Digital Mental Health Interventions for Child and Adolescent Anxiety

Anxiety disorders are the most common mental health conditions in children, with approximately 13% of kids struggling with excessive anxiety. The vast majority do not have access to effective treatments and there continues to be a disjunction between treatments that are empirically supported and those that are available in the community. Digital mental health interventions (DMHI) can increase efficiency, reach, and standardization as well as reduce costs of providing of mental health care. Here we review the extant research on DMHI, including web- or cloud-based programs, mobile applications (apps), virtual reality (VR), and digital assessment methods such as ecological momentary assessment (EMA) for the delivery and/or support of evidence-based care in child anxiety. Preliminary research is promising for these tools to improve access and efficiency of evidence-based practice. However, ethics and practice guidelines are needed and questions remain regarding what level and quality of therapeutic involvement is needed to maximize treatment completion and outcomes in youth and whether DMHIs are contraindicated for certain populations or whether they are similarly effective with those with comorbid conditions is unclear.     

Moving From Classical Test Theory to the Evaluation of Usefulness: A Theoretical and Practical Examination of Alternative Approaches to the Development of Career Tools for Job Seekers

This article critiques the common use of principles of classical test theory (CTT) as the key means of assessing the effectiveness of career instruments for employment counseling. The authors argue that excessive reliance on CTT has hindered the development of career assessment tools that better meet the diverse and changing needs of those seeking guidance in their career choice. The authors argue for an alternative paradigm based on notions of usefulness. A computerized career tool is evaluated to illustrate the limitations of CTT and the benefit of alternative methodologies for the assessment of instruments designed to provide effective career guidance.     

Linking property crime using offender crime scene behaviour: A comparison of methods

This study compared the ability of seven statistical models to distinguish between linked and unlinked crimes. The seven models utilised geographical, temporal, and modus operandi information relating to residential burglaries (n = 180), commercial robberies, (n = 118), and car thefts (n = 376). Model performance was assessed using receiver operating characteristic analysis and by examining the success with which the seven models could successfully prioritise linked over unlinked crimes. The regression‐based and probabilistic models achieved comparable accuracy and were generally more accurate than the tree‐based models tested in this study. The Logistic algorithm achieved the highest area under the curve (AUC) for residential burglary (AUC = 0.903) and commercial robbery (AUC = 0.830) and the SimpleLogistic algorithm achieving the highest for car theft (AUC = 0.820). The findings also indicated that discrimination accuracy is maximised (in some situations) if behavioural domains are utilised rather than individual crime scene behaviours and that the AUC should not be used as the sole measure of accuracy in behavioural crime linkage research.     

How Do You Say Nature?: Opening the Design Space with a Knowledge Environment

In this paper, we describe a design study on how families in Los Angeles experience nature, with a particular focus on how using alternative formats for research analysis and presentation can enrich a design research inquiry. Conducted in Pasadena, CA as a part of Super Studio, the year-long design research class emphasized knowledge building and sharing through design methods of analysis, exhibition, and concept prototypes. After conducting interviews and engaging participants with probes, the class built the results into an open-ended knowledge environment. The main observation from the exhibition – that Angelenos have a limited vocabulary for describing nature and their interaction with it – helped to define the opportunity for design intervention that created connection points between Angelenos and nature. There are few attempts to describe how probe returns evolve into design concepts. Showcased is a process that depends on the unique affordances of design as the vehicle for discovery and invention.     

Reflective Sociocultural Psychology: Lost and Found in Collaboration with Funding Agencies and ICT Experts

This paper deals with emerging kinds of collaboration between researchers, funding agencies and ICT (Information and Communications Technology) experts. The goal of this paper is to analyze the challenges and opportunities for researchers presented by such collaborations. The analysis is based on a sociocultural approach, and leads to the following conclusions: (a) the main challenges to collaboration arise from the fact that partners’ communities have different goals and use different sets of mediation tools, (b) there are different ways for researchers to cope with more powerful partners such as major funding agencies (refusing collaboration, pseudo collaboration, asymmetric collaboration, and real partnership), (c) appropriation of mediation tools developed by partners could be useful for researchers, (d) collaboration with partners could be a source of new theoretically interesting phenomenon, and (e) communication with partners who are not familiar with our routine discourses might help us to improve our own understanding.

