Is an attenuated physiological response to family conflict, seen in some youth exposed to early adversity, protective or problematic? A longitudinal study including 54 youth (average age 15.2 years) found that those with higher cumulative family aggression exposure showed lower cortisol output during a laboratory-based conflict discussion with…

Predictions of family therapy outcome consistently vary depending on which client rates the alliance. We used the actor-partner interdependence model (Kenny, Kashy, & Cook, 2006) to test the interdependence of parents' and adolescents' ratings of alliance, session depth/value, and improvement-so-far after Sessions 3, 6, and 9. Initial analyses…

Objective: The purpose of this study was to identify common and unique risk factors for intimate partner violence (IPV) among young adults in relationships. Guided by two models of IPV, the same set of risk factors was used to examine outcomes of unidirectional (perpetration or victimization) and bidirectional (reciprocal) IPV separately for males…

Aim: This study investigated prediction of separate cognitive abilities at the age of 5 years by cognitive development at the ages of both 2 and 3 years, and the agreement between these measurements, in very preterm children. Methods: Preterm children (n=102; 44 males; 58 females) with a gestational age less than 30 weeks and/or birthweight less…

Introduction: Process research in psychotherapy is important to understand how treatment works. The National Institute of Clinical Excellence guidelines suggest that in methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) for opioid dependence, drug key-working should be based on cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) principles. This article reports the findings…

The contributions of mothers' and children's oral language to children's school readiness were longitudinally examined among 75 low-income mothers and children. When children were 36 months, mothers' and children's lexical diversity, mothers' wh-questions, and children's PPVT-III scores were assessed from play interactions. At pre-kindergarten,…

According to Bayesian theories in psychology and neuroscience, minds and brains are (near) optimal in solving a wide range of tasks. We challenge this view and argue that more traditional, non-Bayesian approaches are more promising. We make 3 main arguments. First, we show that the empirical evidence for Bayesian theories in psychology is weak.…

Research Findings: A statewide study of preschool classroom quality was conducted using 3 distinct classroom observation measures in order to inform a statewide quality rating system. Findings suggested that Tennessee preschool classrooms were approaching "good" quality on the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised (ECERS-R)…

Using a framework of assessment literacy that included teachers' view of learning, knowledge of assessment tools, and knowledge of assessment interpretation and action taking, this study explored the assessment literacy of five experienced middle school teachers. Multiple sources of data were: teachers' predictions about students' ideas, students'…

Background: Rumination and anxiety sensitivity are posited cognitive vulnerabilities in the development and/or maintenance of depression and anxiety and have only been examined separately in youth. Objective: We examined the relation between rumination and anxiety sensitivity in girls, after controlling for other girl, maternal, and parenting…

Current estimates suggest that by 2015, 60% of college students will be women, a change since 1970 when 59% were men. We investigated family dynamics that might explain the growing gender gap in college attendance, focusing on an ethnically diverse sample of 522 mixed sex sibling dyads from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. We…

Fifty-nine 6- to 9-year-old children evaluated three discipline strategies (reasoning, verbal power assertion, acknowledgment of feelings), and mothers were asked to predict their children's evaluations. Maternal knowledge scores were derived. Mothers were less accurate at predicting their children's perceptions of discipline when the misdeed in…

The whole-school approach to bullying prevention is predicated on the assumption that bullying is a systemic problem, and, by implication, that intervention must be directed at the entire school context rather than just at individual bullies and victims. Unfortunately, recent meta-analyses that have looked at various bullying programs from many…

As a cognitive-motivational construct, self-efficacy has been researched extensively and has involved two important lines of inquiries, namely the impact of sources of information on self-efficacy and the predictive effect of self-efficacy on learning outcomes. We proposed and tested the relations between the four major sources of information…

Children's home and school are the most influential contexts in which learning and development occur, especially during early childhood. This paper builds on Bronfenbrenner's ecological theory and Epstein's theory of overlapping spheres of influence to examine school and family connections and their relationships to family involvement and…