STRONG MILITARY FAMILIES INTERVENTION ENHANCES PARENTING REFLECTIVITY AND REPRESENTATIONS IN FAMILIES WITH YOUNG CHILDREN

Military families face many challenges due to deployment and parental separation, and this can be especially difficult for families with young children. The Strong Military Families (SMF) intervention is for military families with young children, and consists of two versions: the Multifamily Group, and a Home‐based psychoeducational written materials program. The Multifamily Group was designed to enhance positive parenting through both educational components and in vivo feedback and support during separations and reunions between parents and children (n = 78 parents). In the present study, we examine parenting reflectivity and mental representations in mothers versus fathers in military families, service members versus civilian spouses/parenting partners, and before versus after participation in the SMF Multifamily Group and Home‐based interventions. Parenting reflectivity and mental representations were coded from the Working Model of the Child Interview (WMCI; C.H. Zeanah & D. Benoit, 1995). Results suggest that neither parenting reflectivity nor WMCI typology differs between mothers and fathers in military families, or between service members and civilian parenting partners. Furthermore, there was substantial stability in parenting reflectivity and WMCI typology from baseline to posttest, but participation in the Multifamily Group, relative to Home‐based, was associated with improvements in both parenting reflectivity and WMCI ratings from baseline to postintervention.     

Continuous opportunity for reinforcing brain stimulation

The performance of a rat provided with continuous opportunity to obtain reinforcing brain stimulation over a 20-day period is described in detail. The animal averaged 29.2 responses per min during the entire time. Testing session was terminated by experimenters, but a day-by-day analysis of behavior provided no evidence that the animal would have stopped responding.     

Dissociations of writing and praxis: Two cases in point

For normal writing it is essential that both motoric and linguistic competence be present; disruption of one or the other of these faculties may result in qualitatively different types of agraphia. Two right-handed patients became agraphic after left hemisphere lesions; pure apraxic agraphia in the absence of limb apraxia developed in one patient and pure linguistic agraphia in association with severe ideomotor limb apraxia in the other. The performance of these patients not only serves to illustrate the dissociation between the motoric and linguistic faculties that underlie writing but also confirms that ideomotor limb apraxia and apraxic agraphia are distinct and dissociable entities.