Group Cognitive Behavior Therapy Program with Troubled Adolescents: A Learning Experience

ABSTRACT

Group CBT programs are widely used for assisting teenagers with anxiety, depression and other psychological problems. The majority of reported programs have targeted school or clinical populations, however, few have specifically targeted adolescents from highly troubled and disadvantaged backgrounds. This paper describes a group CBT program that was developed for teenagers who have not responded well to the formal structures of school and traditional models of classroom management. Problems such as low levels of motivation, poor attention span, learning difficulties, poor impulse control, substance abuse, and other mental health problems are common within this population. A number of challenges arose in running the program and several modifications were made in order to make it more relevant to participants. These changes resulted in more rapid engagement with the program, improved cooperation within the group, fewer interruptions, and improved rapport. The clinical outcomes associated with the program could not be measured due to difficulties with completing administering self-report questionnaires.     

A test of the CaR-FA-X mechanisms and depression in adolescents

ABSTRACT

People who have depression have difficulty recalling specific autobiographical information (Sumner, (2011) The mechanisms underlying overgeneral autobiographical memory: An evaluative review of evidence for the Ca R-FA-X model. Clinical Psychology Review, 3231(1), 34–48). This is called overgeneral autobiographical memory (OGM) and is associated with the development and persistence of depression. Williams, Barnhofer, Crane, Hermans, Raes, Watkins, & Dalgleish (2007 Autobiographical memory specificity and emotional disorder. Psychological Bulletin, 133(1), 122–148) proposed that OGM is maintained by three mechanisms: capture and rumination (CaR), functional avoidance (FA), and impaired executive control (X), and integrated these into the CaR-FA-X model. The aim of this study was to assess OGM and test the CaR-FA-X model in adolescents with low mood. We recruited 29 young people aged 12–17 with elevated symptoms of depression and 29 with minimal symptoms of depression, matched for gender and age. After controlling for IQ, adolescents with elevated depression retrieved fewer specific memories, ruminated more, and had poorer working memory and verbal fluency than adolescents with minimal depression. The groups did not differ on measures of inhibition or functional avoidance. The CaR-FA-X model was therefore partially supported. These results confirm that there is a relationship between low mood and OGM in young people and that OGM may arise as consequence of impaired working memory and verbal fluency and cognitive interference due to rumination.     

Are we documenting performance validity testing in pediatric neuropsychological assessments? A brief report

A 2016 survey of pediatric neuropsychologists found that 92% of clinicians reported use of “at least one” performance validity test (PVT) in each assessment. The present investigation sought to verify documented PVT use among clinicians by review of actual reports. A convenience sample of pediatric neuropsychological reports of children ages 6–17 were reviewed over an 24-month period (January 2015–January 2017); reports were those seen as part of our routine practice, including reports on children we were reevaluating, cases that we consulted on, or cases evaluated elsewhere presenting to our centers that required record review for clinical decision making (e.g., presurgical epilepsy evaluations). A total of 131 reports, from 102 unique neuropsychologists were reviewed. PVT usage was documented in only six reports, from six unique clinicians, representing only 4.58% of the reports (or 5.88% of clinicians), far below expectations recent survey results. Though sampling differences and documentation factors may account for some of this disparity, a “social desirability bias” on surveys is likely a major factor in explaining these discordant findings.     

感恩对青少年学业成就的影响：有调节的中介效应

本研究提出一个有调节的中介模型,揭示了感恩“怎样”影响学业成就及这种影响“何时”更强或更弱。采用感恩问卷、日常性学业复原力问卷、压力性生活事件量表和学业成就问卷对1361名青少年进行调查。结果显示:(1)日常性学业复原力对感恩与学业成就的关系具有部分中介效应,感恩既对学业成就产生直接影响,也通过日常性学业复原力对学业成就产生间接影响;(2)压力性生活事件对日常性学业复原力的中介作用具有调节效应,压力性生活事件调节了中介过程的后半路径,具体而言,日常性学业复原力对学业成就的影响,随压力性生活事件的增加而降低。因此,感恩对青少年学业成就的影响是有调节的中介效应。研究结论对提高青少年的学业成就具有重要的理论价值和参考价值。     

A Person‐Centered Examination of Adolescent Religiosity Using Latent Class Analysis

Empirical studies of religion's role in society, especially those focused on individuals and analyzing survey data, conceptualize and measure religiosity as ranging from low to high on a single measure or a summary index of multiple measures. Other concepts, such as “lived religion,” “believing without belonging,” or “fuzzy fidelity” emphasize what scholars have noted for decades: humans are rarely consistently low, medium, or high across dimensions of religiosity including institutional involvement, private practice, salience, or belief. A method with great promise for identifying population patterns in how individuals combine types and levels of belief, practice, and personal religious salience is latent class analysis. In this article, we use data from the first wave of the National Study of Youth and Religion's telephone survey to discuss how to select indicators of religiosity in an informed manner, as well as the implications of the number and types of indicators used for model fit. We identify five latent classes of religiosity among adolescents in the United States and their sociodemographic correlates. Our findings highlight the value of a person‐centered approach to understanding how religion is lived by American adolescents.     

