Pre‐service teacher‐delivered behavioral skills training: A pyramidal training approach

This study evaluated the effectiveness of using a university‐based pyramidal approach (i.e., train the trainer) to teach four pre‐service teachers to train another person. These pre‐service teachers were taught to use behavioral skills training (BST) techniques to train other professionals to use an evidence‐based practice. Transfer to a generalization trainee was probed and three participants maintenance of BST fidelity was probed one year later, after the participants had begun teaching. Results indicate that the participants quickly acquired and maintained a high degree of fidelity with BST. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Heroin Use among Adolescents: A Multi-Theoretical Examination

Criminological examination of substance use is common in the extant literature; however, little research has examined heroin use among adolescents. Recent trends in drug use indicate a rise of heroin among adolescents indicating a need to provide theoretical explanations of this phenomenon. This study examines the efficacy of social learning theory and social bond theory to explain heroin use. The study uses a nationally representative sample of adolescents from the Monitoring the Future Survey (N = 2,465). The results support the central arguments from social structure social learning theory. First, the results show that social structure components have links with heroin use. Second, the results show that social learning theory mediates the effect of social structure measures on heroin use. The results are discussed.     

PTSD Symptoms in College Students Exposed to Interparental Violence: Are they Comparable to those that Result from Child Physical and Sexual Abuse?

Undergraduate students completed the Trauma Symptom Inventory and a childhood history questionnaire that assessed their experience of three types of childhood traumatic events: physical abuse (CPA), sexual abuse (CSA), and interparental violence (CPV). Six posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) subscales previously found to be associated with these types of abuse (anxious arousal, anger/irritability, intrusive experiences, depression, tension reduction behaviors, and defensive avoidance) were examined through multiple regression analyses to determine the extent to which each type of trauma history was most predictive of elevated symptomatology. For several subscales, having exposure to interparental violence was the strongest predictor of elevated symptomatology, suggesting that CPV is at least as powerful as CPA or CSA in producing symptoms of PTSD in adulthood.     

BIS,BAS, and response conflict: Testing predictions of the revised reinforcement sensitivity theory

Gray’s (1970) reinforcement sensitivity theory (RST) was recently updated (Gray & McNaughton, 2000), but the changes have not received extensive empirical validation. The study tests three novel predictions of the revised RST. First, the behavioral activation system (BAS) is expected to be sensitive to both conditioned and unconditioned incentives. Second, the behavioral inhibition system (BIS) is expected to be sensitive to conflicting incentives such as between unconditioned and conditioned stimuli, and not to avoidance responses or aversive stimuli alone. Third, during approach-avoidance conflicts only, BAS is expected to moderate BIS responses to conflict such that individuals with high BAS show the strongest effect of BIS. In order to test these hypotheses, we developed a novel incentive task that crosses approach/avoidance conditioned responses to appetitive/aversive unconditioned stimuli. Conflict between unconditioned and conditioned stimuli occurred on the approach-aversive and avoid-appetitive trials. Results confirm the predictions and provide support for the revised RST.     

The automatic evaluation of novel stimuli

From classic theory and research in psychology, we distill a broad theoretical statement that evaluative responding can be immediate, unintentional, implicit, stimulus based, and linked directly to approach and avoidance motives. This statement suggests that evaluative responses should be elicited by novel, nonrepresentational stimuli (e.g., abstract art, "foreign" words). We tested this hypothesis through combining the best features of relevant automatic–affect research paradigms. We first obtained explicit evaluative ratings of novel stimuli. From these, we selected normatively positive and negative stimuli to use as primes in a sequential priming paradigm. Two experiments using this paradigm demonstrated that briefly presented novel prime stimuli were evaluated automatically, as they facilitated responses to subsequently presented target stimuli of the same valence just as much as did pictures or names of real objects. A final experiment revealed that exposure to novel stimuli produces muscular predispositions to approach or avoid them.     

A follow-up study of infants who wake at night

A retrospective follow-up study of 68 adolescents treated for night waking when infants or toddlers showed that 82% of them were described by their parents as currently sleeping "well," and only two continued to experience a night-waking difficulty.     

The Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Disorders Study: reliability of axis I and II diagnoses

Both the interrater and test-retest-retest reliability of axis I and axis II disorders were assessed using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders (SCID-I) and the Diagnostic Interview for DSM-IV Personality Disorders (DIPD-IV). Fair-good median interrater kappa (.40-.75) were found for all axis II disorders diagnosed five times or more, except antisocial personality disorder (1.0). All of the test-retest kappa for axis II disorders, except for narcissistic personality disorder (1.0) and paranoid personality disorder (.39), were also found to be fair-good. Interrater and test-retest dimensional reliability figures for axis II were generally higher than those for their categorical counterparts; most were in the excellent range (> .75). In terms of axis I, excellent median interrater kappa were found for six of the 10 disorders diagnosed five times or more, whereas fair-good median interrater kappa were found for the other four axis I disorders. In general, test-retest reliability figures for axis I disorders were somewhat lower than the interrater reliability figures. Three test-retest kappa were in the excellent range, six were in the fair-good range, and one (for dysthymia) was in the poor range (.35). Taken together, the results of this study suggest that both axis I and axis II disorders can be diagnosed reliably when using appropriate semistructured interviews. They also suggest that the reliability of axis II disorders is roughly equivalent to that reliability found for most axis I disorders.     

Treatment of Prostitution Using Integrative Therapy Techniques: A Case Study

This case study examines a pattern we believe to be common among female prostitutes: a woman (Bonnie) who, like most prostitutes, is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. Bonnie's prostitution is part of the unconscious repetition compulsion common in trauma victims; by prostituting herself, Bonnie re-creates the scenario of sexual abuse that occurred during her childhood, while maintaining an illusion of control over the situation. We maintain that an effective approach to treatment for Bonnie is integrative therapy, a type of psychological counseling designed to address the major aftereffects of sexual abuse: dissociation from the body and sexuality in general; a profound sense of powerlessness; critically low valuation of the self; and mistrust and fear of intimacy. Bonnie's story shows the dynamics of both prostitute behavior and integrative therapy, providing an example we believe to be applicable far beyond this case study.     

Blessed,precious mistakes: deconstruction,evolution, and New Atheism in America

This paper explores the ways that Daniel C. Dennett’s bestselling 2006 book Breaking the Spell traffics in a set of distinctly American presumptions about the relationship between religion and science. In this Americanized atheism, religion is presumed to be a set of logically organized propositional beliefs–a misbegotten science in need of correction or elimination. I show that a convergent critique, drawing on both evolutionary theory and deconstruction, highlights the limitations of this approach. This convergence highlights the theme of accident in both pluralist evolutionary biology and continental philosophy of religion. Thematizing accident opens up a new conversational space between a deconstructive approach to religion and postadaptationist evolutionary theory, with implications not only for a philosophical understanding of religion, but for new, postsecular atheisms.