Utilization of Individual versus Family Therapy Among Adolescents with Severe Emotional Disturbance

Service utilization patterns among children with severe emotional and/or behavioral disturbances are described for 89 children and families, interviewed at two time points across a 6-month period. Children received a greater number of individual therapy sessions than family therapy sessions, and children significantly decreased their levels of internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Family therapy was associated with decreases in internalizing behaviors when children reported outcomes. Individual therapy was not associated with changes in either internalizing or externalizing behaviors regardless of reporter. Symptom severity did not dictate whether children were provided individual or family therapy. Recommendations for individualized treatment plans are offered.     

Young children's interpersonal trust consistency as a predictor of future school adjustment

Young children's interpersonal trust consistency was examined as a predictor of future school adjustment. One hundred and ninety two (95 male and 97 female, M_age = 6 years 2 months, SD_age = 6 months) children from school years 1 and 2 in the United Kingdom were tested twice over one year. Children completed measures of peer trust and school adjustment and teachers completed the Short-Form Teacher Rating Scale of School Adjustment. Longitudinal quadratic relationships emerged between consistency of children's peer trust beliefs and peer-reported trustworthiness and school adjustment and these varied according to social group, facet of trust, and indicator of school adjustment. The findings support the conclusion that interpersonal trust consistency, especially for secret-keeping, predicts aspects of young children's school adjustment.     

Direct and indirect effects of family violence on child-to-parent violence / Efectos directos e indirectos de la violencia familiar sobre la violencia filio-parental

Abstract

This study analyses the impact of family violence on adolescent maladjustment and child-to-parent violence in a community sample. It also explores a possible mediating effect of adolescent behavioural and/or emotional problems in the relationship between family violence and child-to-parent violence. The sample included 485 adolescents of both sexes, with an age range of 12 to 18 years. Two structural equation models are presented in the data analysis. The results support previous findings indicating that all forms of family violence appear to contribute to adolescent maladjustment. Moreover, indirect effects of family violence on child-to-parent violence through behavioural and emotional problems were found. The implications of these results are discussed.     

Predicting early emotion knowledge development among children of colour living in historically disinvested neighbourhoods: consideration of child pre-academic abilities,self-regulation,peer relations and parental education

ABSTRACT

Emotion knowledge, the ability to accurately perceive and label emotions, predicts higher quality peer relations, higher social competence, higher academic achievement, and fewer behaviour problems. Less is known, however, about predictors of early development of emotion knowledge. This study examines emotion knowledge development among children attending pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten programmes in high-poverty urban schools. The study considers child pre-academic abilities, self-regulation, peer relations and parental education as predictors of emotion knowledge development over two years. The sample (n?=?1034) of children living in historically disinvested neighbourhoods was primarily Black (85%) and low-income (～61%). The sample was part of a longitudinal follow-up study of a cluster (school) randomised controlled trial in ten public elementary schools. Children’s emotion knowledge was assessed with a series of tasks three times over a two-year period. At baseline, parents and teachers reported on peer relations, children completed a test of pre-academic abilities, independent observers rated child self-regulation, and parents reported on their educational attainment. Results demonstrate that emotion knowledge increases over time, and pre-academic abilities, self-regulation, peer relations, and parent education independently predict children’s emotion knowledge. This study highlights multiple factors that predict emotion knowledge among primarily Black children living in historically disinvested neighbourhoods.     

Reduced willingness to approach genuine smilers in social anxiety explained by potential for social evaluation,not misperception of smile authenticity

ABSTRACT

We investigate perception of, and responses to, facial expression authenticity for the first time in social anxiety, testing genuine and polite smiles. Experiment 1 (N?=?141) found perception of smile authenticity was unaffected, but that approach ratings, which are known to be reduced in social anxiety for happy faces, are more strongly reduced for genuine than polite smiles. Moreover, we found an independent contribution of social anxiety to approach ratings, over and above general negative affect (state/trait anxiety, depression), only for genuine smiles, and not for polite ones. We argue this pattern of results can be explained by genuine smilers signalling greater potential for interaction – and thus greater potential for the scrutiny that is feared in social anxiety – than polite smiles. Experiment 2 established that, relative to polite smilers, genuine smilers are indeed perceived as friendlier and likely to want to talk for longer if approached. Critically, the degree to which individual face items were perceived as wanting to interact correlated strongly with the amount that social anxiety reduced willingness to approach in Experiment 1. We conclude it is the potential for social evaluation and scrutiny signalled by happy expressions, rather than their positive valence, that is important in social anxiety.     