A Jewish Spiritual Perspective on Psychopathology and Psychotherapy: A Clinician's View

This paper will present a Jewish Spiritual Perspective on clinical work by examining key underlying values and attitudes in Judaism that relate to human behavior, mental health and illness. Common symptom presentations and family issues that have roots in culture will be explored. Contemporary and ancient spiritual coping tools will be suggested for use in clinical work and personal growth.     

Inhibition difficulties in preterm children: Developmental delay or persistent deficit?

Among executive functions (EFs), research has highlighted specific inhibition difficulties in preterm children. The present paper reviews and classifies the studies that assessed response inhibition and interference control abilities in preterm children and adolescents aged 3 to 16 years. Most behavioral studies agree on a developmental delay at early school age in inhibition abilities and a catch-up before adolescence, with lesser response inhibition difficulties at pre-adolescence. However, persisting interference control difficulties have been reported into early adulthood. These results are discussed, along with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) findings. Finally, this paper outlines methodological issues that need to be overcome in order to define the developmental trajectory of inhibition abilities in the preterm population.     

Development of an Abuse Screening Tool for Women with Disabilities

Abstract

Women with disabilities are at increased risk for violence, including forms of abuse that can be experienced by all women as well as forms unique to women with disabilities, such as abuse by personal assistants. The purpose of this study was to develop an abuse-screening tool unique to women with disabilities. The tool, which was based on previous research, was field-tested with 47 women who experienced physical and/or cognitive disabilities. Final refinement of the tool's wording and formatting was accomplished through focus groups and individual interviews. Women with disabilities were receptive to participating in screening, which facilitated the identification of abuse and risk factors. Recommendations for abuse screening and risk assessment with women who have disabilities are presented.     

You Can Lead An Ape To A Tool But...: A Review Of Povinelli’s Folk Physics For Apes: The Chimpanzee’s Theory Of How The World Works.

We reviewed Daniel Povinelli's book, Folk physics for apes: The chimpanzee's theory of how the world works. After a summary of the book's contents, we analyzed two sets of experiments on chimpanzees' folk psychology: one that explored whether chimpanzees understand that others see (i.e., that apes have internal visual experiences) and another that examined whether chimpanzees can distinguish intended from unintended actions. The conceptual scaffolding on which these studies were conceived was sufficiently faulty that their outcomes were virtually assured a priori. We then analyzed two sets of experiments on chimpanzees' folk physics, reinforcing our view that conceptual confusion guaranteed that certain key predictions about the outcome of these studies could not be supported. A unifying reason for this conceptual confusion is that the author devalues understanding that results from programmatic conditioning. We closed the review by relating Povinelli's findings and conclusions to behavior analysis and by explaining why behavior analysts should read this book     

自闭症谱系障碍的早期筛查工具

基于35项实证研究, 遵循诊断准确性研究的质量评估(QUADAS-2)的循证程序对自闭症谱系早期预警特征筛查工具开展质量评估, 包括婴儿阶段(10个筛查工具, 159388人)、幼儿阶段(14项筛查工具, 11712人), 旨在为自闭症谱系风险的早期识别提供全面的理解。结果表明：幼儿阶段的筛查工具的分类准确性要高于婴儿阶段, 在婴儿阶段达到良好水平的筛查工具有M-CHAT-R/F、PDQ-1; 在幼儿阶段达到优秀水平的筛查工具有OERA、TIDOS。其中, “改良的幼儿自闭症检查表-有修订的后续随访” (M-CHAT-R/F)是目前最具潜力的自闭症谱系风险筛查工具之一。最后, 我们探讨了应用QUADAS-2评估研究质量的局限性, 强调需要规范工具的质量评估标准与进一步验证研究的必要性。