Comparing Brief Experimental Analysis and Teacher Judgment for Selecting Early Reading Interventions

The purpose of this study was to examine the use of brief experimental analysis (BEA) to identify early reading interventions for students in the primary grades and to compare teachers’ judgments about their students’ early reading intervention needs to BEA results. In addition, the research was conducted to explore how teachers make decisions regarding early reading intervention selection and evaluation. Three teachers and three elementary students (two kindergarten and one second grade) participated in the study. A BEA using a multielement design with mini-reversals was used to test the effects of four different interventions. Each teacher selected an intervention that she judged to be the most promising for her student. An extended analysis using an alternating treatments design compared the relative effects of the BEA-identified intervention and the teacher-identified intervention across time. The teachers were interviewed before and after selecting and implementing the interventions. The extended analysis results showed that the BEA-identified intervention was more effective than the teacher-identified intervention for all participants. Initial and final interview findings revealed that the teachers reported using data to make intervention decisions, but with limited specificity and in some cases, misjudgments. The results are discussed in regard to limitations and future research.     

Abuse Experiences in a Community Sample of Young Adults: Relations with Psychiatric Disorders, Sexual Risk Behaviors, and Sexually Transmitted Diseases

This study documents significant associations among lifetime abuse experiences, psychiatric diagnoses, and sexual risk behaviors in a multiethnic community sample of young men and women (N = 1803) in South Florida. Self-report data were collected via structured interviews as part of a longitudinal follow-up of a larger school-based study. Participants were grouped according to extent of lifetime abuse experiences. Cumulative lifetime abuse experiences were associated with increased risk for a broad range of individual lifetime psychiatric disorders, as well as cumulative lifetime psychiatric disorders. Both cumulative abuse experiences and cumulative psychiatric disorders were independently associated with (a) higher levels of sexual risk behaviors and (b) higher risk for lifetime sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Implications for selective prevention of sexual risk behaviors and STDs among young adults with histories of abuse and psychiatric disorders are discussed.     

Role of perceived importance in intergroup contact

Furthering G. W. Allport's contentions for optimal contact, the authors introduce a new construct: the perceived importance of contact. They propose that perceived importance is the best proximal predictor of contact's reduction of prejudice. If individuals have opportunities for contact at work or in the neighborhood, their chances to have intergroup acquaintances and friends increase. Intergroup contact among acquaintances and friends can be perceived as more or less important, which in turn determines intergroup evaluations. A 1st study shows that the new measure of perceived importance is indeed distinct from established quantity and quality indicators. The results are cross-validated in a 2nd study that also sheds light on the meaning of importance. In 3rd and 4th studies, structural equation analyses and a meta-analysis support the hypotheses.     

African American children's reports of depressed mood, hopelessness, and suicidal ideation and later suicide attempts

This study attempted to assess whether family demographic characteristics and child aggressive behavior are equal to or better than child self-reported depressive symptoms in predicting suicidal behavior. Participants were a community population of African Americans first recruited at age 6 and followed periodically through age 19-20. Measures included child self-reports of depressed mood, hopelessness, and suicidal ideation, teacher reported child aggression in grades 4-6, 6 th grade caregiver report of family demographic characteristics, and the participants' report at age 19-20 of suicide attempts. Depressed mood proved the most consistent predictor of adolescent/young adult attempts in our logistic regression analyses of the data from the population as a whole and among females. The relationship between depressed mood and suicide attempts in males was in the expected direction, but was not statistically significant. Teacher-reported youth aggressive behavior did prove to be a significant predictor of attempts in 4 th and 5 th grade for the population as a whole, but not in our analyses by gender. The relationships between family demographic characteristics and attempts failed to reach statistical significance, but were, generally, in the expected direction. The study revealed that African American children's self-reports of depressed mood as early as grade 4 may prove useful in predicting adolescent/young adult suicide attempts, particularly among females. Neither family demographics nor teacher-reported child aggressive behavior proved equal to child self-reported depressive symptoms in predicting later suicide attempts.     

Neuroimaging studies in eating disorders

The understanding of the eating disorders (EDs) anorexia (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN) has undergone remarkable advancements in the past decade. Most studies that have been done in AN show brain gray and white matter volume loss during the ill state that, at least in part, remit with recovery. Similar patterns occur for brain phospholipids assessed using magnet resonance spectroscopy (MRS). Imaging studies have been used to provide functional information regarding serotonin neuroreceptor dynamics, regional cerebral blood flow, or cerebral glucose metabolism. Such studies have implicated cingulate, frontal, temporal, and parietal regions in AN. Investigators have found that challenges such as food and body image distortions may activate some of these regions, raising the possibility that such studies may shed light on puzzling AN symptoms, such as body image distortions or extremes of appetitive behaviors. Emerging data suggest these disturbances persist after recovery from AN, suggesting the possibility that these are traits that may create a vulnerability to develop an ED. While fewer studies have been done in BN or binge eating disorder, there may be disturbances of serotonin metabolism in similar brain regions. Taken together, these findings give promise for future investigations with the hope of delineating brain pathways that contribute to the etiology of EDs     

