Treating boys with low school achievement and behavior problems: comparison of two kinds of intervention

Children with low school achievement frequently have behavior problems and interpersonal difficulties that pose a risk for psychosocial maladjustment. 39 boys were assessed and randomly assigned to one of two group treatment conditions: (a) interpersonal cognitive problem-solving for whom training was provided through oral and written language activities that met children's social and academic needs and (b) a language workshop, during which only academic difficulties were treated. Parents of children in both groups received group attention. Posttreatment assessments indicated that boys in both conditions showed significant improvements on school achievement and behavior problems, as they were measured by behavior scales reported by mothers and by an academic achievement test. Children in the problem-solving group improved significantly more than the other group on most measures. These results suggest that work with interpersonal cognitive problem-solving skills combined with reading and writing activities is a useful means to produce improvements in child behavior and school achievement.     

Gravity biases in a non-human primate?

Pre-school children expect falling objects to travel in a straight line even when there are clear physical mechanisms that deviate the object's path (Hood, 1995). The current study set out to determine whether this expectancy is limited to humans. Cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus oedipus), a New World monkey species, were tested on Hood's (1995) experimental task where objects are dropped down a chimney connected by an opaque tube to one of three containers. Like human children, there was a significant tendency to search in the container underneath the chimney where the food was dropped on the first trial, even though aligned chimneys and containers were never connected. These search errors suggest that there may be a gravity bias that operates when both primate species fail to understand the constraints operating on object trajectories. Unlike human children however, tamarins were generally more likely to perseverate in making errors even though repeated testing and cost incentives were used.     

Bouncing Back from Setbacks: On the Mediating Role of Team Resilience in the Relationship Between Transformational Leadership and Team Effectiveness

The purpose of this study was to clarify the role of team resilience on different facets of effectiveness (team viability and quality of the group experience). Moreover, given the importance of team resilience for the organizational context, it was also our aim to contribute to the study of the conditions that promote team resilience, analyzing the role of transformational leadership. Finally, we examined whether the relationship between transformational leadership and team resilience stimulates positive team outcomes. Ninety teams (445 employees from 40 companies) were surveyed and path analysis was used in the test of the hypotheses. The results showed a positive direct effect of team resilience on both team viability and the quality of the group experience. Moreover, a positive relationship was also identified between transformational leadership and team resilience. Finally, support was found for the mediated effect of team resilience on the relationship between transformational leadership and the dimensions of team effectiveness considered. The findings of this study highlight the role of team resilience as an intervening process between transformational leadership and team effectiveness. Supervisors should promote team resilience, adopting transformational leadership behaviors, in order to contribute to increase team viability and the quality of the group experience.     

The Structure of Idealization in Biological Theories: The Case of the Wright-Fisher Model

In this paper we present a new framework of idealization in biology. We characterize idealizations as a network of counterfactual and hypothetical conditionals that can exhibit different ??degrees of contingency??. We use this idea to say that, in departing more or less from the actual world, idealizations can serve numerous epistemic, methodological or heuristic purposes within scientific research. We defend that, in part, this structure explains why idealizations, despite being deformations of reality, are so successful in scientific practice. For illustrative purposes, we provide an example from population genetics, the Wright-Fisher Model.     

Inhibition of mTOR by rapamycin in the amygdala or hippocampus impairs formation and reconsolidation of inhibitory avoidance memory

Mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), a central regulator of protein synthesis in neurons, has been implicated in synaptic plasticity and memory. Here we show that mTOR inhibition by rapamycin in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) or dorsal hippocampus (DH) impairs both formation and reconsolidation of memory for inhibitory avoidance (IA) in rats. Male Wistar rats received bilateral infusions of vehicle or rapamycin into the BLA or DH before or after IA training or retrieval. Memory retention was tested at different time points after drug infusion. Rapamycin impaired long-term IA retention when given before or immediately after training or retrieval into the BLA. When infused into the DH, rapamycin produced memory impairment when given before training or immediately after retrieval. The impairing effects of post-retrieval rapamycin required memory retrieval and were not reversed by a reminder shock. The results provide the first evidence that mTOR in the BLA and DH might play a role in IA memory reconsolidation.     

