An International Examination of the Effectiveness of Functional Family Therapy (FFT) in a Danish Community Sample

Youth behavior problems have increased in prevalence in Scandinavian countries. Functional Family Therapy (FFT) has been shown to be an effective intervention across diverse populations and international contexts. The current study examines the effectiveness of FFT within a Danish-community sample in a pre-post comparison design and includes 687 families. Observed outcomes included both parent- and/or youth- reported domains of youth behavior, family dysfunction, school attendance and performance, and substance use. Significant improvements were found in youth behavior, family functioning, and school-related outcomes (e.g., like of school and truancy) despite experiencing a 60% attrition rate in our sample postintervention. This study provides evidence for the effectiveness of FFT on a wide scale in a Scandinavian context, adding to previous research that supports the transportability of this intervention.     

Predicting Patterns of Regulatory Behavior in the Still‐Face Paradigm at 3 Months

The current study addressed two aims: (1) to describe different patterns of infant regulatory behavior during the Face‐to‐Face Still‐Face (FFSF) paradigm at 3 months of age and (2) to identify specific, independent predictors of these patterns from an a priori set of demographic, infant (e.g., temperament), and maternal (e.g., sensitivity) variables. Analyses were based on data collected for 121 mother–infant dyads assessed longitudinally in the newborn period and again at 3 months. In the newborn period, infants’ neurobehavior was evaluated using the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (NBAS) and mothers reported on their caregiving confidence and their newborns’ irritability and alertness. At 3 months, mothers reported on their infant's temperament, and mother–infant interactions were videotaped during free play and the FFSF. Three patterns of infant regulatory behavior were observed. The most common was a Social‐Positive Oriented Pattern, followed by a Distressed‐Inconsolable Pattern, and a Self‐Comfort Oriented Pattern. Results of multinomial logistic regression indicated that categorical assignment was not associated with demographic or infant characteristics, but rather with dyadic regulatory processes in which maternal reparatory sensitivity played a crucial role.     

The Career Development Quarterly: A 22‐Year Publication Pattern Metastudy

Patterns of articles published in The Career Development Quarterly (CDQ) from 1990 to 2011 were reviewed in this metastudy. Author characteristics (e.g., gender, employment setting, nation of domicile) and article characteristics (e.g., topic, type, design, sample, sample size, participant type, statistical procedures and sophistication) were described and analyzed for trends over time. Significant changes were noted in increased proportions of female authors, international contributors, research articles, more sophisticated research designs, and decreased numbers of practitioner‐authors. These trends highlight a robust journal that continues to evolve to address changing career development and counseling challenges.     

Linguistic and developmental influences on superordinate facial configuration categorization in infancy

Humans perceive emotions in terms of categories, such as “happiness,” “sadness,” and “anger.” To learn these complex conceptual emotion categories, humans must first be able to perceive regularities in expressive behaviors (e.g., facial configurations) across individuals. Recent research suggests that infants spontaneously form “basic-level” categories of facial configurations (e.g., happy vs. fear), but not “superordinate” categories of facial configurations (e.g., positive vs. negative). The current studies further explore how infant age and language impact superordinate categorization of facial configurations associated with different negative emotions. Across all experiments, infants were habituated to one person displaying facial configurations associated with anger and disgust. While 10-month-olds formed a category of person identity (Experiment 1), 14-month-olds formed a category that included negative facial configurations displayed by the same person (Experiment 2). However, neither age formed the hypothesized superordinate category of negative valence. When a verbal label (“toma”) was added to each of the habituation events (Experiment 3), 10-month-olds formed a category similar to 14-month-olds in Experiment 2. These findings intersect a larger conversation about the nature and development of children's emotion categories and highlight the importance of considering developmental processes, such as language learning and attentional/memory development, in the design and interpretation of infant categorization studies.     