Reducing hopelessness: the interation of enhancing and depressogenic attributional styles for positive and negative life events among youth psychiatric inpatients

A recovery model of depression (Needles & Abramson, 1990 Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 99, 156-165) proposes that depressed individuals who exhibit an enhancing attributional style for positive events (i.e. make stable, global attributions) will be more likely to regain hopefulness and, thereby, recover from depression when positive events occur. While only a few studies have directly tested this model among clinical and nonclinical adult samples, none have tested a clinical sample of children and adolescents. Furthermore, prior studies testing this model have failed to examine the interactive role of an 'enhancing attributional style' for positive events with a 'depressogenic attributional style' for negative events, as prescribed by the hopelessness theory of depression (Abramson, Metalsky, & Alloy, 1989 Psychological Review, 96, 358-372). The current study presents data demonstrating that depressogenic and enhancing attributional styles interact to predict differential decreases in hopelessness. Implications of these findings and suggestions for future research also are presented.     

Effects of involuntary outpatient commitment on subjective quality of life in persons with severe mental illness

Recent evidence suggests that involuntary outpatient commitment (OPC), when appropriately applied, can improve adherence with psychiatric treatment, decrease hospital recidivism and arrests, and lower the risk of violent behavior in persons with severe mental illness. Presumably these are benefits that improve quality of life (QOL); however, insofar as OPC involves legal coercion, the undesirable aspects of OPC could also exert a negative effect on quality of life, thus offsetting clinical benefits. Involuntarily hospitalized subjects, awaiting discharge under outpatient commitment, were randomly assigned to be released or continue under outpatient commitment in the community after hospital discharge, and were followed for one year. Quality of life was measured at baseline and 12 months follow-up. Treatment characteristics and clinical outcomes were also measured.Subjects who underwent longer periods of outpatient commitment had significantly greater quality of life as measured at the end of the 1 year study. Multivariable analysis showed that the effect of OPC on QOL was mediated by greater treatment adherence and lower symptom scores. However, perceived coercion moderated the effect of OPC on QOL. Involuntary outpatient commitment, when sustained over time, indirectly exerts a positive effect on subjective quality of life for persons with SMI, at least in part by improving treatment adherence and lowering symptomatology.     

Bipolar disorder in children and adolescents

There is increased recognition that bipolar disorder has an early age of onset. The prevalence of bipolar disorder in prepubertal children has not been determined, however the prevalence in adolescence is approximately 1%. Bipolar disorder in children poses a diagnostic challenge since the symptoms may differ from those in late adolescence and adulthood. Comorbid disorders, such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, further complicate both the diagnosis and course of the disorder. There is increasing evidence of the chronicity and severity of this disorder in youths. Bipolar disorder significantly disrupts a child's psychosocial development including impairments in academic functioning, family functioning, and relationship with peers. Although this disorder has significant morbidity in children and adolescents, there is a paucity of controlled studies to assess the efficacy and safety of mood stabilizers in the treatment of this disorder in youths. The treatment literature consists largely of case studies, retrospective chart reviews, and open-label studies. There is a compelling need for double-blind, placebo-controlled trials to determine whether commonly used medications to treat this disorder are significantly superior to placebo. Since many children in clinical practice require more than one psychotropic medication to adequately manage this disorder, studies of combination treatments are warranted. This review will provide an overview of the literature of bipolar disorder in children and adolescents, including discussion of the prevalence, diagnosis, epidemiology, course of the illness, and treatment issues.     

Phonological activation of category coordinates during speech planning is observable in children but not in adults: evidence for cascaded processing

There is a long-standing debate in the area of speech production on the question of whether only words selected for articulation are phonologically activated (as maintained by serial-discrete models) or whether this is also true for their semantic competitors (as maintained by forward-cascading and interactive models). Past research has addressed this issue by testing whether retrieval of a target word (e.g., cat) affects--or is affected by--the processing of a word that is phonologically related to a semantic category coordinate of the target (e.g., doll, related to dog) and has consistently failed to obtain such mediated effects in adult speakers. The authors present a series of experiments demonstrating that mediated effects are present in children (around age 7) and diminish with increasing age. This observation provides further evidence for cascaded models of lexical retrieval.     

Development of a new critical thinking test using item response theory

The authors describe the initial development of the Wagner Assessment Test (WAT), an instrument designed to assess critical thinking, using the 5-faceted view popularized by the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (WGCTA; G. B. Watson & E. M. Glaser, 1980). The WAT was designed to reduce the degree of successful guessing relative to the WGCTA by increasing the number of response alternatives (i.e., 80% of WGCTA items are 2-alternative, multiple-choice), a change that was hypothesized to result in more desirable test information and standard-error functions. Analyses using the 3-parameter logistic item response theory (IRT) model in a sample of undergraduates (N = 407) supported this prediction, even when the WAT item pool was shortened to match the length of the WGCTA. Convergent validity between full-pool IRT score estimates was r = .69. Implications for subsequent research on IRT-based measurement of critical thinking are discussed.