Social Cognition and Externalizing Psychopathology: An Investigation of the Mediating Role of Language

The present study integrates findings from three lines of research on the association of social cognition and externalizing psychopathology, language and externalizing psychopathology, and social cognition and language functioning using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). To date these associations have been examined in pairs. A sample of 354 clinic-referred children (aged 7 to14 years) recruited from a children’s mental health centre were tested on measures of language, social cognition, working memory, and child psychopathology. We compared a hypothesized model presenting language functioning as a mediator of the association between social cognition and externalizing psychopathology to a model presenting the independent contribution of language and social cognition to externalizing psychopathology. As hypothesized, we found that the mediation model fits the data better than the alternative model. Our findings have implications for developing and modifying intervention techniques for children with dual language and externalizing psychopathology. This research was supported by a grant from Health Canada (NHRDP, 6606-4835) to the third author.     

Building an active citizenry: the role of neighborhood problems, readiness, and capacity for change

Community-building initiatives strive to involve residents as the drivers of the change process, involving them in an array of activities including collective action efforts. Recent evaluations of many of these initiatives, however, suggest that developing the levels of resident involvement needed in such efforts is challenging. This study examines the neighborhood conditions that are related to whether and how much residents become involved in individual activism and collective action efforts. A random-digit-dial phone survey of 460 residents in 7 distressed neighborhoods suggested that while demographic variables were relatively unimportant, resident perceptions of neighborhood readiness (i.e., hope for the future and collective efficacy) and capacity for change (i.e., social ties and neighborhood leadership), and the level of neighborhood problems were strongly related to whether and how much residents were involved in individual and collective action efforts. Moreover, different elements of these neighborhood conditions were more or less important depending on the type and level of resident involvement. For example, while perceptions of neighborhood problems was the strongest predictor of whether an individual became involved at all, perceived strength of neighborhood leadership was the strongest predictor of an individual's level of activity. The implications of these findings for practitioners and scientists are discussed.     

Maintenance of Treatment Gains: A Comparison of Enhanced,Standard, and Self-directed Triple P-Positive Parenting Program

This report describes the 3 year outcomes of three different variants of the Triple P-Positive Parenting Program, a behavioural family intervention. Families were randomly assigned to one of three intervention conditions or to a waitlist condition. At 1 year follow-up there were similar improvements on observational and self-report measures of preschooler disruptive behaviour for Enhanced, Standard and Self Directed variants of Triple P. At 3 year follow-up (completed by 139 families), each condition showed a similar level of maintenance of intervention effects. Approximately 2/3 of preschoolers who were clinically elevated on measures of disruptive behaviour at pre-intervention moved from the clinical to the non-clinical range. Across conditions, there was a comparable preventive effect for each intervention for these high risk children. The implications of the findings for the development of brief, cost effective parenting interventions within a public health framework are discussed.     

Impact of neighborhood disadvantage on overt behavior problems during early childhood

Researchers have yet to examine the impact of neighborhood disadvantage on early child behavior problems (BPs) longitudinally. We examined the impact of neighborhood disadvantage on overt BPs in a low-income, urban sample of 281 African American and European American boys followed longitudinally from toddlerhood to school entry. Measures included census data and maternal report of BPs, sociocultural factors, parental criminality, and maternal depressive symptomatology. After controlling for age 2 overt BPs, family selection variables, and residential instability, neighborhood effects on boys' behavior emerged, but only at age 6 and only at the extreme of neighborhood disadvantage (i.e., underclass). Findings suggest boys in underclass neighborhoods are at risk for overt BPs as they make the transition to elementary school.     

对我国肝移植现状的系统化思考

阐述了我国肝移植的现状及新时期肝移植的新特点,用系统的观点分析了我国肝移植实施中存在的问题,提出了今后如何系统化发展我国肝移植事业的几点设想。     

Thinking about complex decisions: How sleep and time-of-day influence complex choices

In this study, we systematically manipulate a person’s state of sleep; Sleep-deprived and Well-rested along with Matching or Mismatching the decision time-of-day to their circadian preferred time-of-day. We assessed how these conditions influenced performance on an incentivized complex decision task. In the overall analysis of these variables no differences emerged. However, a comparison of the more cognitively depleting Sleep-deprivation/Circadian-mismatch condition to the cognitively enhancing Well-rested/Circadian-match condition showed improved performance in the Well-rested/Circadian matched group for one complex decision task but not for the other. These findings build upon the existing literature on sleep and circadian rhythm effects while uniquely observing the combined effects of these variables on complex decision making.     