Trends in the Research Productivity of Newly Hired Assistant Professors at Research Departments from 2007 to 2012

Has the sociology job market for assistant professors at research universities become more competitive in recent years? One approach to addressing this question is to consider the research productivity of new hires. This study reports on trends in research productivity and the proportion of hires that are ABDs from 2007 to 2012 using data collected from the CVs of 334 assistant professors employed at the top 98 sociology departments. The analysis reveals a substantial increase in the median number of publications, median number of peer-reviewed publications, and the median number of first- or sole-authored peer-reviewed publications over the past 6 years among newly hired professors. This is in part due to a decrease in the proportion of assistant professors hired out of graduate school (i.e., ABDs) and the fact that ABDs have fewer publications on average than non-ABDs. The article concludes with a consideration of the mechanisms that might underlie these trends and notes important limitations concerning selectivity that pertain to the analysis.     

Risk factors for attrition from an evidence-based parenting program: Findings from the Netherlands

Parent management training programs for the treatment of childhood conduct problems are increasingly being transported from their country of origin to international settings. Family interactions, however, may be influenced by different cultural expectations and children's mental health problems may be addressed within different systems. Demonstrating reductions in symptoms within the new population is insufficient to support the wide-scale transport of a treatment model. Implementation outcomes such as the rates of treatment retention and factors related to treatment attrition must also be considered. We explored predictors of attrition in families from the Netherlands referred to the evidence-based parenting program Parent–Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT). Participants included 40 children with conduct problems (2–7 years; 68% boys) and their caregivers. Attrition (40%) was somewhat lower than findings with similar community samples in the US. Significant predictors of attrition were child age and maternal levels of internalizing symptoms. Low parental demandingness and high child compliance before start of treatment were related to early attrition within twelve treatment sessions. Meeting the needs of families at risk for attrition is an important goal for parent management training programs within and outside the US if families in need of services are to benefit from them.     

Posttraumatic symptoms following a campus shooting: the role of psychosocial resource loss

Conservation of resources (COR) theory has proven a useful framework for understanding posttrauma adjustment. A key tenet of this theory is the centrality of resource loss in determining adjustment. However, COR theory research has often been limited by retrospective research design, a focus on material loss (e.g., one's home), and a lack of attention to other adjustment predictors. This study examined whether psychosocial resource loss prospectively predicted PTSD symptomatology both immediately and 8 months following a campus shooting in a sample of college women (n = 691). Results supported that resource loss predicted symptomatology, even after controlling for other predictors, including prior trauma, psychological distress, initial PTSD symptomatology, and shooting exposure. Implications of the results for research and intervention following mass trauma are discussed.     

Predictors of treatment attrition and treatment length in Parent‐Child Interaction Therapy in Taiwanese families

Parent–Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) has been used successfully in the United States and in other countries around the world, but its use in Asian countries has been more limited. The present study is the first of its kind to examine the predictors of treatment attrition and length in a sample of Taiwanese caregivers and their children. It is also the first to examine PCIT outcomes in Taiwanese families. Maladaptive personality characteristics of the caregiver were the best predictor of attrition, followed by single-parent, removal of the child from the home, and lower levels of caregiver education. Treatment length was predicted by child minority status and parent–child interactions (i.e., parent commands and negative parent talk). In terms of outcomes, statistically significant treatment changes were noted for all treatment outcome variables at post-treatment and at 3-month follow-up. These findings suggest that PCIT is a promising intervention for this population. The predictors of treatment attrition and length can be used when Taiwanese caregiver–child dyads present for services so that additional assistance can be provided prior to or during treatment to increase adherence to the recommended number of treatment sessions for maximal impact. Future studies may replicate the present study with a larger clinical sample to examine the long-term effects of PCIT and to include a no-treatment control condition to afford a more robust empirical evaluation.     

