Promoting Wellness Among Elementary School Children

In this article the authors (a) discuss wellness for children from a developmental perspective and (b) present results of a research study investigating the effects of wellness promotion guidance activities among fifth-grade children. Results reveal enhanced self-esteem and higher knowledge of wellness information among children in the experimental group.     

University Campus Consultation: Opportunities and Limitations

Consultation on a university campus is an important adjunct mental health service to individual and small-group counseling. It serves as a preventive and an early identification resource for both emotional-social and educational-vocational problems. Interventions with faculty, staff, and campus organizations are made possible with a consultation service. Consultation projects have enhanced support networks for ethnic-minority students and increased the humanization of the campus for all students.     

Impact of social problem-solving training on aggressive boys: Skill acquisition,behavior change,and generalization

This study examined the impact of social problem-solving training on the behavior of five aggressive boys. Acquisition of problem-solving skills and changes in classroom behavior were evaluated using multiple-baseline designs within and across subjects. A generalization-programming procedure to promote the use of problem-solving skills in the natural environment was introduced across children in multiple-baseline fashion. Direct observation and behavior ratings were used to evaluate the treatment. Results indicated that each subject acquired the problem-solving skills at levels comparable to well-adjusted peers. Only one child showed behavioral improvement coincident with problem-solving skill acquisition. Three others showed moderate behavior change after the generalization-programming procedure was introduced. Only one child's gains on teacher ratings were maintained at the 6-month followup. The results suggest that cognitive-behavioral treatment of childrens' aggressive behavior may produce changes of limited magnitude and durability.This paper was based on a doctoral dissertation by the first author in partial fulfillment of the requirements of West Virginia University. The authors wish to thank Lianne Willis for her participation as a therapist. Appreciation is also extended to Barry Edelstein, David Hansen, Daniel Hursh, and Mark Cummings for their constructive comments.     

The factor analytic structure of the Roberts Apperception Test for Children: a comparison of the standardization sample with a sample of chronically ill children

A confirmatory principal component factor analysis of the Roberts Apperception Test for Children was conducted using the standardization sample and a sample of chronically ill children. An interpretation of three- and four-factor solutions identified the three-factor solution as superior to the four-factor solution as measured by chi-square goodness of fit and coefficients of convergence. A cluster analysis using Ward's minimum variance method was calculated to determine the typical profiles that best describe the chronically ill sample. Results of this analysis reveal two distinct profiles that differ primarily on the level of adaptive psychological functioning.     

The effects of marital disharmony on prepubertal children

The study investigated the association between marital disharmony and childhood behavior problems in a sample of families drawn from a general population. Eighty-three families where the marital relationship had previously been rated as disharmonious were matched with an equivalent number of families where the marriage was rated harmonious. Mothers, fathers, and children were interviewed, using a semistructured interview format. Children living in disharmonious homes had significantly more problems than children from harmonious homes, and control for confounding variables, such as the mothers' mental health, did not alter this relationship. The main effects found were in antisocial symptomatology. Gender differences and differences according to the accounts of different respondents were found. One possible interpretation is that mothers perceived their sons as more affected by marital disharmony, while evidence from children suggested that boys and girls were equally affected.     

Dynamics of the relationship in clinical work with African-American clients

The high drop-out rate from psychotherapy for minority clients signals the need for increasing our skills with this population and exploring the possibility of treatment innovations. However, at the same time, there are developments in traditional psychodynamic theory that are relevant to work with African-American and other minority clients. The emerging emphasis in modern psychoanalytic theory on the therapist-patient relationship as a medium of change provides the background for this paper. Black clients typically operate in an interpersonal mode in the early phases of therapy. Unless they satisfy themselves as to the therapist's capacity to be sensitive to their sociocultural as well as to their personal situation, these clients often will not move into an instrumental mode, that is, one of working on the personal problems that brought them. In this paper, the dimensions of empathy and countertransference are discussed with respect to their particular relevance for Blacks in treatment and in the context of a telic-humanistic approach to psychology.A version of this paper was presented at the Conference on Ethnic Minority Perspectives in Human Development and Clinical Psychology held at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, May 15–16, 1986.     

MULTI-CULTURAL RESEARCH: DEVELOPING A PARTICIPATIVE METHODOLOGY FOR CROSS-CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY

Since truly culture-free research is impossible, greater attention should be paid to the nature of collaborative processes among researchers in cross-cultural psychology. Participative methodology should be examined through appropriate research, and methodologies to ensure equal participation should be developed accordingly. It is suggested that the nature of the collaborative process be reported in research publications as a standard methodology section. A short questionnaire on researchers' reactions to these suggestions and on current collaborative processes is presented.     

Sex-related differences in the relationship between sibling status and responsivity to babies

Ninety-six middle-class subjects equally divided by age (4–5, 8–9, and 14–15 years), sex, and the presence or absence of younger siblings in the family were studied in two situations which assessed their interest in babies: responsivity to an unfamiliar baby in a waiting room situation and reactions to pictures of babies. Subjects' birth order does not affect degree of interest, only mode of expression. These findings held for boys, but not girls. Regardless of age, boys without younger siblings expressed their interest in babies in more distal, cautious ways. The results were discussed in terms of the contention that birth order effects are best understood as distinctive for each sex, especially when sex-role-related behavior is being investigated.This project was supported by funds from the Boys Town Center for the Study of Youth at Stanford. We are indebted to Barbara Aschenbrenner for her assistance in all phases of this study.     

SOCIAL-SKILLS TRAINING TO MODIFY ABUSIVE VERBAL OUTBURSTS IN ADULTS

Social-skills training was used to modify abusive verbal outbursts displayed by two adult psychiatric patients. Five target behaviors—looking, irrelevant comments, hostile comments, inappropriate requests, and appropriate requests were monitored during role-played situations. Social-skills training, consisting of behavior rehearsal with modelling, focused instructions, and feedback, was introduced in a multiple-baseline design across individuals. Training improved all target behaviors. The improved behavior generalized to: (1) novel scenes role-played with the original respondent, (2) training and novel scenes role-played with a different respondent, and (3) interpersonal situations on the hospital ward.     

Verbal feedback and the feature-positive effect in children

A pair of displays having common elements may be differentiated by the presence of a distinctive feature in one of the displays. When required to discriminate between such displays presented simultaneously, young children more readily learn to confine their responses to the display containing the distinctive feature (feature-positive condition) than to the display which does not contain the distinctive feature (feature-negative condition). The effect of explicit verbal feedback for incorrect choices on the learning of discriminations of this type was examined in 3- to 5-year-old children. In the feature-positive case, explicit feedback for incorrect responses increased the tendency to respond directly to the distinctive feature when responding on the positive display and greatly reduced errors. In the feature-negative case, explicit feedback for incorrect responses increased the tendency to avoid the distinctive feature in favor of a common feature when responding on the negative display. In this case, however, consistent avoidance of the distinctive feature on the negative display was not always followed by the development of consistent choice of the positive display, and errors continued to occur at a high rate throughout training for most subjects. These results reflect the difference in the structure of the feature-positive and feature-negative tasks.