Same-sex patterns and sex differences in the trust-value basis of children's friendship

Thirty-six children in fourth grade were required (a) to report the secret-sharing, secret-keeping, promise-making, and promise-keeping behaviors of classroom peers; and (b) to judge those classmates on trust and friendship. Teachers provided observations of the children's friendship interaction. Same-sex patterns were found in observed friendship, friendship ratings, trust, secrets shared, proportion of secrets kept, and promises made. These were less frequent/lower for opposite-sex peers than for same-sex peers. As expected, males tended to share fewer secrets with same-sex peers than did females. The expected associations were found among proportion of secrets kept, proportion of promises kept, trust, and rated or observed friendship in females but with one exception in males. The findings supported the conclusion that same-sex friendship patterns are maintained by same-sex trust patterns through (a) infrequent secret sharing with opposite-sex peers and (b) the perception that opposite-sex peers break secrets more frequently than same-sex peers. The findings also supported the conclusion that there are some sex differences in the intimacy/trust basis of friendship.     

A general Bayesian multilevel multidimensional IRT model for locally dependent data

Many item response theory (IRT) models take a multidimensional perspective to deal with sources that induce local item dependence (LID), with these models often making an orthogonal assumption about the dimensional structure of the data. One reason for this assumption is because of the indeterminacy issue in estimating the correlations among the dimensions in structures often specified to deal with sources of LID (e.g., bifactor and two-tier structures), and the assumption usually goes untested. Unfortunately, the mere fact that assessing these correlations is a challenge for some estimation methods does not mean that data seen in practice support such orthogonal structure. In this paper, a Bayesian multilevel multidimensional IRT model for locally dependent data is presented. This model can test whether item response data violate the orthogonal assumption that many IRT models make about the dimensional structure of the data when addressing sources of LID, and this test is carried out at the dimensional level while accounting for sampling clusters. Simulations show that the model presented is effective at carrying out this task. The utility of the model is also illustrated on an empirical data set.     

Examining Parents’ Preferences for Group Parent Training for ADHD When Individual Parent Training is Unavailable

Parent training programs are considered well-established interventions for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children as they reduce behavioral impairment, but limited parent engagement decreases service effectiveness. We used a discrete choice experiment to examine how parent preferences for group vs. individual format might influence their participation in Parent training. Parents (N?=?260) seeking mental health services for children with elevated symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in Ontario, Canada were participants. They preferred Individual parent training in another study and completed a discrete choice experiment composed of 30 choice tasks measuring Parent training format preference. In this paper, parents’ preferences for alternatives to Individual Parent training, specifically Group Parent training and Minimal Information options, were estimated. Specifically, this study asked “if first choice is unavailable, what is the second choice?” This question is important as many clinics may not be able to offer both group and individual therapy given state funding cuts for youth mental health services. Simulations predicted that 85.8?% of parents who initially preferred Individual Parent training would switch to Group Parent training that included step-by-step solutions to children’s emotional and behavior problems, and the possibility of feeling informed and confident. The remaining 14.2?% of parents preferred Minimal Information; these parents preferred internet services offered conveniently and timely. Findings highlight consideration of less appealing factors that families might trade for more desirable service elements in a cost-restrictive environment.     

Trends in Behavior-Analytic Gambling Research and Treatment

The purpose of the present review was to analyze research outcomes for all gambling studies reported in the behavior analysis literature. We used the search term “gambling” to identify articles that were published in behaviorally oriented journals between the years 1992 and 2012 and categorized the content of each article as empirical or conceptual. Next, we examined and categorized the empirical articles by inclusion of an experimental manipulation and treatment to alleviate at least some aspect of pathological gambling, participant population used, type of gambling task employed in the research, whether the participants in the study actually gambled, and the behavioral phenomena of interest. The results show that the rate of publication of gambling research has increased in the last 6 years, and a vast majority of articles are empirical. Of the empirical articles, examinations of treatment techniques or methods are scarce; slot machine play is the most represented form of gambling, and slightly greater than half of the research included compensation based on gambling outcomes within experiments. We discuss implications and future directions based on these observations of the published literature.     