Processes of Religious and Spiritual Influence in Adolescence: A Systematic Review of 30 Years of Research

This is a systematic review of 30 years (1988‐2017) of empirical research on processes of religious/spiritual influence in adolescence. We followed a multi‐step process that resulted in 241 studies organized according to eight research questions and the corresponding methods and analyses typically used to address them. We coded these studies based on the dimensions of religiosity/spirituality and the youth outcomes involved. In some cases (quantitative studies of mediation and moderation, as well as qualitative studies) we also coded a third process variable. Results of the coding process revealed a number of interesting patterns. First, religiosity/spirituality is generally adaptive for adolescents, protecting them from negative outcomes (e.g., risk behaviors and mental illness), and promoting positive youth development and flourishing. Nevertheless, in some contexts, religiosity/spirituality may be at least partially maladaptive. Second, there is some evidence, from experimental and longitudinal studies, that relations between religiosity/spirituality and adaptive outcomes are causal. Third, there are numerous complex and dynamic processes by which religiosity/spirituality relate to youth outcomes. In terms of mediation studies, the most salient mediating processes seem to involve religiosity/spirituality dimensions, peers, values/attitudes, and social control/norms. Fourth, religiosity/spirituality is multidimensional, involving various interwoven facets at the individual and ecological levels. Private or personal aspects of religiosity/spirituality (e.g., religious/spiritual importance) tend to be more salient predictors of outcomes than public aspects of religiosity/spirituality (e.g., religious worship service attendance). The results of this systematic review point to promising directions for future research. First, more research is needed studying a broader range of dimensions of religiosity/spirituality, processes of influence, and outcomes. In terms of religiosity/spirituality, much of the prior work has focused on overall religiosity/spirituality, and religious/spiritual behaviors (e.g., worship service attendance). In terms of outcomes, the emphasis has been on religiosity/spirituality protecting against maladaptive outcomes (e.g., substance use). Second, more research is needed examining the role of culture, and using more rigorous methods (e.g., experience sampling, experimental design, longitudinal design, or mixed methods). This systematic review provides a detailed analysis of what is known regarding processes of religious/spiritual influence in the lives of adolescents, and hopefully better positions researchers to move the field forward.     

Assessing Speech Discrimination in Individual Infants

Assessing speech discrimination skills in individual infants from clinical populations (e.g., infants with hearing impairment) has important diagnostic value. However, most infant speech discrimination paradigms have been designed to test group effects rather than individual differences. Other procedures suffer from high attrition rates. In this study, we developed 4 variants of the Visual Habituation Procedure (VHP) and assessed their robustness in detecting individual 9‐month‐old infants' ability to discriminate highly contrastive nonwords. In each variant, infants were first habituated to audiovisual repetitions of a nonword (seepug) before entering the test phase. The test phase in Experiment 1 (extended variant) consisted of 7 old trials (seepug) and 7 novel trials (boodup) in alternating order. In Experiment 2, we tested 3 novel variants that incorporated methodological features of other behavioral paradigms. For the oddity variant, only 4 novel trials and 10 old trials were used. The stimulus alternation variant was identical to the extended variant except that novel trials were replaced with “alternating” trials—trials that contained repetitions of both the old and novel nonwords. The hybrid variant incorporated elements from both the oddity and the stimulus alternation variants. The hybrid variant proved to be the most successful in detecting statistically significant discrimination in individual infants (8 out of 10), suggesting that both the oddity and the stimulus alternation features contribute to providing a robust methodology for assessing discrimination in individual infants. In Experiment 3, we found that the hybrid variant had good test‐retest reliability. Implications of these results for future infant speech perception work with clinical populations are discussed.     

Graduate Training and Initial Job Placement*

This study examines the extent to which professional credentials accrued during graduate school are related to postgraduate employment. The undergraduate and graduate records, demographic characteristics, and initial job placements of 711 Ph.D. recipients from the University of California, Santa Barbara, are analyzed. We find that several aspects of graduate training (e.g., holding research assistantships) have greater influence on the initial placement of women than men. Further, coauthored publications with the mentor influence the initial placement of men and women somewhat differently. Given the importance of initial placement in determining career productivity (e.g., Long and McGinnis, 1981; Reskin, 1978). these differences may have considerable impact on professional life chances.     

