Identifying subgroups that succeed or fail with three levels of physical activity intervention: the Activity Counseling Trial.

The authors used recursive partitioning methods to identify combinations of baseline characteristics that predict 2-year physical activity success in each of 3 physical activity interventions delivered in the multisite Activity Counseling Trial. The sample consisted of 874 initially sedentary primary care patients, ages 35-75 years, who were at risk for cardiovascular disease. Predictors of 2-year success were specific to each intervention and represented a range of domains, including physiological, demographic, psychosocial, health-related, and environmental variables. The results indicate how specific patient subgroups (e.g., obese, unfit individuals; high-income individuals in stable health) may respond differently to varying levels and amounts of professional assistance and support. The methods used provide a practical first step toward identifying clinically meaningful patient subgroups for further systematic investigation.     

Association between anxiety and depression in children and adolescents with anxiety disorders

The relationship between anxiety and depression was examined in a sample of 106 children and adolescents referred to an outpatient anxiety disorder clinic for children. Twenty-eight percent of patients with DSM-III diagnoses of anxiety disorders displayed a concurrent major depression. Children with anxiety disorders plus major depression were found (1) to be older, (2) to demonstrate more severe anxiety symptomatology, and (3) to be diagnosed with different rates of certain anxiety-disorder subtypes, when compared to anxious patients without major depression. Nondepressed anxious children and adolescents did not differ from a psychopathological control group in severity of either anxiety or depression symptoms.     

Overanxious disorder: An examination of developmental differences

Differences between a clinical sample of younger (ages 5 to 11) and older (ages 12 to 19) children meeting DSM-III criteria for overanxious disorder (OAD) were examined. Younger and older children were compared in terms of (1) the rates of OAD diagnoses occurring in the two age groups, (2) sociodemographic characteristics, (3) symptom expression, (4) association with other forms of maladjustment, and (5) self-reported anxiety and depression. The prevalence of OAD diagnoses and sociodemographic characteristics did not differ. Although younger and older OAD children showed similar rates of most specific DSM-III OAD symptoms, older children presented with a higher total number of overanxious symptoms than younger children. Older children more frequently exhibited a concurrent major depression or simple phobia, whereas younger OAD children more commonly had coexisting separation anxiety or attention deficit disorders. Older OAD children reported significantly higher levels of anxiety and depression on self-report measures. Findings indicated that the expression of OAD varies by developmental level.     

Knowledge in society: anatomy of an emergent field

An emergent social science of knowledge applications, drawing on a substantial multidisciplinary literature published over the past twenty-five years, signals an inversion of typical scholarly reasoning about the knowledge-society nexus. Whereas most scholarly research thus far has concentrated on conditions believed to affect the production of scientific and professional knowledge, we pose a new problematic: What must we examine in order to comprehend and consciously shape applications of scientific and professional knowledge to the manifold problems facing contemporary societies? To date, approaches to this problematic have proceeded on the basis of four broadly accepted if abstract theses about the nature of contemporary knowledge systems: subjectivity, corrigibility, sociality, and complexity. Within the boundaries supplied by these commonly accepted theses are unresolved controversies expressed in competing visions of complexity, alternative perspectives of causation, rival images of progress, and conflicting criteria of application.     

The Influence of Applicant Communication Style and Interviewer Characteristics on Hiring Decisions1

This study examined the influence of the gender and communication style of job applicants, as well as the gender and sex-role stereotyping of interviewers, on hiring decisions. Fifty-six personnel officers viewed videotapes of simulated employment interviews, in which male and female candidates used either aggressive, assertive, or nonassertive styles of communication. Personnel officers rated job candidates on likeability, similarity to the officers themselves, and hireability. Interviewers were most likely to employ assertive applicants, and the sex-role stereotypes of interviewers did not influence their perceptions of these candidates. Sex-role beliefs, however, did affect evaluations of aggressive and nonassertive job applicants. Interviewers who were low in sex-role stereotyping were more likely to hire a nonassertive than an aggressive candidate, while interviewers with higher levels of sex-role stereotyping were more likely to hire aggressive candidates. For assertive candidates, judgments by the interviewers of the perceived similarity of the candidate to themselves and their liking for the applicant both influenced their decision to hire the candidate. For aggressive and nonassertive candidates, however, the interviewers' liking toward the candidate mediated the relationship between perceived similarity and hiring decisions.     

ACQUISITION,GENERALIZATION, AND MAINTENANCE OF QUESTION-ANSWERING SKILLS IN AUTISTIC CHILDREN

We conducted an investigation to evaluate the effects of a training strategy for teaching autistic students generalized responses to three forms of wh— questions (what, how, and why). Students were taught, using modeling and reinforcement procedures, to answer questions with magazine pictures as the referents. Each question form was divided into two or more subcomponents reflective of common social usage and was taught within the context of a modified multiple probe design across subcomponents. Following acquisition of each subcomponent, generalization to natural context and storybook questions was assessed; additional probes were conducted to assess responding over time and whether acquisition of responses to questions promoted question-asking skills. Results showed that the picture training procedure was effective in teaching a generalized response to questions for which the relevant cue was visible, whereas specific generalization programming was required for situations in which the relevant cue was not visible. All acquired responses were durable over time.     

The sensitivity of the Bender-Gestalt Test as a screening instrument for neuropsychological impairment in older adults

We investigated the sensitivity of the Bender (1938) Visual-Motor Gestalt Test (BGT) using the Halstead-Reitan Neuropsychological Battery (HRB) as the criterion for cortical dysfunction. We studied 95 subjects over age 55 who had been diagnosed as having dementia or pseudodementia. Subjects were classified as mild, moderately, or severely impaired on the HRB and as impaired or unimpaired on the BGT. The results indicated that the BGT is less sensitive (36%) than was expected when used on an impaired geriatric population. The data further indicated that false negatives occurred more frequently with the BGT when individuals had mild neuropsychological impairment. Less frequent misclassifications occurred as the severity of impairment on HRB indices increased.     

The Effects of Flavor-Aversion Learning on Instrumental Performance

Two experiments investigated the role of lithium-mediated environmental conditioning on instrumental performance. Experiment 1 demonstrated that a novel taste consumed in one arm of a T maze prior to lithium-induced toxicosis reduced performance in this environment whereas similar aversions conditioned in the home cage failed to alter maze performance. Experiment 2 showed that maze performance in a straight alleyway was decremented during extinction only in a group that actually traversed the alley prior to drinking saccharin and receiving lithium injections. This demonstrated that the instrumental decrement observed in Experiment 1 was due not only to the presence of an unpalatable flavor in the goalbox during the test.