Evaluating the FRIENDS program: a cognitive-behavioral group treatment for anxious children and their parents.

Conducted the 1st randomized clinical trial evaluating the efficacy of the FRIENDS program, a family-based group cognitive-behavioral treatment (FGCBT) for anxious children. Children (n = 71) ranging from 6 to 10 years of age who fulfilled diagnostic criteria for separation anxiety (SAD), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), or social phobia (SOP) were randomly allocated to FRIENDS or to a 10-week wait-list control group. The effectiveness of the intervention was evaluated at posttreatment and 12-month follow-up. Results indicated that 69% of children who completed FGCBT were diagnosis-free, compared to 6% of children completing the wait-list condition. At 12-month follow-up, 68% of children were diagnosis-free. Beneficial treatment effects were also evident on the self-report measures completed by the children and their mothers. Parents and children reported high treatment satisfaction. Results suggest that FRIENDS is an effective treatment for clinically anxious children. Limitations of this study and directions for future research are discussed.     

The Influence of Family and Experimental Context on Cognition in Anxious Children

Examined the influence of family on anxious children's cognition. Research by Barrett, Rapee, Dadds, and Ryan (1996) found anxious children reported increased avoidance after interacting with their parents. They labelled this finding the FEAR effect—Family Enhancement of Avoidant Responses. Whilst some subsequent studies have found similar results, others have not. These contradictory findings question whether the direction of parental influence on anxious children is determined by the perceived demands of the experimental context. Anxious children (N = 101) and their parents were asked to interpret seven ambiguous situations and to discuss what their child would do if the scenario actually occurred. Study 1 found that children in the anxious group and an externalizing control group were more likely to interpret ambiguous situations as threatening than nonclinic children were. Study 2 sought to examine changes in the children's responses from pre- to postfamily discussion, and to identify variables associated with the FEAR effect in anxious families. Interestingly, anxious children whose families completed the discussion task after they (children) had been offered treatment were more likely to show a FEAR effect than anxious families who completed the task as part of assessment. Study 3 examined predictors of enhanced avoidance in anxious families. Treatment context and maternal distress were correlated with the child's increased avoidance following family discussion. Limitations of these studies and directions for future research are discussed.     

Effect of unstressed affixes on stress-beat location in speech production and perception

The present study examined the influence of unstressed prefixes and suffixes upon the location of stress-beats in the production and perception of stressed CVC syllables. Analysis indicates that the addition of an unstressed suffix produces a small stress-beat shift, while the addition of an unstressed prefix produces a much larger shift in the opposite direction.     

Effect of lexical status on phonetic categorization

To investigate the interaction in speech perception between lexical knowledge (in particular, whether a stimulus token makes a word or nonword) and phonetic categorization, sets of [bVC]-[dVC] place-of-articulation continua were constructed so that the endpoint tokens represented word-word, word-nonword, nonword-word, and nonword-nonword combinations. Experiment 1 demonstrated that ambiguous tokens were perceived in favor of the word token and supported the contention that lexical knowledge can affect the process of phonetic categorization. Experiment 2 utilized a reaction time procedure with the same stimuli and demonstrated that the effect of lexical status on phonetic categorization increased with response latency, suggesting that the lexical effect represents a perceptual process that is separate from and follows phonetic categorization. Experiment 3 utilized a different set of [b-d] continua to separate the effects of final consonant contrast and lexical status that were confounded in Experiments 1 and 2. Results demonstrated that both lexical status and contextual contrast separately affected the identification of the initial stop. Data from these three experiments support a perceptual model wherein phonetic categorization can operate separately from higher levels of analysis.     

Issue Salience, Perceived Efficacy and Perceived Risk: A Study of the Origins of Anti-Nuclear War Activity

One hundred eleven college students participated in this two-session experiment designed to explore the origins of anti-nuclear war activism. In Session 1 participants completed questionnaires assessing a number of background characteristics and attitudes, the most important of which for this study's purpose was a measure of perceived political efficacy in the nuclear realm. One week later both the salience of the nuclear weapons issue and participants' sense of personalized risk were experimentally manipulated in a 2 × 2 × 2 (salience × risk × measured efficacy) design. Dependent measures were a behavioral intentions questionnaire and an actual opportunity to sign a petition which participants did not recognize as part of the experiment. High salience significantly increased both anti-nuclear war behavioral intentions and actual behavior as predicted. Individuals who felt highly efficacious were also significantly more likely to take action than others as predicted. A similar relation between efficacy and behavioral intentions was not found, although a salience by efficacy interaction was. Personalized risk influenced only behavioral intentions. Finally, the relative impact of these three variables and of other background and attitudinal variables measured in the first session was explored using regression techniques.