Personalization of Mail Surveys for General Public and Populations with a Group Identity: Results from Nine Studies*

Abstract The effect of personalization on mail survey response rates was examined in nine studies that included 17 comparisons under several research conditions. A study of this variable across multiple experiments in five agricultural experiment stations was undertaken because of conflicting results from previous research and from concern that the effectiveness of personalization might have decreased over time. Results show that, while response to general public surveys appeared to increase modestly across all treatment groups, there was no positive effect for populations in which a group identity (e.g., Dear Oregon Gardner or Dear ATV Owner) is employed to address respondents in cover letters. Personalization appears to remain useful for improving response in surveys of the general public.     

Neighborhood Association Participation and Formal Volunteering in Japan

We examine the effect of participation in neighborhood association (NHA) activities on volunteering using the 2010 Japanese General Social Survey data. We find that controlling for established predictors of formal volunteering such as demographic and socioeconomic variables, NHA association participation, either operationalized as a dichotomous or interval variable, positively predicts volunteering. Moreover, some of the established predictors of volunteering (e.g., marital status and associational membership) are useful in predicting NHA participation. Our results indicate a complementary relationship between volunteering and NHA participation. We discuss implications of our study for future research on community volunteering in Japan and elsewhere.     

Infants’ Visual Attention to Baby DVDs as a Function of Program Pacing

This study examined the effects of program pacing, defined as the rate of scene and character change per minute, on infants’ visual attention to video presentations. Seventy‐two infants (twenty‐four 6‐month‐olds, twenty‐four 9‐month‐olds, twenty‐four 12‐month‐olds) were exposed to one of two sets of high‐ and low‐paced commercial infant DVDs. Each DVD was approximately 5‐min long, and the order the DVDs were viewed was counterbalanced for pace. Attention was higher during rapidly than slowly paced DVDs, particularly for the 6‐ and 9‐month‐old infants. These results support previous research documenting that attention is initially controlled by exogenous qualities (e.g., rapid pace), but with development and experience becomes more influenced by endogenous factors.     

Your Eyes Say “No,” But Your Heart Says “Yes”: Behavioral and Psychophysiological Indices in Infant Quantitative Processing

Behavioral indices (e.g., infant looking) are predominantly used in studies of infant cognition, but psychophysiological measures have been increasingly integrated into common infant paradigms. The current study reports a result in which behavioral measures and physiological measures were both incorporated in a task designed to study infant number discrimination. Seven‐month‐old infants were habituated to several sets of stimuli varying in object type, but of a constant numerical value (either two or three items). Although looking time to each of the test trials revealed no differences, differences in heart rate defined measures of attention revealed infants’ ability to discriminate number. These findings imply that the inclusion of indices other than behavioral measures should become commonplace in studies of infant cognition.     

Puberty in the Last 25 Years: A Retrospective Bibliometric Analysis

Puberty research has been highly productive in the past few decades and is gaining momentum. We conducted an analysis of bibliographic data, including titles, abstracts, keywords, indexing terms, and citation data to assess the sheer numbers, audience and reach, publication types, and impact of puberty‐related publications. Findings suggest that puberty‐related publications are increasing in sheer numbers, and have reach in many fields as befits an interdisciplinary science. Puberty‐related publications typically have higher impact in terms of citations than the journal averages, among the journals that published the most studies on puberty. Limitations of the field and recommendations for researchers to improve the impact and reach of puberty‐related publications (e.g., clear conclusions in abstracts, highlighting the importance of puberty) are discussed.     

From Parts to Wholes: Mechanisms of Development in Infant Visual Object Processing

Visual object processing in infancy is often described as proceeding from an early stage in which object features are processed independently to a later stage in which relations between features are taken into account (e.g., Cohen, 1998). Here we present the Representational Acuity Hypothesis, which argues that this behavioral shift can be explained by a developmental decrease in the size of neural receptive fields in the cortical areas responsible for object representation, together with a tuning to specific object features. We evaluate this hypothesis with a connectionist model of infant perceptual categorization. The model shows a behavioral shift in featural to relational processing consistent with similar results observed in the infant categorization experiments of Younger (1985) and Younger and Cohen (1986).     

