School Climate and Implementation of a Preventive Intervention

Although there has been wide dissemination of research-based psychosocial prevention programs, a similarly strong research base to guide program implementation has been lacking. Program implementation has been particularly difficult for schools, due partly to insufficient understanding of how school ecologies interact with these programs. This study examined the effects of multiple dimensions of school climate on level and rate of change in implementation of a violence prevention intervention across three school years. Using multi-level modeling, the study found that teacher-reported support between staff and among teachers and students predicted higher average levels of implementation. Teacher-reported administrative leadership predicted greater growth in implementation across 3 years. Findings offer implications for an ecological model of program implementation that considers school-level contextual effects on adoption and sustainability of new programs in schools. The Metropolitan Area Child Study Research Group is a collaboration of (in alphabetical order) Leonard Eron, University of Michigan; Nancy Guerra, University of California, Riverside; David Henry, University of Illinois at Chicago; L. Rowell Huesmann, University of Michigan; Patrick Tolan, University of Illinois at Chicago; and Richard VanAcker, University of Illinois at Chicago.     

Reactions of Men of Color to a Commonly Used Rape Prevention Program: Attitude and Predicted Behavior Changes

African American, Latino, and Asian first-year college men (36) saw The Men’s Program, an all-male rape prevention workshop, and wrote answers to four open-ended questions to determine how men from non-white groups react to a commonly used rape prevention program. Using a multi-stage inductive analysis, participant responses fell into five main themes including reinforced current beliefs and/or no changes, increased awareness of rape and its effects on survivors, increased understanding of consent, plans to intervene if a rape might occur, and plans to change behavior in their own intimate situations. Participants mentioned specific ways in which they planned to change personal behavior, and ways in which they planned to intervene if they saw potentially dangerous situations.     

Effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Anxiety and Depression Among Orthodox Jews

Several clinical papers have provided clinical recommendations for how to provide cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for obsessive-compulsive symptoms among Orthodox Jewish individuals. However, no published studies have described culturally adapted CBT for anxiety or depression in this population or quantified the effectiveness of such approaches. We evaluated the effectiveness of CBT for symptoms of generalized anxiety and depression in a sample of Orthodox Jews (n = 65) and a comparison sample (n = 42) presenting to the Center for Anxiety, a private outpatient clinic with three offices in the New York area (www.centerforanxiety.org). A chart review revealed that all patients received CBT-based interventions with appropriate religious-cultural adaptations of treatment, which we present in two case studies. We observed statistically and clinically significant treatment gains from pretreatment to midtreatment (anxiety: t = 8.56, p < .001; depression: t = 8.01, p < .001), and again from midtreatment through termination (anxiety: t = 3.68, p < .001; depression: t = 3.62, p < .001). No significant differences in anxiety or depression were observed between Orthodox Jewish patients and controls at any time point or for treatment effects (anxiety: Wilks’ Lambda = .950, F = 2.65, p = .076, η_p² = .050; depression: Wilks’ Lambda = .99, F = 2.00,p = .49, η_p² = .014). This paper offers clinical insight into delivery of CBT to Orthodox Jewish patients, as well as preliminary support for the effectiveness of CBT in treating symptoms of generalized anxiety and depression within this population.     

Is recursion language-specific? Evidence of recursive mechanisms in the structure of intentional action

In their 2002 seminal paper Hauser, Chomsky and Fitch hypothesize that recursion is the only human-specific and language-specific mechanism of the faculty of language. While debate focused primarily on the meaning of recursion in the hypothesis and on the human-specific and syntax-specific character of recursion, the present work focuses on the claim that recursion is language-specific. We argue that there are recursive structures in the domain of motor intentionality by way of extending John R. Searle’s analysis of intentional action. We then discuss evidence from cognitive science and neuroscience supporting the claim that motor-intentional recursion is language-independent and suggest some explanatory hypotheses: (1) linguistic recursion is embodied in sensory-motor processing; (2) linguistic and motor-intentional recursions are distinct and mutually independent mechanisms. Finally, we propose some reflections about the epistemic status of HCF as presenting an empirically falsifiable hypothesis, and on the possibility of testing recursion in different cognitive domains.     

Evaluation of the attentional capacities and working memory of early and late blind persons

Although attentional processes and working memory seem to be significantly involved in the daily activities (particularly during navigating) of persons who are blind and who use these abilities to compensate for their lack of vision, few studies have investigated these mechanisms in this population. The aim of this study is to evaluate the selective, sustained and divided attention, attentional inhibition and switching and working memory of blind persons. Early blind, late blind and sighted participants completed neuropsychological tests that were designed or adapted to be achievable in the absence of vision. The results revealed that the early blind participants outperformed the sighted ones in selective, sustained and divided attention and working memory tests, and the late blind participants outperformed the sighted participants in selective, sustained and divided attention. However, no differences were found between the blind groups and the sighted group in the attentional inhibition and switching tests. Furthermore, no differences were found between the early and late blind participants in this set of tests. These results suggest that early and late blind persons can compensate for the lack of vision by an enhancement of the attentional and working memory capacities.     

