Potential Mediators in Parenting and Family Intervention: Quality of Mediation Analyses

Parenting and family interventions have repeatedly shown effectiveness in preventing and treating a range of youth outcomes. Accordingly, investigators in this area have conducted a number of studies using statistical mediation to examine some of the potential mechanisms of action by which these interventions work. This review examined from a methodological perspective in what ways and how well the family-based intervention studies tested statistical mediation. A systematic search identified 73 published outcome studies that tested mediation for family-based interventions across a wide range of child and adolescent outcomes (i.e., externalizing, internalizing, and substance-abuse problems; high-risk sexual activity; and academic achievement), for putative mediators pertaining to positive and negative parenting, family functioning, youth beliefs and coping skills, and peer relationships. Taken as a whole, the studies used designs that adequately addressed temporal precedence. The majority of studies used the product of coefficients approach to mediation, which is preferred, and less limiting than the causal steps approach. Statistical significance testing did not always make use of the most recently developed approaches, which would better accommodate small sample sizes and more complex functions. Specific recommendations are offered for future mediation studies in this area with respect to full longitudinal design, mediation approach, significance testing method, documentation and reporting of statistics, testing of multiple mediators, and control for Type I error.     

Teenage Offenders' Ability to Detect Deception in Their Peers

This study investigated the deception detection abilities of teenage offenders and teenage non‐offenders who made veracity judgments about 12 videotaped interviewees and also explored the behavioural characteristics of teenage liars and truth tellers. The findings revealed that teenage offenders were significantly more accurate in their credibility judgments than teenage non‐offenders. However, the offenders' impressive accuracy rates were not as a consequence of using valid cues to deceit. The feedback hypothesis helps to explain why the offenders were more accurate in their decisions: Operating within a criminal environment may mean that teenage offenders frequently lie and are lied to. Consequently, they receive more feedback than non‐offenders regarding the effectiveness of their lies as well as how successful they are at detecting lies. As a result, their lie detection ability improves. The current study suggests moving away from individual deceptive cues as predictors of deceit towards a more intuitive and holistic approach to lie detection, such as the Brunswikian Lens Model.Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Potential for Suicide and Aggression in Delinquents at Juvenile Court in a Southern City

Because juvenile delinquents rarely communicate their wishes for suicide or homicide appropriately to busy caretakers, some means to identify those juveniles at greatest risk of acting out was sought. Psychological examiners in a Southern city individually questioned 263 Juvenile Court offenders about whether they wished to be dead, to kill themselves, or to kill others; and also about their existential experiences, thoughts and feelings. Taking the data associated with each wish, we used stepwise multiple logistic regression to pinpoint experiences, such as substance abuse, that were associated with a high likelihood of verbalizing a wish for destructive behavior. These results included sexual abuse as a risk factor and the presence of a mother or grandmother as a protective factor, and led to recommending education of caretakers and forming a screening test.