BEHAVIORAL ASSESSMENT AND TREATMENT OF CHRONIC FOOD REFUSAL IN HANDICAPPED CHILDREN

In this study, we examined the eating behavior of four handicapped children, none of whom exhibited self-feeding skills. All children had a history of food refusal and were nutritionally at risk; one child received all nourishment by way of a gastrostomy tube. Baseline data taken during mealtimes indicated that all children accepted very little food, expelled food frequently, and engaged in a number of disruptive behaviors. Treatments consisted of one or more of the following contingent events: social praise, access to preferred foods, brief periods of toy play, and forced feeding. Results of multiple-baseline and reversal designs showed marked behavioral improvement for each child and increases in the amount of food consumed. Further improvements were noted at follow-up, which ranged from 7 to 30 months posttreatment.     

Developing the Individual: Life Skills and Family Therapy

Two bodies of literature on life skills and on family therapy have developed from different sources but have interesting similarities. Life skills comes from training and educational thinking, and concentrates upon the skills of and strategies for coping. Family therapy focuses upon the disturbance of an individual as symbolic of the dynamics of the family, but has at its roots a more-or-less explicit model of what constitutes an effective family, where the interactions can be readily understood in life-skill terms. The two approaches are compared and contrasted.     

Memory access: The effects of fact-oriented versus problem-oriented acquisition

This study examined the effects of similarity between the processing of acquisition and the processing of test materials on performance in a problem solving task. Previous work by Perfetto, Bransford, and Franks (1983) demonstrated that uninformed subjects’ failure to utilize relevant acquisition information in a later problem solving task is the result of a failure to spontaneously access such information. The present study demonstrated that spontaneous access can be enhanced when both acquisition and test materials are processed in a similar manner, that is, in a problem-oriented manner. Furthermore, the present findings indicate that the processing similarity leading to enhanced access is specific to particular acquisition and test items, rather than a general problem solving set induced at acquisition and the subsequent testing situation. Results are interpreted within a transfer-appropriate processing perspective.     

A comparison of the effects of child management and planned activities training in five parenting environments

This study compared the effects of two procedures designd to enhance the extratraining effects of behavioral parents training. Twenty parents of oppositianal children were randomly assign to either a child manangment training condition or a combined child management plus planned activity condition. A further 10 nonproblem children and their parents serve as a social validation group. Observation of both parents and children behavior were conducted in each of five home observation setting (breakfirst time, kindy (kindergarten) or school exit, a structured playtime, bathtime, and bedtime). Both training procedures result in change in both child oppositional and parents oversive behaviosr in all observation settings. In addition, desire positive parents behaviour also improve in all setting. Treatment effect were maintained in all setting at 3-month follow up. Composition between oppositional children following treatment and children in the social validation group showed that they each displayed similarly low lavels of oppositional behaviour in all settings. The inplecation of the results for faciliating generalised changes in behavioral parent training are discusssd.This study was supported by a grant from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC324 82 579049). We wish to thank all families, therapists, and observers who participated in the project.     

PSYCHOLOGY IN THE AUSTRALIAN CONTEXT*

Psychology formally entered the Australian arena via university departments of Philosophy, commencing last century and taking its initial direction largely from Britain. The previous pattern of development of Australian psychology was more distinctive than is its present state. Although the influences of Germany and the United States have supplemented that of the parent country, it is difficult to discern any locally blended colouration in the discipline or the profession as they now appear. Somewhat distanced from the universities, applied psychology has flourished especially in the public sector beginning with the initial close liaison formed between psychology and education in a developing colonial society. The public impact of research and practice is by no means as apparent as in the United States or Britain. After a burgeoning in the ‘sixties and early ‘seventies, the present state is one of limited growth concurrent with the general recession.     

Suicide Risk across Latent Class Subgroups: A Test of the Generalizability of the Interpersonal Psychological Theory of Suicide

It remains unclear whether the Interpersonal Psychological Theory of Suicide (IPTS; Joiner, 2005 ) is generalizable to the population or holds more explanatory power for certain subgroups compared to others. The aim of this study was to (1) identify subgroups of individuals who endorsed suicide ideation in the past month based on a range of mental health and demographic variables, (2) compare levels of the IPTS constructs within these subgroups, and (3) test the IPTS predictions for suicide ideation and suicide attempt for each group. Latent class, negative binomial, linear, and logistic regression analyses were conducted on population‐based data obtained from 1,321 adults recruited from Facebook. Among participants reporting suicide ideation, four distinct patterns of risk factors emerged based on age and severity of mental health symptoms. Groups with highly elevated mental health symptoms reported the highest levels of thwarted belongingness and perceived burdensomeness. Tests of the IPTS interactions provided partial support for the theory, primarily in young adults with elevated mental health symptoms. Lack of support found for the IPTS predictions across the subgroups and full sample in this study raise some questions around the broad applicability of the theory.     

Remembering the past and imagining the future: a role for nonvisual imagery in the everyday cognition of blind and sighted people

Images can be generated in all sensory modalities. Nevertheless, research on the everyday use of mental imagery, for example in autobiographical memory tasks, has suggested that it is only visual images that facilitate memory retrieval (e.g., Williams, Healy, & Ellis, 1999). If this is the case, individuals born without sight may be forced to rely more on verbal encoding (Goddard & Pring, 2001). This paper explores the presence and everyday role of nonvisual sensory imagery in 16 individuals with and 16 without sight. Using a cue word paradigm, contrary to previous research, Experiment 1 suggested that for both blind and sighted people, nonvisual imageries have a significant role to play in the generation of autobiographical memories. These results were reinforced by similar findings in Experiment 2, which used the same cue word method to explore the role of visual and nonvisual (auditory) imagery when generating future events. The results refute the claim that "useful" imagery in everyday tasks is exclusively visual.