The relationship between social anxiety and the perception of depth-ambiguous biological motion stimuli is mediated by inhibitory ability

Orthographically projected biological motion stimuli are depth-ambiguous. Consequently, their projection when oriented towards the viewer is the same as when oriented away. Despite this, observers tend to interpret such stimuli as facing the viewer more often. Some have speculated that this facing-the-viewer bias may exist for sociobiological reasons: Mistaking another human as retreating when they are actually approaching could have more severe consequences than the opposite error. An implication of this theory is that the facing-towards percept may be perceived as more threatening than the facing-away percept. Given this, as well as the finding that anxious individuals have been found to display an attentional bias towards threatening stimuli, we reasoned that more anxious individuals might have stronger facing-the-viewer biases. Furthermore, since anxious individuals have been found to perform poorer on inhibition tasks, we hypothesized that inhibitory ability would mediate the relationship between anxiety and the facing-the-viewer bias (i.e., difficulty inhibiting the threatening percept). Exploring individual differences, we asked participants to complete anxiety questionnaires, to perform a Go/No-Go task, and then to complete a perceptual task that allowed us to assess their facing-the-viewer biases. As hypothesized, we found that both greater anxiety and weaker inhibitory ability were associated with greater facing-the-viewer biases. In addition, we found that inhibitory ability significantly mediated the relationship between anxiety and facing-the-viewer biases. Our results provide further support that the facing-the-viewer bias is sensitive to the sociobiological relevance of biological motion stimuli, and that the threat bias for ambiguous visual stimuli is mediated by inhibitory ability.     

Effectiveness of the ‘Hold me Tight’ Relationship Enhancement Program in a Self‐referred and a Clinician‐referred Sample: An Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy‐Based Approach

While evidence‐based couple therapies are available, only a minority of troubled couples seek help and they often do this too late. To reach more couples earlier, the couple relationship education (CRE) group program “Hold me Tight” (HmT) based on Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT) was developed. This study is the first to examine the effectiveness of HmT. Using a three‐wave (waiting period, treatment, and follow‐up) within‐subject design, HmT was delivered to 79 self‐referred couples and 50 clinician‐referred couples. We applied a comprehensive outcome measure battery. Our main findings were that (1) self‐referred couples significantly improved during HmT on all measures, that is relationship satisfaction, security of partner‐bond, forgiveness, daily coordination, maintenance behavior, and psychological complaints, with a moderate‐to‐large mean effect size (d = .63), which was maintained (d = .57) during the 3.5 month follow‐up; (2) in clinician‐referred couples, who were vulnerable in terms of insecure attachment status and psychopathology, the improvement during HmT was moderate (d = .42), but this was reduced during the 3.5‐month follow‐up to a small effect (d = .22); (3) emotional functioning (typical HmT target) as well as behavioral functioning (typical Behavioral Couples Therapy‐based CRE target) improved during HmT; and (4) individual psychological complaints, although not specifically targeted, were reduced during HmT. These findings suggest that HmT is a promising intervention for enhancement of relationship functioning. Clinical implications are discussed.     

Maternal communicative functions and mind-mindedness at 16 months as predictors of children’s internal and non-internal language at 20 months

The effects of Communicative functions and Mind-Mindedness on children’s language development have been typically investigated in separate studies. The present longitudinal research was therefore designed to yield new insight into the simultaneous impact of these two dimensions of maternal responsiveness on the acquisition of expressive language skills in a sample of 25 mother-child dyads. The frequencies of five communicative functions (Tutorial, Didactic, Conversational, Control and Asynchronous) and two types of mind-related comments (attuned vs. non-attuned) were assessed from a 15-min play session at 16 months. Children’s expressive language was examined at both 16 months (number of word types and tokens produced, and number of words attributed to the child in the Questionnaire for Communication and Early Language development) and 20 months (number of internal and non-internal words attributed to the child in the Italian version of the Mac Arthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory). The main finding was that mothers’ use of attuned mind-related comments at 16 months predicted internal state language at 20 months, above and beyond the effects of CFs and children’s linguistic ability at 16 months; in addition, mothers’ Tutorial function at 16 months marginally predicted non-internal state language at 20 months, after controlling for MM and children’s linguistic ability at 16 months. These results suggest that different expressions of maternal responsiveness influence distinct aspects of children’s expressive language in the second year of life, although the effects of MM appear to be more robust.