Overriding age differences in attentional capture with top-down processing

Two experiments investigated the influence of top-down information on adult age differences in the ability to search for singleton targets using spatial cues. In Experiment 1, both younger and older adults were equally able to use target-related top-down information (target feature predictability) to avoid attentional capture by uninformative (25% valid) cues. However, during informative (75% valid) cue conditions, older adults demonstrated less efficient use of this cue-related top-down information. The authors extended these findings in Experiment 2 using cues that were either consistent or inconsistent with top-down feature settings. Results from this second experiment showed that although older adults were capable of avoiding attentional capture when provided with top-down information related to target features, capture effects for older adults were notably larger than those of younger adults when only bottom-up information was available. The authors suggest that older adults' ability to use top-down information during search to avoid or attend to cues may be resource-limited.     

Distress and Divorce: Establishing Cutoff Scores for the Marital Status Inventory

This study was designed to identify Marital Status Inventory (MSI) scores that could be used as cutoff points for degrees of marital distress. Cutoff scores are useful in clinical work as a way to estimate degrees of marital distress, differentiate couples for treatments, and to provide uniformity across studies. Subjects consisted of 474 couples requesting marital therapy at a university-based clinic. Based on their individual Marital Adjustment Test (MAT) scores, participants were placed in severely distressed, moderately distressed, and non-distressed groups. Using a discriminant analysis, MSI scores of 4 for husbands and 5 for wives were found to be useful cutoff points for severe distress.     

The relationship between loneliness and interpersonal trust during middle childhood

The authors administered measures of loneliness, generalized trust beliefs in peers, and trust beliefs in specific familiar peers (i.e., opposite-gender peers, same-gender peers, close same-gender peers) to a sample of 63 children (33 girls, 30 boys) from 4th and 5th grades (M age = 10 years, 6 months). They assessed children's trusting behavior by engaging them in a Prisoner's Dilemma game (reciprocal trusting) and by evaluating teachers' ratings. The authors found that, across gender, loneliness was negatively correlated with each measure of trust beliefs and trusting behavior. As expected, the relationship between children's loneliness and trust, specifically trust beliefs in same-gender peers, was stronger for girls than for boys. In support of an additive risk model, the authors found low trust beliefs in same-gender peers and low reciprocal trusting behavior with peers each statistically contributed to loneliness in girls.     

Temporal and spatial factors reflecting performance improvement during learning three-ball cascade juggling

Beek and van Santvoord [Beek, P. J., & van Santvoord, A. A. M. (1992). Journal of Motor Behavior, 24, 85-94] proposed a three-stage model of learning to juggle based on group analyses of temporal measures. Here, we examined in detail how the temporal and spatial features of juggling evolved in eight individual participants progressing from the second to the third stage of learning. During the second stage, the dwell ratio, defined as the ratio of the time that the juggler holds a ball between catch and toss and the hand cycle time (HCT), was stable when it was about 0.83. The subjects with a dwell ratio near this value and controlled throws exhibited stable juggling, whereas the subjects with a dwell ratio of 0.80 or smaller exhibited unstable juggling. Compared to the former group, the latter group had a longer time from the throw of a ball to the arrival at its zenith (TZ), and a shorter time between the arrival of an airborne ball at its zenith and the subsequent throw (IZR). The latter group also exhibited larger variability in the dwell ratio and IZR. With practice, the subjects appropriated, on average, the duration of TZ and IZR to the dwell ratio and improved the ability to accurately throw balls by changing the motions of the limb segments involved. Although these changes helped to stabilize the performance during the second stage, the variability problem was not sufficiently resolved. Only two out of eight subjects passed on to the third stage by the last (10th) Session. They achieved small variability in IZR, dwell ratio, and flight paths of the ball while juggling with short HCTs and small dwell ratios. These results suggest that the reduction of variability in these variables was essential to pass on to the third stage.