The Viability of Structural Family Therapy in the Twenty-first Century: An Analysis of Key Indicators

This paper examines the degree to which structural family therapy has adapted effectively to client families and professional demands of the twenty-first century. A review of the current professional literature was conducted to assess the structural model’s continued clinical relevance, how the model has changed in adapting to contemporary social and professional contexts, and whether or not the integrity of the model’s core proposition has been eroded or confounded as a result of adaptive changes.     

The Effect of Emotion on Visual Attention to Information and Decision Making in the Context of Informed Consent Process for Clinical Trials

The aim of this study was to examine the influence of emotion on visual information processing and decision making in the context of informed consent. Researchers are ethically obligated to ensure informed consent in clinical trials; however, many volunteers have unrealistic expectations about the value of an experimental therapy. Moreover, suboptimal participation rates for clinical trials may be partially attributable to perceptions that ethical obligations to volunteers are not met. This study examines whether discrete negative emotions (fear, anger, and sadness) differentially influence information processing, visual attention, and decisions in the context of clinical trial informed consent. Community participants completed a standard emotion induction (or control) and then read an actual consent form from a clinical trial while eye movements were tracked. Fear and anger produced the most prominently different patterns of systematic processing and visual attention, such that fear induced longer fixations to information presented, whereas anger induced shorter fixations. Moreover, among women only, fear increased decisions to participate, compared with anger and neutral emotion. Examinations of associations between eye‐tracking variables and self‐reported outcomes indicated that for angry participants only, less systematic processing was associated with greater decisions to participate. Negative emotions of any kind decreased accurate perceptions of trial benefit. These patterns suggest a complex interplay among emotion, processing style, and decision making. Future research is necessary to further probe these effects among potential clinical trial volunteers. Published 2016. This article is a U.S Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.     

Memory and mineness in personal identity

Stanley Klein and Shaun Nichols (2012) describe the case of patient R.B., whose memories (they claim) lacked the sense of “mineness” usually conveyed by memory. Klein and Nichols take R.B.’s case to show that the sense of mineness is merely a contingent feature of memory, which they see as raising two problems for memory-based accounts of personal identity. First, they see it as potentially undermining the appeal of memory-based accounts. Second, they take it to show that the conception of quasi-memory that underpins many memory-based accounts is inadequate. I argue that Klein and Nichols’ characterization of R.B.’s experience is implausible; as a result, the problems that they describe for memory-based accounts of personal identity do not arise.     

Parent Prediction of Autism Spectrum Disorder in Infants at Risk: A Follow-up Study

Later-born siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder are considered at biological risk for autism spectrum disorder and the broader phenotype. Early screening may detect first signs of autism spectrum disorder and expedite diagnosis and early intervention. In this follow-up study, we re-examine a validated second-degree autism spectrum disorder screener for children at biological risk of autism spectrum disorder, the parent observation of early markers scale. Using available follow-up information up to age 13 years, 110 children (the original 108 infants plus 2 infants recruited after the completion of the original study) were divided into three groups: diagnosed group (n?=?13), lost diagnosis group (n?=?5), and undiagnosed group (n?=?92). The parent observation of early markers scale continued to show acceptable predictive validity. The parent observation of early markers scale total scores and mean number of elevated items were significantly higher in the diagnosed group than the undiagnosed group. The lost-diagnosis group did not differ from the undiagnosed group on parent observation of early markers scale total scores and elevated items at any age, but the lost-diagnosis group had significantly lower total scores, and number of elevated items than the diagnosed group starting at 18 months. Both autism spectrum disorder core and subsidiary behaviors differentiated the diagnosed and undiagnosed groups from 9 to 36 months of age. We hereby provide further evidence that the parent observation of early markers scale may serve as a low-cost early screener for autism spectrum disorder in at-risk children and pinpoint specific developmental ,and behavioral problems that may be amenable to very early intervention.     

Conceptualizing and Measuring Safe,Stable, Nurturing Relationships and Environments in Educational Settings

Most children and adolescents older than 5 years spend at least 6 h of their day in school settings. Like parents, education professionals can promote health and protect youth from harm by providing safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has developed a framework which posits that safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments are Essentials for Childhood and are fundamental to promoting health and well-being; protecting youth from maltreatment and other violence and victimization; and ensuring optimal, healthy development. In this paper, the authors propose an approach to applying safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments to the school ecology; review select survey measures to examine these constructs within educational settings; and suggest available indicators to measure safety, stability, and nurturance within the school context.     

Examining the influence of anecdotal stories and the interplay of individual differences on reasoning

In two experiments, we explored whether anecdotal stories influenced how individuals reasoned when evaluating scientific news articles. We additionally considered the role of education level and thinking dispositions on reasoning. Participants evaluated eight scientific news articles that drew questionable interpretations from the evidence. Overall, anecdotal stories decreased the ability to reason scientifically even when controlling for education level and thinking dispositions. Additionally, we found that article length was related to participants' ratings of the news articles. Our study demonstrates that anecdotes can discourage scientific reasoning while also pointing to the potential influence of article length on judgements of quality.     

psiTurk: An open-source framework for conducting replicable behavioral experiments online

Online data collection has begun to revolutionize the behavioral sciences. However, conducting carefully controlled behavioral experiments online introduces a number of new of technical and scientific challenges. The project described in this paper, psiTurk, is an open-source platform which helps researchers develop experiment designs which can be conducted over the Internet. The tool primarily interfaces with Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, a popular crowd-sourcing labor market. This paper describes the basic architecture of the system and introduces new users to the overall goals. psiTurk aims to reduce the technical hurdles for researchers developing online experiments while improving the transparency and collaborative nature of the behavioral sciences.