A Developmental Framework for Collaboration in Child-Serving Agencies

Collaboration for the purpose of interdependent problem solving represents a fundamental reform of services for children with serious emotional disturbance and their families, which have typically been categorical, poorly coordinated, costly, overly restrictive, and frequently provided outside of the children's home communities. This article presents a developmental framework for collaboration that is based on the experience of families, service providers, administrators, and community members who have been involved in local collaborative processes in their own communities. The framework provides those interested in building collaboration a clear identification of the stages of collaborative development, defining characteristics of each stage, collaborative activities typical of that stage, and identification of the catalyst for change to the next stage. The results of this project indicate that while well-developed professional collaboration is a necessary component of collaboration, it is not sufficient in and of itself. The sites participating in this project related their experiences in building collaborative processes to both the development of strong interagency collaborations and the development of family participation. Their experience indicates that these two processes must be fully developed and woven together to achieve the goal of true collaboration.     

Borderline Personality Disorder and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Time for Integration?

The increasing prevalence of borderline personality disorder (BPD) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnoses among women illustrates problems and limitations of the medical model system (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition; American Psychiatric Association, 1994). In particular, diagnoses of BPD continue the trend of overpathologizing women's issues and reinforcing a patriarchal system of diagnosis and treatment. A PTSD diagnosis, with similar criteria, is preferred for traumatized women because it portrays them in a more positive context. This article explores the overlapping relationship between BPD and PTSD and critiques how both are viewed within the mental health community. Previous research on BPD and PTSD is explored, as well as concerns and limitations regarding both diagnostic categories.     

Relationship specificity of aggressogenic thought-behavior processes

The purpose of this longitudinal study was to examine the relationship specificity of aggressogenic thought-behavior processes and to investigate the role of self-esteem in translating or inhibiting aggressogenic thought into aggression toward personally liked and disliked targets. Participants (186 Finnish boys and girls; 11-12 years old at Time 1) completed measures twice over a 1-year interval. We assessed children's attributions of hostility, relational goals, expectations of anger, and self-efficacy at Time 1 as well as aggression, at both time points, toward their previously identified liked and disliked peers. Our results mostly supported our hypothesis that cognitions guide behavior mainly within the relationship context. Moreover, high self-esteem potentiated cognition-behavior links toward children's own liked peer but inhibited the actualization of aggressogenic thought toward children's disliked peer. These findings highlight the importance of taking a Person × Situation approach when studying cognition-behavior processes.     

Learning as a function of coordination bias: building upon pre-practice behaviours

Instructions and demonstrations were manipulated to make pre-practice behaviours explicit and inform participants how to build-upon these to perform a novel bi-manual movement. In Experiment 1, participants who could perform only in- and anti-phase movements were studied, whereas in Experiment 2, individuals who could perform additional movements were tested. Zanone and Kelso (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 23 (1997) 1454) predicted differential learning progressions as a result of initial ability. Instruction promoting gradual adaptation of an existing skill would be more likely to benefit participants in Experiment 2. Irrespective of initial ability, participants did not benefit from instruction. Instructions that built-upon the in-phase pattern were particularly detrimental to acquisition, as compared to withholding instruction and providing only feedback. Instructional effects were related to decreased within-trial variability early in practice due to avoidance of certain movements and a complement bias to another undesirable one. It was suggested that trying to implement instructions, especially for the participants in Experiment 2, caused individuals to exert control over processes better controlled by lower, less cognitive levels of the motor system.     

‘Language of the past’ – Exploring past tense disruption during autobiographical narration in neurodegenerative disorders

Compromised retrieval of autobiographical memory (ABM) is well established in neurodegenerative disorders. The recounting of autobiographical events is inextricably linked to linguistic knowledge, yet no study to date has investigated whether tense use during autobiographical narration is disrupted in dementia syndromes. This study investigated the incidence of correct past tense use during ABM narration in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD, n = 10) and semantic dementia (SD, n = 10) in comparison with healthy older Controls (n = 10). Autobiographical narratives were analysed for episodic content (internal/external) and classified according to tense use (past/present). Across both patient groups, use of the past tense was significantly compromised relative to Controls, with increased levels of off‐target present tense verbs observed. Voxel‐based morphometry analyses based on structural MRI revealed differential associations between past tense use and regions of grey matter intensity in the brain. Bilateral temporal cortices were implicated in the SD group, whereas frontal, lateral, and medial temporal regions including the right hippocampus emerged in AD. This preliminary study provides the first demonstration of the disruption of specific linguistic constructs during autobiographical narration in AD and SD. Future studies are warranted to clarify at what point in the disease trajectory such deficits in tense use emerge, and whether these deficits are a product or contributing factor in memory disruption in these syndromes.