The Moderating Role of English Proficiency in the Association Between Immigrant Chinese Mothers' Authoritative Parenting and Children's Outcomes

The authors' objective was to investigate the association between Chinese immigrant mothers' authoritative parenting and their children's socioemotional and behavioral difficulties. Participants were 136 first-generation Chinese immigrant mothers with 3–5-year-old children residing in the United States. Authoritative parenting was associated with lower socioemotional and behavioral difficulties in children as reported by preschool teachers. Further moderation analyses revealed that immigrant mothers' English proficiency moderated the association between authoritative parenting and children's difficulties. Specifically, authoritative parenting was significantly associated with fewer total difficulties only for children with mothers who reported higher English proficiency.     

The Relationship Between Parenting and the Economic Orientation and Behavior of Norwegian Adolescents

Little is known about the economic socialization of children and adolescents and the role of parents in this process. The authors’ purpose was to explore the role of parenting in the intergenerational transfer of economic orientation and economic behavior. More specifically, they studied the link between four parenting dimensions (parental warmth–responsiveness, behavioral control, psychological control, autonomy granting), three parenting styles (authoritative, authoritarian, and neglectful) and adolescents’ conscientiousness, future time perspective, and present hedonistic orientation. The authors also studied the relationships between these dispositions and the adolescents’ spending preferences and ability to control spending. They used data collected from 14–16-year-olds (n = 597) and their parents (n = 469) in Norway. Results showed that adolescents who perceived their parents as psychologically controlling were less future oriented and conscientious, and were more present hedonistic oriented than others, while adolescents who perceived their parents as responsive, autonomy granting, and controlling of behavior were more future orientated and conscientious than others. Adolescents’ scores for conscientiousness and future orientation were negatively associated with preferences for spending and positively with the ability to control spending, while the opposite relationships were found with respect to a present hedonistic orientation. Parental style was also found to be important for the future educational plans of adolescents, and plans for higher education were more frequent among adolescents who characterized their parents as authoritative than among those who perceived their parents as neglectful. Implications of the findings for economic socialization are discussed.     

Concept Shift and the Development of the Concept of Class in Children

The authors compared parent-related perceptions by hospitalized adolescents (i.e., who were admitted to a specialized psychiatric unit; n = 50) and delinquent adolescents (i.e., who were placed at a juvenile treatment institution; n = 51) with adolescents from the general population (n = 51). All adolescents completed a broad set of measures of attachment, perceived parenting, and separation–individuation. Contrary to initial expectations, hospitalized adolescents scored higher than controls on indices of excessive autonomy. Ambivalence regarding issues of interpersonal closeness and distance was found among delinquent adolescents. In addition, hospitalized and delinquent adolescents were found to be struggling, each in their specific way, with attachment-related experiences of trauma. Finally, delinquent adolescents also showed a stage-appropriate form of potentially adaptive narcissism. These findings add to the growing consensus in the literature that associations between adolescent psychopathology and parent-related perceptions are typically complex and somewhat counterintuitive.     

The Adolescent Unresolved Attachment Questionnaire: The Assessment of Perceptions of Parental Abdication of Caregiving Behavior

This article reports on the Adolescent Unresolved Attachment Questionnaire (AUAQ), a brief questionnaire that assesses the caregiving experiences of unresolved adolescents (as recipients of caregiving). The AUAQ was developed and validated in a large normative sample (n = 691) and a sample of 133 adolescents in psychiatric treatment. It is a self-report questionnaire consisting of 3 scales with Likert-type responses ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The Aloneness/Failed Protection Scale assesses the adolescent's perception of the care provided by the attachment figure. The Fear Scale taps the fear generated by the adolescent's appraisal of failed attachment figure care. The Anger/Dysregulation Scale assesses negative affective responses to the perceived lack of care from the attachment figure. All scales demonstrated satisfactory internal reliability and agreement between scores for adolescents (n = 91) from the normative sample who completed the AUAQ twice. Adolescents in the clinical sample also completed the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI; C. George, N. Kaplan, & M. Main, 1984/1985/1996); the AUAQ demonstrated high convergent validity with the AAI.     

Adolescent Girls' Parasocial Interactions With Media Figures

We examined aspects of adolescent girls’ parasocial interactions in the context of typical development. Parasocial interactions are defined as symbolic, one-sided quasi-interactions between a viewer and a media figure. In total, 107 adolescent girls were examined; 94% reported engaging in parasocial interactions to some degree. Preoccupied attachment style predicted the degree of involvement in and emotional intensity of parasocial interactions. Results suggest that parasocial interactions are characteristic of girls with preoccupied attachment, but are also part of normative development.