Effects of Language of Implementation on Functional Analysis Outcomes

This study evaluated the influence of language of implementation on functional analysis outcomes for a child with a severe intellectual disability from a Spanish-speaking home. Challenging behavior was assessed during 5-min sessions under 4 conditions; attention, play-verbal, play-nonverbal, and demand and across 2 phases; implementation in English versus Spanish. The highest levels of challenging behavior occurred during the attention and demand conditions of the English phases. These results suggest that the language of implementation may influence the overall levels of challenging behavior within functional analysis conditions.     

Use of Computer-Based Interventions to Teach Communication Skills to Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Systematic Review

The purpose of this review is to provide a systematic analysis of studies involving the use of computer-based interventions (CBI) to teach communication skills to children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). This review evaluates intervention outcomes, appraises the certainty of evidence, and describes software and system requirements for each included study. This review has three main aims: (a) to evaluate the evidence-base regarding CBI, (b) to inform and guide practitioners interested in using CBI, and (c) to stimulate and guide future research aimed at improving the efficiency and effectiveness of CBI in communication for individuals with ASD. Results suggest that CBI should not yet be considered a researched-based approach to teaching communication skills to individuals with ASD. However, CBI does seem a promising practice that warrants future research.     

Rumination, worry, cognitive avoidance, and behavioral avoidance: examination of temporal effects

Recently, cross-sectional research has demonstrated that depressive rumination is significantly associated with the tendency to engage in cognitive and behavioral avoidance. This evidence suggests that rumination may be the result of attempts to avoid personally threatening thoughts, in a manner suggested by multiple contemporary theories of worry. This investigation examined the temporal relationship among daily levels of cognitive avoidance, behavioral avoidance, rumination, worry, and negative affect. Seventy-eight adolescents completed baseline questionnaires and then electronically completed daily measures of rumination, worry, behavioral avoidance, and cognitive avoidance, as well as sad and anxious affect for 7 days. Lagged-effect multilevel models indicated that increases in daily sadness were predicted by greater daily rumination and cognitive avoidance. Increases in daily anxiety were predicted by greater daily rumination, worry, and both cognitive and behavioral avoidance. Further, both daily rumination and worry were positively predicted by daily cognitive, but not behavioral, avoidance. Mediation analyses suggested that rumination mediated the effect of cognitive avoidance on both sadness and anxiety. Also, worry mediated the effect of cognitive avoidance on anxiety. Implications for models of avoidance, rumination, and worry are discussed.     

Evaluation of three circadian rhythm questionnaires with suggestions for an improved measure of morningness

Circadian rhythms, cyclic fluctuations in many physiological and psychological functions, are thought to influence adjustment to shiftwork. A widely acknowledged individual difference in circadian rhythms, commonly called morningness, indicates preferences associated with morning or evening activities. Various self-report instruments have been developed to measure morningness, although little measurement data have been published for these scales. Because morningness scales are being used to select workers for night shiftwork, psychometric evaluations of these scales are needed. Psychometric assessments of undergraduate responses (N = 501) on three widely used scales indicate internal (interitem) measurement deficiencies in all three. Therefore, a 13-item scale was developed that distills the best items from two of these scales. Relationships between the new composite scale and external criteria are comparable with or stronger than similar relationships between the published scales and external criteria.     

Effects of emotional illness and age upon the resolution of discrepant messages

To determine their ability to interpret messages, normal and disturbed children, adolescents, and adults (ns = 10) were shown videotaped statements containing discrepant verbal and nonverbal components and statements containing consistent verbal and nonverbal components. No significant differences were observed between subjects in response to the consistent messages regardless of age or mental status; however, pronounced differences occurred under the condition with discrepant messages. Among normal subjects a developmental shift was observed, i.e., an inverse relation was found between age and reliance upon verbal content. Younger normal subjects relied upon the verbal content of a message in interpretation, while adults relied upon the nonverbal elements. Disturbed subjects regardless of age relied primarily upon the verbal content of the discrepant message.     

Sentence representations and anaphor processing

This paper describes the use of anaphora to explore the nature of the representation constructed during the on-line processing of sentences. The central concern of the study was to discover whether this representation is componential or holistic. It was found that subjects took longer to resolve references to objects rather than events and, more interesting, that the componential complexity of the target representation affected the speed of anaphor resolution. The results suggest that events are represented differently from objects, and that the representation of events is componential.     

Toward the self-regulation of mood: Theory and research

Moods, defined as diffuse or global feeling states, may lead us to take self-regulatory action designed to maintain them (good moods) or eliminate them (bad moods). This paper first surveys theories that help explain the origin and nature of such feeling states and then goes on to review and evaluate evidence purporting to demonstrate that self-regulation of mood occurs. Some support was found for the idea that people in bad moods will engage in various self-gratifying or self-indulgent acts as therapy. Other techniques that appear to be used are alcohol consumption and self-serving cognitive processes. The evidence regarding other sorts of self-regulation is fragmentary and/or anecdotal. It is argued that research on the self-regulation of mood would profit from better theoretical development, and some ideas along these lines are offered.The authors are grateful to Margaret S. Clark, Jay Hull, Alice Isen, Robert Kleck, Kevin McConkey, and Paula Schnurr for comments on a previous draft of this paper.