Critical thinking in North America: A new theory of knowledge,learning, and literacy

The pace of change in the world is accelerating, yet educational institutions have not kept pace. Indeed, schools have historically been the most static of social institutions, uncritically passing down from generation to generation outmoded didactic, lecture-and-drill-based, models of instruction. Predictable results follow. Students, on the whole, do not learn how to work by, or think for, themselves. They do not learn how to gather, analyze, synthesize and assess information. They do not learn how to analyze the diverse logic of the questions and problems they face and hence how to adjust their thinking to those problems. They do not learn how to enter sympathetically into the thinking of others, nor how to deal rationally with conflicting points of view. They do not learn to become critical readers, writers, speakers and listeners. They do not learn how to use their native languages clearly, precisely, or persuasively. They do not, therefore, become literate, in the proper sense of the word. Neither do they gain much in the way of genuine knowledge since, for the most part, they could not explain the basis for what they believe. They would be hard pressed to explain, for example, which of their beliefs were based on rational assent and which on simple conformity to what they have been told. They have little sense as to how they might critically analyze their own experience, or identify national or group bias in their own thinking. They are much more apt to learn on the basis of irrational than rational modes of thought. They lack the traits of mind of a genuinely educated person: intellectual humility, courage, integrity, perseverance, and faith in reason.Happily, there is a movement in education today striving to address these problems in a global way, with strategies and materials for the modification of instruction at all levels of education. At its foundation is an emerging new theory of knowledge, learning, and literacy, one which recognizes the centrality of independent critical thinking to all substantial learning, one which recognizes that higher-order, multilogical thinking is as important to childhood as to adult learning, and as important to foundational learning in monological as in multilogical disciplines. This educational reform movement is not proposing an educational miracle cure, for its leading proponents recognize that many social and historical forces must come together before the ideals of the critical thinking movement will become a full academic reality. Schools do not exist in a social vacuum. To the extent that the broader society is uncritical so, on the whole, will be society's schools. Nevertheless, the social conditions necessary for fundamental changes in schooling are increasingly apparent. The pressure for fundamental change is growing. Whether and to what extent these needed basic changes will be delayed or side-tracked, thus requiring new periodic resurgences of this movement, with new, more elaborate articulations of its ideals, goals, and methods — only time will tell.     

Exposure to community violence and social support as predictors of anxiety and social and emotional behavior among African American children

We examined the effects of exposure to violence and social support on self-reported state and trait anxiety and parental rated problem behaviors among school-aged African-American children in low and high violence areas. Ninety-seven (97) fourth through sixth graders and their parents were interviewed about exposure to community violence, social support, and state and trait anxiety. Results indicate that trait anxiety was correlated positively with exposure to violence and negatively with social support. State anxiety was correlated negatively with family social support. Problem behaviors were correlated negatively with family support and income. Hierarchial multiple regression analyses indicated that children's reports of their exposure to community violence continued to explain significant variability in trait anxiety, and problem behavior after controlling for both income and social support measures. Social support from peers, family and teachers played differential roles in predicting problem behaviors among children from high and lower violence areas. These findings suggest that in planning intervention programs for children exposed to violence, greater attention to empowering parents to support their children, to fostering peer group support, and to bolstering teacher support may be useful, but attention to the underlying socio-political causes of violence exposure is essential.     

Cross-cultural investigations of stress: Conceptual and methodological considerations

Cross-cultural studios on stress are confounded by conceptual, methodological and applied problems. Although several comprehensive definitions of stress have been offered, the conceptual schema from which the definitions emerge reflect a Western perspective and are not always relevant when transposed into other cultures. The word stress itself is not easily translated into other languages which creates a problem for research workers in non-Western cultures. While studies in India of Westernized executives in organizations using Western models have offered valuable insights into problems related to organizational structures, executive stress, etc., they do not tell us a great deal about the nature and experience of stress in the rest of the population. A brief history of stress research is offered with a concentration on stress research in India. Conceptual and methodological issues are discussed leading to an assessment of the difficulties of stress research in India.