My Disaster Recovery: a pilot randomized controlled trial of an Internet intervention

Abstract

This pilot study tested the efficacy of the My Disaster Recovery (MDR) website to decrease negative affect and increase coping self-efficacy. Fifty-six survivors of Hurricane Ike were recruited from a larger study being conducted at the University of Texas Medical Branch at the first anniversary of the storm. Restricted randomization was used to assign participants to the MDR website, an information-only website, or a usual care condition. Group×time interactions indicated that MDR reduced participant worry more than the other conditions. A similar trend was also identified for depression. Both websites were accessed a small to moderate amount and participants reported mixed satisfaction for both websites. Although the effect sizes for worry and depression were in the moderate to large range, small sample size and timing of the intervention qualify the findings. These preliminary findings encourage further evaluation of MDR with a larger, demographically diverse sample and indicate that the MDR website might be helpful in reducing worry and depression.     

Comparing Self-Regulation-Associated Event Related Potentials in Preschool Children with and without High Levels of Disruptive Behavior

Deficient self-regulation plays a key role in the etiology of early onset disruptive behavior disorders and signals risk for chronic psychopathology. However, to date, there has been no research comparing preschool children with and without high levels of disruptive behavior using Event Related Potentials (ERPs) associated with specific self-regulation sub-processes. We examined 15 preschool children with high levels of disruptive behavior (35 % female) and 20 peers with low disruptive behavior (50 % female) who completed a Go/No-go task that provided emotionally valenced feedback. We tested whether 4 ERP components: the Error Related Negativity, the Error Positivity, the Feedback Related Negativity, and the No-go N2, differed in preschool children with and without high levels of disruptive behavior. Preschoolers with high levels of disruptive behavior showed less differentiation between the Error Positivity and corresponding waveforms following correct responses at posterior sites. Preschoolers with high and low disruptive behavior also showed differences in Go/No-go N2 waveform amplitudes across electrodes. These findings suggest that preschool children with high levels of disruptive behavior may show abnormal brain activity during certain self-regulation sub-processes, informing potential advances in conceptualizing and treating early disruptive behavior.     

The nature of skilled adult reading varies with type of instruction in childhood

Does the type of reading instruction experienced during the initial years at school have any continuing effect on the ways in which adults read words? The question has arisen in current discussions about computational models of mature word-reading processes. We tested predicted continuing effects by comparing matched samples of skilled adult readers of English who had received explicit phonics instruction in childhood and those who had not. In responding to nonwords that can receive alternative legitimate pronunciations, those adults having childhood phonics instruction used more regular grapheme-phoneme correspondences that were context free and used fewer vocabulary-based contextually dependent correspondences than did adults who had no phonics instruction. These differences in regularization of naming responses also extended to some low-frequency words. This apparent cognitive footprint of childhood phonics instruction is a phenomenon requiring consideration when researchers attempt to model adult word reading and when they select participants to test the models.     

Development of conduct problems and peer rejection in preschool children: A social systems analysis

The development of impulsive-aggressive problem behavior and peer rejection was examined in sixty 4- to 5-year-old boys from low-income family backgrounds. Children's sociometric status and behavioral adjustment were assessed longitudinally at the beginning and end of the preschool year, and related to measures of peer interaction at three different points in time. Boys identified as socially rejected and aggressive in the beginning of the year were highly likely to be identified as such at the end of the year. Early in the preschool year, these children contributed to their own rejection by initiating socially aversive exchanges with peers. Although peers clearly perceived these problems, they did not reciprocate with counteraggression at first. However, as time passed, peers began to actively victimize these children, and most of the aggression on the part of victims became reactive in nature. Thus, the current findings strongly support a transactional model of the development of early peer rejection and conduct problems.The author is indebted to the Head Start teachers, children, and parents who participated, and to the following individuals for their invaluable help with data collection and coding: Margo Bonner, Beth O'Connell, Cindy Friedman, Elizabeth Jamner, Karen Lifgren, Marina Post, Jacqueline Raznick, Lisa Walsh, and Karen Weitzner.     

The development of infants' preference for motherese

Generally, infants prefer infant-directed (ID) to adult-directed (AD) speech. Mostly, researchers have used unfamiliar female voices in these studies. We investigated preferences for maternal ID speech in 1- and 4-month-olds. Using a procedure in which infants controlled access to voices by fixating a visual display, infants listened to recordings of natural female ID and AD speech. In Experiment 1, 1-month-olds heard recordings of maternal ID and AD speech, but these infants showed no preference for maternal ID speech. In Experiment 2, 1-month-olds heard the same ID and AD speech tapes but were not familiar with the speakers. Contrary to Experiment 1, these infants preferred ID speech. In Experiment 3, 4-month-olds heard recordings of maternal ID and AD speech and showed a significant preference for ID speech. Collectively, these results suggest that infant attention to ID speech depends on both speaker-general and speaker-specific characteristics, with interesting developmental changes occuring during early infancy.     

The effects of sex-role taking on children's responses to aggressive conflict situations

The effects of sex-role taking on children's responses to aggressive conflict situations were investigated in the present study. Subjects were 40 boys and girls aged 8–9, who were asked to take the role of boy and girl story characters involved in the following kinds of aggressive situations: victim of a verbal attack, victim of a physical attack, and witness to an attack upon a friend. A significant interaction effect between type of conflict situation and sex of story character was obtained. Subjects expected boy characters to retaliate more strongly than girl characters when intervening in an attack upon a friend, and girl characters to retaliate more strongly than boy characters when being verbally or physically assaulted. These findings suggest the importance of situational factors in determining children's sex-stereotyped expectations for aggressive retaliation.     

Figural goodness and the predictability of figural elements

All 126 patterns composed of five dots distributed over the cells of a 3 by 3 matrix were examined for the predictability of their elements. The predictability of a given dot in a given pattern was measured as the percentage of Ss who indicated that dot as one “implied or suggested” by the subpattern composed of the remaining four dots of the pattern. The dots comprising a figurally good five-dot pattern were generally more predictable, one from the others, than the dots comprising a poor pattern. This finding accords with the Gestaltist conception of a good figure as one whose elements are well organized, and it is the state of affairs required by Garner’s hypothesis that better figures are perceived to have fewer alternatives than poorer figures. A mechanism mediating the prediction of an element of a pattern from the other elements was suggested.