Seduction,date rape,and aborted surrender

Abstract

This paper clarifies the dual-layered nature of the “demon lover complex,” with its background of both pre-Oedipal trauma and Oedipal-level desire. It draws on an object relations understanding of the unconscious and dissociated addiction to an internal demon object that has derivations in the personalities of the actual parents, and in the internalization of these parents. The dramatic case of early trauma compounded by adult date rape trauma serves to illustrate how a “developmental mourning process” in treatment can resolve such trauma. It also illustrates how reparation with the mother that partially heals pre-Oedipal trauma cannot immunize anyone against Oedipal-level attractions to a “demon lover” father, as represented in a displacement, resulting in victimized behavior, and in an aborted surrender to heterosexual desire. However, this victimization can be resolved, as seen in the clinical illustration, when the psychoanalyst has an understanding of the mourning process in developmental terms, working with a natural interaction between mourning and transference evolutions in treatment. The case also demonstrates the transitional object role of the psychoanalyst who is involved with the healing of pre-Oedipal trauma through mourning.     

Frustration and disappointment

The paper describes research on children’s responses to failures of gratification. Although this has always been an important area of consideration in psychoanalytic thinking, arguments are put forward for the child’s actual feelings of disappointment being significant in ways that have yet to be fully realised theoretically and clinically within Kleinian object relations. Since Freud first used the term ‘frustration’, it has been applied in psychoanalysis as a means by which to describe in an undifferentiated way all those responses to failures of gratification that have an aggressive content. It will be argued that, in a context of the historical shift in thinking from drive to relational models, there is now perhaps scope to posit the existence instead of two discrete object relational positions towards such failures of aim – that frustrated responses can be differentiated in important structural and developmental ways from disappointed ones, by suggesting that the former are schizoid, whilst the latter are depressive in quality. To try and begin to test the hypothesis that there might be an object relational distinction between feelings of frustration and feelings of disappointment, selected process notes from two training cases became the subject of a combined piece of clinical and theoretical research. I will outline how this research was undertaken and present the findings that arose from the clinical part of it. With the use of a content analysis, a method for gathering interesting quantitative data about the children’s various responses to the failures of gratification was arrived at.     

A General Setting for Dedekind's Axiomatization of the Positive Integers

A Dedekind algebra is an ordered pair (B, h), where B is a non-empty set and h is a similarity transformation on B. Among the Dedekind algebras is the sequence of the positive integers. From a contemporary perspective, Dedekind established that the second-order theory of the sequence of the positive integers is categorical and finitely axiomatizable. The purpose here is to show that this seemingly isolated result is a consequence of more general results in the model theory of second-order languages. Each Dedekind algebra can be decomposed into a family of disjoint, countable subalgebras called the configurations of the algebra. There are ?₀ isomorphism types of configurations. Each Dedekind algebra is associated with a cardinal-valued function on ω called its configuration signature. The configuration signature counts the number of configurations in each isomorphism type that occurs in the decomposition of the algebra. Two Dedekind algebras are isomorphic iff their configuration signatures are identical. The second-order theory of any countably infinite Dedekind algebra is categorical, and there are countably infinite Dedekind algebras whose second-order theories are not finitely axiomatizable. It is shown that there is a condition on configuration signatures necessary and sufficient for the second-order theory of a Dedekind algebra to be finitely axiomatizable. It follows that the second-order theory of the sequence of the positive integers is categorical and finitely axiomatizable.     

Positive Social Pressure and Prosocial Motivation: Evidence from a Large‐Scale Field Experiment on Voter Mobilization

Political scientists are increasingly exploring the psychological underpinnings of voting behavior using field experimental techniques. Research in psychology demonstrates that positive reinforcement—what I describe as positive social pressure—motivates prosocial behavior. A distinctive feature of the current study is the focus on key subgroups of voters, namely unmarried women and minorities. Attention to these voter subgroups allows us to build upon findings reported in previous studies that leave questions about the generalizability of the reported effects of positive social pressure to key demographic subgroups of voters largely unanswered. This article reports the results of a large‐scale randomized field experiment designed to investigate the impact of positive social pressure on voter turnout. The experiment was conducted during the November 2009 gubernatorial election in New Jersey, and the results suggest positive social pressure mobilizes voters. Moreover, the effects appear to be robust across subgroups of voters, including minorities and unmarried women, and both lower‐ and higher‐propensity voters.     

Value Differentiation Between Enemies and Allies: Value Projection in National Images

The current study aimed to investigate value projection between Palestinians, Israelis, Americans, and Swiss as a function of their group's stance toward the Israeli‐Palestinian conflict. Drawing on image theory, we assumed that images—operationalized by value projection—would be a function not just of features of the target group, but of the rater group's relationship with the target group. Value projection can be seen as an indicator of (de)humanization as values represent goals and desirable behaviors of a person. We therefore expected higher projection to ally than to enemy groups, whereas we expected no difference in projection to out‐groups with neutral relations. Results show that allies did indeed project Security and Power to a higher degree to each other than to enemies, and enemies showed no, or even negative, projection onto each other. The ally of the enemy (Americans) was projected less negatively by Palestinians than vice versa, pointing to the higher complexity of third‐party images as opposed to the more classical ally and enemy images. As expected, Swiss students showed almost no difference in projection to the different out‐groups. These results confirm that the relationship between groups (e.g., alliance, enmity) rather than a consensual view of particular nations determines images.