A Level of Care Instrument for Children's Systems of Care: Construction, Reliability and Validity

The Child and Adolescent Level of Care System/Child and Adolescent Service Intensity Instrument (CALOCUS/ CASII) is designed to help determine the intensity of services needed for a child served in a mental health system of care. The instrument contains eight dimensions that are rated following a comprehensive clinical evaluation. The dimensions are risk of harm, functionality, co-morbidity (psychiatric, substance abuse, development disability and medical), environmental stressors, environmental supports, the child's resiliency, and the child and family's willingness to engage in treatment. An algorithm connects the ratings to a level of care recommendation. The instrument specifies six levels of care defined flexibly enough to consider whatever services are available. The results of psychometric testing using raters with a broad range of clinical experience and training from four different systems of care around the country are presented. The testing demonstrates excellent reliability when rating vignettes. Using children and adolescents in live system of care clinical settings, the CALOCUS/CASII demonstrates reasonable validity when compared with the Child Global Assessment Scale, and the Child and Adolescent Functional Assessment Scale.     

The time of activity

This essay analyzes the time of human activity. It begins by discussing how most accounts of action treat the time of action as succession, using Donald Davidson's account of action as illustration. It then argues that an adequate account of action and its determinants, one able to elucidate the ``indeterminacy of action,' requires an alternative conception of action time. The remainder of the essay constructs a propitious account of the time and determination of action. It does so by critically drawing on Henri Bergson's notion of duration and Martin Heidegger's notion of the teleological dimensionality (past, present, and future) of existence. Whereas Bergson provides valuable insights into the continuity of activity, Heidegger illuminates the determination of action. Combining their insights yields an account of the time of activity that supplements succession with a nonsuccessive temporality: the time of activity is an overlapping continuum of action performances each of which is structured as coming towards an end starting from a motivating state of affairs. The essay concludes with brief thoughts on what justifies calling the nonsuccessive dimensionality of existence a kind of time.     

Relationships between attachment behavior in the laboratory and the caretaking environment

How useful are observations of patterns of attachment behavior in a structured laboratory setting for making inferences about the quality of caretaking received by an infant in the home environment? To address this question a sample of 107 12-month-old infants who had participated in a longitudinal intervention project beginning before birth through 14 months of age were observed in a structured laboratory setting. Patterns of attachment behavior were compared to maternal caretaking variables observed in the home environment as well as to ratings of the quality of the infants' play. The results indicated that attachment behavior in the laboratory can be used to make inferences about the quality of caretaking in the home environment with confidence when a consistent and unambiguous pattern of either optimal or problematical attachment behavior is present, but not when the attachment behavior pattern is inconsistent or ambiguous.     

An investigation of people's metamemories for naturally occurring events

Three studies investigated the role of event salience in the validity of metamemory reports for naturally occurring events. Two studies investigated metamemory for daily forgetting behaviours as recorded on memory diaries for either 10 days (Study 1) or a month (Study 2). A third study examined metamemory for remembering recent events (consisting of the first day of class, the most recent weekend, and the first experimental session). The results indicated that metamemory validity was higher for the more salient memory events, e. g. rote memory failures and memory of the first day of class.     

Coronary Prone Behavior: Components of the Type A Pattern and Hostility

Traditional and nontraditional risk factors for coronary heart disease (CHD) are discussed with special attention devoted to the Type A behavior pattern (TABP). Positive and negative epidemiological evidence bearing on the risk factors status of global TABP is reviewed. Results of the review suggest that component scoring of the multidimensional global TABP in attempts to uncover "toxic" components, particularly Potential for Hostility, is a profitable research strategy. Similarly, evidence is presented that suggests merit in component scoring of hostility, also a multidimensional construct. To explicate more fully the nature of Potential for Hostility and its categories, correlations between the SI-derived ratings and ratings of established dimensions of individual differences based on the five-factor taxonomic model of personality from subsamples of the MRFIT and WCGS studies are presented. Total Potential for Hostility and especially the Style of interaction category show highly significant relations to Low Agreeableness or Antagonism. High ratings of Potential for Hostility identify individuals who can be described as uncooperative, antagonistic, rude, disagreeable, unsympathetic, callous, and the like. Implications of the evolving concept of coronary-prone behavior, as distinguished from TABP, are briefly considered.     

Hemi-retinal attention under conditions of color rivalry

Human Ss viewed stimulus arrays of color patches such that two instances of color rivalry were simultaneously present. That is, two patches of different color were present, one each in each of the left halves of the two ocular fields, and at the same time, rival patches were also present in the two right halves. As would be expected, binocular percepts often corresponded to predominance of one or the other of the two eyes. On other occasions, however, Ss reported percepts which indicated simultaneous predominance of the nasal halves or, more often, of the temporal halves of the two retinas.     

Further comments on the evidence for post-retinal storage

A critical re-examination of the perceptual reports given in the experiments described by Haber and Nathanson reveals confirma-tion of the essential elements of the phenomena previously reported by Parks. Specifically, it is argued that a moving stimulus viewed through a narrow stationary opening gives rise to percepts containing more stimulus information than is, in fact, available to the eye at any instant.     

The peak shift in stimulus generalization: equivalent effects of errors and noncontingent shock

Terrace suggested that the peak shift in stimulus generalization occurs because the training stimulus not correlated with reinforcement has become aversive. This hypothesis is plausible in the light of instances where the peak shift is obtained compared with those where it fails to appear. The present experiment attempted to test implications of this hypothesis. Two groups of pigeons learned the same two-stimulus discrimination between colors by different training methods in a free-operant situation. When the discrimination was trained with many errors, a large peak shift was obtained in a subsequent generalization test of wavelength; after discrimination training with few errors, a negligible shift was observed. Half of each group then received noncontingent aversive shock during presentations of the stimulus not correlated with reinforcement in continued discrimination training. After this treatment, the errorless-shock subgroup showed a large peak shift and the error-shock subgroup tended to show a larger shift than before. Nonshocked control groups showed little change in the peak shift. It was concluded that pairing aversive shock with a stimulus not correlated with reinforcement is sufficient to produce or enhance a peak shift. In their effect on the peak shift, aversive shock and large amounts of nonreinforced responding appear to be equivalent.     

Learning techniques for alcohol abuse

Eighteen month follow-up data are presented for two projects evaluating the effectiveness of learning techniques for treating alcohol abuse and achieving moderation using three groups of subjects-inpatient alcoholics, outpatient alcoholics and problem drinkers. Subjects received various combinations of the following procedures: videotape self-confrontation of drunken comportment, blood alcohol concentration discriminating training, aversion training for overconsumption, avoidance practice, behavior counseling and alternatives training, and alcohol education. While the loss of subjects was considerable between 12 and 18 months follow-up, the data were very similar. Subjects in all groups improved in terms of reductions in alcohol intake and on drinking-related variables. Significant between-groups differences in favor of subjects whose training included actual experience in drinking moderately were found only for the inpatient alcoholics. In this research, the best candidate for moderation was the less chronic. younger drinker with a relatively lower alcohol intake, a more stable vocational record and no history of hospitalization for alcohol abuse or physical deterioration from drinking. We believe that the techniques with the greatest potential for the prevention and treatment of alcohol abuse are videotape self-confrontation, blood alcohol discrimination training, and alcohol education/alternatives training.