Crafting Mosaics: Person-Centered Religious Influence and Selection in Adolescent Friendships

This research addresses the intersection of two key domains of adolescents’ lives: religion and peer networks. Religion scholars argue that religion is multi-faceted and better understood by focusing on combinations of indicators (i.e., mosaics), versus a variable-centered approach. We adopt this framework and investigate the interplay between religion and peer networks, both in how religious mosaics are shaped by friends and how religious profiles affect friend selection dynamics. With data from two schools in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we estimate religious mosaics using latent class analysis (LCA) to identify profiles consisting of combinations of commonly available survey-based measures of religious attitudes, behaviors, and identities. Finding evidence of theoretically expected profiles, we then use stochastic actor–based models (SABMs) to investigate network dynamics for these LCA-based religious profiles. We demonstrate how the profile data can be integrated within the SABM framework to evaluate processes of friend selection and influence. Results show evidence of adolescents influencing one another's religious mosaics, but not selecting friends on that basis.     

Pre‐service teacher‐delivered behavioral skills training: A pyramidal training approach

This study evaluated the effectiveness of using a university‐based pyramidal approach (i.e., train the trainer) to teach four pre‐service teachers to train another person. These pre‐service teachers were taught to use behavioral skills training (BST) techniques to train other professionals to use an evidence‐based practice. Transfer to a generalization trainee was probed and three participants maintenance of BST fidelity was probed one year later, after the participants had begun teaching. Results indicate that the participants quickly acquired and maintained a high degree of fidelity with BST. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

A follow-up study of infants who wake at night

A retrospective follow-up study of 68 adolescents treated for night waking when infants or toddlers showed that 82% of them were described by their parents as currently sleeping "well," and only two continued to experience a night-waking difficulty.     

The Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Disorders Study: reliability of axis I and II diagnoses

Both the interrater and test-retest-retest reliability of axis I and axis II disorders were assessed using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders (SCID-I) and the Diagnostic Interview for DSM-IV Personality Disorders (DIPD-IV). Fair-good median interrater kappa (.40-.75) were found for all axis II disorders diagnosed five times or more, except antisocial personality disorder (1.0). All of the test-retest kappa for axis II disorders, except for narcissistic personality disorder (1.0) and paranoid personality disorder (.39), were also found to be fair-good. Interrater and test-retest dimensional reliability figures for axis II were generally higher than those for their categorical counterparts; most were in the excellent range (> .75). In terms of axis I, excellent median interrater kappa were found for six of the 10 disorders diagnosed five times or more, whereas fair-good median interrater kappa were found for the other four axis I disorders. In general, test-retest reliability figures for axis I disorders were somewhat lower than the interrater reliability figures. Three test-retest kappa were in the excellent range, six were in the fair-good range, and one (for dysthymia) was in the poor range (.35). Taken together, the results of this study suggest that both axis I and axis II disorders can be diagnosed reliably when using appropriate semistructured interviews. They also suggest that the reliability of axis II disorders is roughly equivalent to that reliability found for most axis I disorders.     

Blessed,precious mistakes: deconstruction,evolution, and New Atheism in America

This paper explores the ways that Daniel C. Dennett’s bestselling 2006 book Breaking the Spell traffics in a set of distinctly American presumptions about the relationship between religion and science. In this Americanized atheism, religion is presumed to be a set of logically organized propositional beliefs–a misbegotten science in need of correction or elimination. I show that a convergent critique, drawing on both evolutionary theory and deconstruction, highlights the limitations of this approach. This convergence highlights the theme of accident in both pluralist evolutionary biology and continental philosophy of religion. Thematizing accident opens up a new conversational space between a deconstructive approach to religion and postadaptationist evolutionary theory, with implications not only for a philosophical understanding of religion, but for new, postsecular atheisms.     

Telehealth and in‐person training outcomes for novice discrete trial training therapists

The efficacy and efficiency of telehealth and in‐person training were compared while teaching seven undergraduate students to implement components of discrete trial training. A multiple‐baseline design across skills with elements of multiple probe and delayed multiple baseline combined with an alternating‐treatments design was used to evaluate the effects of behavioral skills training (BST) on (a) implementing a multiple stimulus without replacement preference assessment, (b) setting up an instructional context, (c) delivering antecedent prompts, and (d) delivering consequences for accurate and inaccurate responding. Two skills were trained via telehealth and two skills were trained in‐person using BST procedures with a mock student. All participants provided high acceptability ratings for both training procedures. Results also showed that telehealth training was as efficacious and efficient as in‐person training for all skills across all participants. Five of six participants showed high levels of maintenance of the newly acquired skills; these five also exhibited the skills during a novel instructional task.