Are American children's problems still getting worse? A 23-year comparison

Child Behavior Checklists were completed in home interviews by parents of 7–16-year-olds in 1976, 1989, and 1999. Competence scores decreased from 1976 to 1989, but increased in 1999. Problem scores increased from 1976 to 1989 and decreased in 1999 but remained higher than in 1976. Items, empirically based scales, and DSM-oriented scales showed similar patterns for demographically similar nonreferred samples assessed in 1976, 1989, and 1999 and for national samples that included referred children assessed in 1989 and 1999. For the 114 problem items that were common to the 1976, 1989, and 1999 assessments, the Q correlation was .98 between the mean scores on the 114 items in 1976 versus 1989 and was .94 between the mean scores on the 114 items in 1976 vs. 1999. This indicated very high stability in the rank ordering of item scores across intervals up to 23 years. For all children, the 1-year prevalence rate for mental health services use was 13.2% in 1989 versus 12.8% in 1999. For children with deviant Total Problems scores, the 1989 prevalence for service use was 30.5 versus 26.6% in 1999. Neither difference was statistically significant.     

心算活动机制的研究

心算是一种重要的思维活动,是认知心理学的研究主题之一,心算活动具有明显的问题大小效应,其加工过程与工作记忆和长时记忆存在密切关第。此外,对心算的加工机制进行跨学科的综合研究,是今后心算研究的主要方向。     

旋转汉字识别的眼动特性

该文以客观眼动测量方法考察了单个旋转汉字的识别和由旋转汉字组成的短文的阅读过程。对心理旋转操作在汉字辨认过程中的作用及其操作对象进行了探讨。     

内省的心理学新探─—自我观察与心理调适

本文对内省作为一种心理学的基本方法作了历史回顾。作者还把内省看作人的某种个性倾向或心理特征尝试进行实证研究。调查结果表明,内省在被试看来,是自我概念形成与发展所必不可少的。结果还使作者确信,对内省联系个体心理与行为的调适作实证研究,不仅可行,而且有益。     

初中学生心理健康状况及其影响因素

本研究对441名初中学生进行问卷调查,结果发现：1．有7．5％的初中学生存在明显的心理健康问题。2．初中学生心理健康存在性别与年级的差异。女生比男生,初三、初二学生比初一学生有更多的心理健康问题。3．日常生活压力是影响初中学生心理健康的重要因素。4．解决问题、求助两种应付方式对学生的心理健康有积极作用,而自责、幻想、忍耐、合理化等应付方式则会危害心理健康。     

TRAINING AND GENERALIZATION OF SEXUAL ABUSE PREVENTION SKILLS FOR WOMEN WITH MENTAL RETARDATION

Previous research has shown that behavioral skills training to teach sexual abuse prevention skills to women with mental retardation results in skill acquisition but poor generalization. In this investigation we evaluated procedures for enhancing generalization following training. Five women with mental retardation received 10 behavioral skills training sessions followed by in situ training when the skills did not fully generalize. Behavioral skills training resulted in skill acquisition and in situ training produced generalized responding during naturalistic assessments.     

Making the Parents as Partners Principle a Reality: The Role of the Alliance

We explore the dimensions of the Parents as Partners principle, the widely touted, but somewhat elusive construct in the literature on treating children with serious mental illness, whose poorly defined boundaries, lack of empirical grounding, and overemphasis on instrumental dimensions attenuates its usefulness as a guide for practice and research. Four major barriers to the realization of this principle are outlined, all of which may impede actualizing partnership in practice and may also inhibit the early formation of a positive clinician/parent alliance, a neglected, though key dimension of true partnership practice. The alliance, which has a long clinical and research history in psychotherapy and behavioral research, and more recently, in a variety of community-based interventions, is a precursor to active client partnership with helpers and to treatment participation, as well as therapeutic in its own right. After reviewing relevant alliance research, we close with a beginning research agenda to incorporate the alliance as an integral component of future conceptualization and research about the Parents as Partners principle.     

The Prophylactic Mastectomy Dilemma: A Support Group for Women at High Genetic Risk for Breast Cancer

The goal of this pilot study was to test the usefulness of a six session psychoeducational support group for women at high genetic risk for breast cancer who were considering prophylactic mastectomy. The themes of the group sessions included overestimation of and anxiety about risk; desire for hard data; the emotional impact of watching a mother die of breast cancer; concerns about spouse reactions; self- and body image; the decision-making process; and confusion over whom to trust in decision making. Both the participants and the multidisciplinary leaders concluded that as a supplement to individual counseling, a support group is a beneficial and cost-effective treatment modality. Recommendations for the optimal format for such a group are described.     

Functional Status, Receipt of Help, and Perceived Health

We model the effects of disability, functional limitation, and receipt of help on perceived health. This analysis specifies a model with two dimensions of disability and three dimensions of functional limitation, including upper body disability, lower body disability, basic activities of daily living (ADLs), household ADLs, and advanced ADLs. The latent variables of receiving help are modeled for each of the ADLs as intervening between limitations and perceived health. The results show that instrumental social support in the form of receiving help for ADLs has no substantive independent effect on perceived health. In addition, receiving instrumental social support shows a pattern of task-specific responses to individual measures of need. Implications for both caregiver and care recipient are discussed.     

The Future of Psychology in Academic Health Care Centers

A promising opportunity exists to continue psychology's move beyond its traditional mental health emphasis into a general health care discipline. Abundant empirical evidence supports that psychologists treat a wide array of physical disorders as well as psychological components of medical problems. The immediate issues confronting psychology's full emergence into the health care world are discussed and recommendations are offered to assure the success of this initiative. Office of the Senior Vice President and Provost