment demonstrates that control can be meaningfully divided into two components: control over the presentation of evidence and control over the final decision. The experiment placed subjects (law students and undergraduates) in a situation of conflict and varied two between-subjects factors: (1) Role, whether subjects expected to role-play third parties (law students) or litigants (undergraduates), and (2) Orientation, whether individuals focused on equity claims (appeals to a norm of fairness) or legal claims (appeals to a strict, legal interpretation of events). As a control, a third-party neutral-orientation condition was included. In addition, subjects were presented with four dispute-resolution procedures which varied in third-party control over the presentation of evidence (Process Control) and third-party control over the final decision (Decision Control) as within-subjects factors. Results revealed that both litigants and third parties preferred high rather than low third-party decision control. Litigants with an equity orientation preferred low third-party control over the presentation of evidence, particularly when third parties had high rather than low decision control. Third parties and litigants with a legal orientation preferred low rather than high third-party process control only when there was high third-party decision control. Litigant preferences were more affected by variation in process control than variation in decision control while third-party preferences were more affected by variation in decision control than in process control. As a check on external validity, military judges given a neutral orientation were asked to evaluate and express preferences for the four dispute-resolution procedures. Their results were not detectably different from those of the law students who role-played third parties in the main portion of the study.     

Naming and categorization in young children: IV: listener behavior training and transfer of function

Following pretraining with everyday objects, 14 children aged from 1 to 4 years were trained, for each of three pairs of different arbitrary wooden shapes (Set 1), to select one stimulus in response to the spoken word /zog/, and the other to /vek/. When given a test for the corresponding tacts ("zog" and "vek"), 10 children passed, showing that they had learned common names for the stimuli, and 4 failed. All children were trained to clap to one stimulus of Pair 1 and wave to the other. All those who named showed either transfer of the novel functions to the remaining two pairs of stimuli in Test 1, or novel function comprehension for all three pairs in Test 2, or both. Three of these children next participated in, and passed, category match-to-sample tests. In contrast, all 4 children who had learned only listener behavior failed both the category transfer and category match-to-sample tests. When 3 of them were next trained to name the stimuli, they passed the category transfer and (for the 2 subjects tested) category match-to-sample tests. Three children were next trained on the common listener relations with another set of arbitrary stimuli (Set 2); all succeeded on the tact and category tests with the Set 2 stimuli. Taken together with the findings from the other studies in the series, the present experiment shows that (a) common listener training also establishes the corresponding names in some but not all children, and (b) only children who learn common names categorize; all those who learn only listener behavior fail. This is good evidence in support of the naming account of categorization.     

Naming and categorization in young children: v. manual sign training

Following pre-training with everyday objects, 8 children aged from 2 to 4 years learned to produce one manual sign (fists placed one above the other, in front of body) to one stimulus and an alternative manual sign (shoulders touched with ipsilateral hands) to the other stimulus, with each of three pairs of different arbitrary wooden shapes (Set 1). The six stimuli then were presented in category match-to-sample tests, which all subjects passed. Three of the children were next trained to produce the manual signs (denoted as fist/shoulder) for an additional six arbitrary stimuli, Set 2. All 3 children went on to pass category match-to-sample tests for Set 2, and for Set 1 and Set 2 combined. In the final experimental phase, 2 of the children were trained, for one of the six stimulus pairs, to produce the vocal tact "zag" to one stimulus and "vek" to the other. Both children showed category transfer of these vocalizations in test trials with each of the remaining five stimulus pairs, and all the stimuli combined in a 12-stimulus array. In line with Horne and Lowe's (1996) naming account, manual sign naming was found to be as effective as vocal naming in establishing arbitrary stimulus categorization, measured in terms of category sorting and transfer of function. The findings also have implications for the training of verbal repertoires in people with learning disabilities.     

Order in Choice: Effects of Serial Position on Preferences

ABSTRACT— When several choice options are sampled one at a time in a sequence and a single choice of the best option is made at the end of the sequence, which location in the sequence is chosen most often? We report a large-scale experiment that assessed tasting preferences in choice sets of two, three, four, or five wines. We found a large primacy effect—the first wine had a large advantage in the end-of-sequence choice. We also found that participants who were knowledgeable about wines showed a recency effect in the longer sequences. We conclude with a process model that explains our findings.     

The cognitive-behavioural treatment of low self-esteem in psychotic patients: a pilot study

Low self esteem in individuals with a psychotic disorder is common and may be related to poorer clinical outcomes. However, there has been little research on devising treatment methods to improve self-esteem either generally or in psychotic patients in particular. The aims of this study were to evaluate the efficacy of a simple cognitive behavioural intervention to improve self esteem in psychotic patients who scored poorly on a self-esteem measure. This pilot study was a randomised control trial with a convenience sample of chronic psychotic inpatients. The cognitive behavioural self-esteem intervention, as an adjunct to treatment as usual (TAU), was compared to TAU alone in patients with psychosis. The individual self-esteem intervention as described by Tarrier (The use of coping strategies and self-regulation in the treatment of psychosis. (2001)) consisted of working with participants to elicit positive self-attributes and then identify specific behavioural examples to provide evidence of this attribute. Emphasis was given to any consequential change in the patient's belief that they had the attribute. The results indicated that this cognitive behavioural treatment for self-esteem used as an adjunct treatment in psychosis, resulted in clinical benefits in terms of increased self-esteem, decreased psychotic symptomatology and improved social functioning. These benefits were largely maintained at 3-month follow-up.     

Cognitive processes in psychological adaptation to miscarriage: A preliminary report

Abstract

Twenty-two women who wished to continue their pregnancies were interviewed several months after their first miscarriage. Levels of anxiety and depression showed an extremely high degree of variability. Cognitive processes in the form of a search for meaning, mastery and self-enhancement hypothesised to be important in adaptation to negative events were assessed. Having an explanation for the miscarriage and the experience leading to a general reappraisal of values were associated with lower levels of intrusive thoughts. A belief in a medical cause was linked to lower anxiety. Women believed that neither they themselves nor their doctors could exert much influence over the outcome of future pregnancies. Stronger belief in personal control was associated with higher anxiety levels. There is a need to consider not only the emotional consequences of miscarriage but also the cognitive mediators influencing such responses and although based upon a small sample this study initiates that process.     

Infant interest in their mother's face is associated with maternal psychological health

Early experience can alter infants’ interest in faces in their environment. This study investigated the relationship between maternal psychological health, mother–infant bonding, and infant face interest in a community sample. A visual habituation paradigm was used to independently assess 3.5-month old infants’ attention to a photograph of their mother's face and a stranger's face. In this sample of 54 healthy mother–infant pairs, 57% of mothers (N = 31) reported symptoms of at least one of stress response to trauma, anxiety, or depression. Interest in the mother-face, but not stranger-face, was positively associated with the mother's psychological health. In regression analyses, anxiety and depression predicted 9% of the variance in looking to the mother-face. Anxiety was the only significant predictor within the model. No direct associations were found between mother–infant bonding and infants’ face interest. Taken together, these findings indicate that infant's visual engagement with their mother's face varies with maternal symptoms of emotional distress, even within a community sample.