Quality home visits: Activities to promote meaningful interactions

Examination of and support for specific practices that promote high-quality home visiting are essential as family support programs continue to expand across the country. The current study used direct observation of 91 home visits across 41 home visitors to examine relations among interaction partners, content of the interactions, the home-visitors’ activities, and quality of home-visitors’ practices and family-members’ engagement within programs funded by the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting program. More time spent in triadic interactions focused on child-related content, as measured by the Home Visit Rating Scale-Revised, was related to higher quality of family engagement in home visits, as measured with the Home Visit Observation Rating Scales. Time spent in adult-focused interactions and administrative tasks, however, was related to lower quality of home-visiting practices and family engagement. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Defining ‚exdurance’

On stage theory, ordinary continuants are instantaneous stages which persist by exduring—by bearing temporal counterpart relations to other such stages. Exduring objects lack temporal extension and there is a sense in which they are wholly present at multiple instants. How then is exdurance different from endurance? I offer a definition of ?exdurance’ that clearly sets it apart from other modes of persistence.     

Evaluative pressure in mothers: effects of situation, maternal, and child characteristics on autonomy supportive versus controlling behavior

This study examined the effects of situational pressure and maternal characteristics (social contingent self-worth, controlling parenting attitudes) on mothers' autonomy support versus control in the social domain. Sixty 4th-grade children and their mothers worked on a laboratory task in preparation for meeting new children, with mothers in either an evaluation (mothers told their child would be evaluated by other children) or no-evaluation (no mention of evaluation) condition. Mothers in the evaluation condition spent more time giving answers to their children. Mothers with controlling parenting attitudes exhibited more controlling behavior. Further, mothers with high social contingent self-worth in the evaluation condition were most controlling. Results suggest the importance of interactions between situations and maternal characteristics in determining levels of mothers' autonomy support versus control and have implications for helping parents support children's autonomy.     

Assessment protocol for identifying preferred social consequences

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) exhibit deficits in social behavior. Because social consequences may be ineffective or evoke undesirable behavior, teaching interventions for this population may rely heavily on edible or activity reinforcers. This report describes a method, appropriate for young children with ASD, for rapidly identifying social reinforcers and assessing relative preferences among social consequences. The free‐operant behavior of three such children was analyzed in three Social Consequence conditions that alternated with an Extinction condition. The results identified some social consequences that functioned as reinforcers and others to which the child was relatively indifferent. The implications of this study may be particularly pertinent for teaching behavior, like joint attention skills, that is maintained by social reinforcers in the natural environment. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Transfer of training for two ball-throwing tasks

The effects of training overhand ball throws to enhance underhand ball-throwing accuracy were studied with 921 Italian high school pupils (575 girls, M age = 16.5 yr., SD = 1.3; 346 boys, M = 16.5 yr., SD = 1.2) ages 14 to 18 years. A standardized test (10 underhand tennis-ball throws into the floor area delimited by an 80-cm radius wooden hoop lying on the floor 9 m from the standing pupil) was performed and scored. An Experimental group (435 girls, M age = 16.5 yr., SD = 1.3; 204 boys, M age = 16.5 yr., SD = 1.2) was randomly selected to participate in 10 weekly training periods. The set included 10 overhand throws of a rubber bouncing ball (14.5 cm diameter, weight 240 g) into a basketball hoop from 5 standardized positions (in front of the basketball hoop; at 45 degrees, 90 degrees on the right and on the left of the basketball hoop) at a distance of 4.40 m. The underhand test was repeated for both groups. On the average, boys obtained higher test scores than girls of the same age. Older adolescents had higher mean scores than younger adolescents. After 10 weeks, boys and girls of all ages improved. Mean differences between sessions were significant for the Experimental group (Student t test, p < .01). In Session 2, consistent differences between Experimental and Control groups were also found (Student t test, p < .05).     

Social Class, Race, and Ethnicity: Career Interventions for Women Domestic Violence Survivors

This story describes a community intervention study conducted with women domestic violence survivors and a research dilemma related to the complex interrelationships between women's social class, race and ethnicity, and career development needs and experiences. The author presents diversity and research dilemmas related to facilitating women's critical consciousness of power dynamics at work in their lives. The influence of community context, career intervention curricula, and research team members' values on research decisions are described. This story highlights the importance of researchers examining their values and how those values impact the communities that they serve.     

Effects of induced emotional state on lexical processing in younger and older adults

The authors investigated the effects of an induced emotional mood state on lexical decision task (LDT) performance in 50 young adults and 25 older adults. Participants were randomly assigned to either happy or sad mood induction conditions. An emotional mood state was induced by having the participants listen to 8 min of classical music previously rated to induce happy or sad moods. Results replicated previous studies with young adults (i.e., sad-induced individuals responded faster to sad words and happy-induced individuals responded faster to happy words) and extended this pattern to older adults. Results are discussed with regard to information processing, aging, and emotion.     

Intimate partner violence and the capacity and desire for self-control

ABSTRACT

According to Tittle, the effect of self-control on one’s criminal offending is a product of both an individual’s capacity to exercise self-control as well as their desire to do so. The present study utilized self-report data gathered at a large urban university in Florida (n = 1,307) to test both the independent and interactive effects of self-control capacity and self-control desire on intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetration. The study suggests that while both capacity and desire for control have effects on one’s likelihood of reporting IPV perpetration, these effects were independent of each other and no evidence of interaction between to two were observed.     

Can dogs count?

Numerical competencies have been thoroughly examined in several species, yet relatively few studies have examined such processes in the domestic dog. In an initial experiment, procedures from numerical studies of chimpanzees (0010 and 0015) were adapted for use with 27 domestic dogs. Subjects in these experiments watched as different quantities of food were sequentially dropped into each of two bowls. The subjects were then allowed to select and consume the contents of one of the bowls. Although dogs excelled in a 1 vs 0 condition, their performance failed to significantly surpass chance across all other ratios. In a second experiment with a single subject (a rough collie named Sedona), the procedure was revised so that non-food stimuli were presented simultaneously to the dog on two magnet boards. If Sedona chose the board with the majority of the items, she was rewarded with a piece of food hidden underneath the board. If she made an incorrect choice, she received no reinforcement. Interestingly, Sedona's performance far exceeded that of the dogs in Experiment 1. Implications of these findings for the study of domestic dogs are discussed.