Predicting geographic transience in homeless young adults across three U.S. cities: Who are these frequent flyers and distance travelers?

ABSTRACT

Prior research reveals high rates of geographic mobility (i.e., transience) among homeless young adults (HYAs). Yet to date, little is known about predictors of different aspects of their transience as well as characteristics of the most highly transient HYAs. This study thus used the risk/resilience framework to identify predictors of three measures of HYAs’ transience (i.e., number of intercity moves, total distance traveled, and average distance traveled) as well as to identify the characteristics of the most highly transient HYAs: frequent flyers (i.e., HYAs with seven or more intercity moves), distance travelers (i.e., HYAs who have traveled average distances greater than 1,092 kilometers), and combined frequent flyers and distance travelers (i.e., HYAs with seven or more intercity moves and average travel distances greater than 1,092 kilometers). Purposive sampling was used to recruit 601 HYAs (ages 18–24) from Los Angeles, Austin, and Denver. Three Ordinary Least Squares regression models identified predictors of each facet of transience. Chi-square tests and independent t-tests were then used to identify profiles of frequent flyers and distance travelers by using the upper quartiles on the variables number of intercity moves and average distance traveled, respectively. Findings reveal similarities in the risk predictors and profiles. The resilience characteristic of self-reliance was a consistent predictor of all three measures of transience. Understanding that transience among HYAs serves both adaptive and maladaptive purposes can inform service providers in customizing interventions aimed at supporting adaptive travel to make it safer as well as preventing and reducing maladaptive travel.     

Infants Discriminate the Affective Expressions of their Peers: The Roles of Age and Familiarization Time

Research examining infants’ discrimination of affect often uses unfamiliar faces and voices of adults. Recently, research has examined infant discrimination of affect in familiar faces and voices. In much of this research, infants were habituated to the affective expressions using a “standard” 50% habituation criterion. We extend this line of research by examining infants’ discrimination of unfamiliar peers’, that is, 4‐month‐olds, dynamic, facial, and vocal affective expressions and assessing how discrimination is affected by changing the habituation criterion. In two experiments, using an infant‐controlled habituation design, we explored 3‐ and 5‐month‐olds’ discrimination of their peers’ dynamic audiovisual displays of positive and negative expressions of affect. Results of Experiment 1, using a 50% habituation criterion, revealed that 5‐month‐olds, but not 3‐month‐olds discriminated the affective expressions of their peers. In Experiment 2, we examined whether 3‐month‐olds’ lack of discrimination in Experiment 1 was a result of insufficient habituation (i.e., familiarization). Specifically, 3‐month‐olds were habituated using a 70% habituation criterion, providing them with longer familiarization time. Results revealed that using the more stringent habituation criterion, 3‐month‐olds showed longer habituation times, that is increased familiarization, and discriminated their peers’ affective expressions. Results are discussed in terms of infants’ discrimination of affect, the role of familiarization time, and limitations of the 50% habituation criterion.     

Newborns' Cries are Unique to Individuals (But Not to Language Environment)

Human neonates exhibit individually distinctive patterns of variation—sometimes called cry “signatures”—in the acoustics of their cries. For tests of group differences (e.g., age, health status, or ambient language differences), the uniqueness of cry sounds to individuals means that multiple cries from same infant cannot appropriately be treated as independent events for analysis. This approach violates the assumption of independence that underlies many statistical techniques and runs the risk of uncovering “significant” group effects that do not actually exist. Nonetheless, publications continue to appear in which multiple cries from the same infant have been treated as independent events for analysis. To demonstrate the perils, we have compared the cries of infants born into a Mandarin Chinese language environment with cries of infants born into an American English language environment. We show (1) that treating each cry sound as an independent event yields numerous “significant” group effects and (2) that these effects all but disappear when cries are treated appropriately, as “nested” within individual infants. The latter outcome is in keeping with prevailing models of neonatal cry production and casts doubt on the claim that neonates alter their cries to match features of the language spoken in their environment.