Cerebellum and processing of negative facial emotions: cerebellar transcranial DC stimulation specifically enhances the emotional recognition of facial anger and sadness

Some evidence suggests that the cerebellum participates in the complex network processing emotional facial expression. To evaluate the role of the cerebellum in recognising facial expressions we delivered transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the cerebellum and prefrontal cortex. A facial emotion recognition task was administered to 21 healthy subjects before and after cerebellar tDCS; we also tested subjects with a visual attention task and a visual analogue scale (VAS) for mood. Anodal and cathodal cerebellar tDCS both significantly enhanced sensory processing in response to negative facial expressions (anodal tDCS, p=.0021; cathodal tDCS, p=.018), but left positive emotion and neutral facial expressions unchanged (p>.05). tDCS over the right prefrontal cortex left facial expressions of both negative and positive emotion unchanged. These findings suggest that the cerebellum is specifically involved in processing facial expressions of negative emotion.     

Maladaptive repetition and career construction

The role of repeated maladaptive relationship patterns established early in life has been widely studied with the goal of understanding the various factors and processes that contribute to and occur during development and psychological adaptation. The effects of maladaptive patterns have also been studied with regard to the goal of guiding interventions. The present article is intended to highlight the contribution of Career Construction Theory (CCT) for the integration of the concept of maladaptive repetition into the theory and practice of career counseling. It begins with a constructivist conceptualization of maladaptive repetition and proceeds to situate this concept within the contexts of both CCT and the constructivist conception of career indecision. The article then presents a case study, discusses difficulties that arise during career decision-making, and analyzes the maladaptive cycle rupture considering the client's perspective about her transformation.     

Severity of Children’s ADHD Symptoms and Parenting Stress: A Multiple Mediation Model of Self-Regulation

The goal of the current study was to determine the extent to which the perceived self-regulation deficits across behavioral, cognitive, and emotional domains seen in children with ADHD explain the association between the severity of ADHD symptoms and parenting stress. Participants for this study included 80 children (mean age = 10 years, 9 months) with a DSM-IV diagnosis of ADHD confirmed by a comprehensive clinical diagnostic assessment. Parents reported their own stress levels as well as the severity of their children’s ADHD symptoms, aggression, emotional lability, and executive functioning difficulties. Results indicated that the severity of children’s hyperactivity/impulsivity symptoms but not their inattention related to parenting stress. Multiple mediational analyses indicated that the association between hyperactivity/impulsivity and parenting stress was explained by children’s perceived comorbid aggression levels, emotional lability, and executive functioning difficulties. No significant differences in the strength of the mediators were found. The current study provides initial data showing that the perceived impairments in children’s self-regulation across emotional, cognitive, and behavioral domains are what parents report as stressful, not simply the severity of ADHD symptoms. Due to the cross-sectional nature of this study and shared variance from relying solely on parent report, it will be critical for future research to replicate our findings using longitudinal and multi-informant data such as teacher reports and standardized assessments.     

Religious Beliefs or Physicians’ Behavior: What Makes a Patient More Prone to Accept a Physician to Address His/Her Spiritual Issues?

The present study aims to understand the relation between religious beliefs, physicians’ behavior and patients’ opinions regarding “Spirituality, religiosity and health (S/R)” issues, and what makes a patient more prone to accept a physician to address his/her spiritual issues. A cross-sectional study was carried out in outpatients from a tertiary hospital, and a path analysis was used to examine the direct and indirect relationships between the variables. For the final analysis, 300 outpatients were evaluated. Most patients would like their doctors to address S/R issues but did not feel comfortable to ask them. In contrast, they reported most doctors have never addressed S/R issues, and they believe doctors are not prepared to address these issues. The path analysis revealed that patients’ previous experiences with their doctors may be as important as their religious/spiritual beliefs in proneness to accept a physician to address his/her spiritual issues.     

Putting category learning in order: Category structure and temporal arrangement affect the benefit of interleaved over blocked study

Recent research in inductive category learning has demonstrated that interleaved study of category exemplars results in better performance than does studying each category in separate blocks. However, the questions of how the category structure influences this advantage and how simultaneous presentation interacts with the advantage are open issues. In this article, we present three experiments. The first experiment indicates that the advantage of interleaved over blocked study is modulated by the structure of the categories being studied. More specifically, interleaved study results in better generalization for categories with high within- and between-category similarity, whereas blocked presentation results in better generalization for categories with low within- and between-category similarity. In Experiment 2, we present evidence that when presented simultaneously, between-category comparisons (interleaved presentation) result in a performance advantage for high-similarity categories, but no differences were found for low-similarity categories. In Experiment 3, we directly compared simultaneous and successive presentation of low-similarity categories. We again found an overall benefit for blocked study with these categories. Overall, these results are consistent with the proposal that interleaving emphasizes differences between categories, whereas blocking emphasizes the discovery of commonalities among objects within the same category.