Barry S. Anton

Promoting and Protecting Youth Mental Health through Evidence-Based Prevention and Treatment.

For decades, empirically tested youth interventions have prevented dysfunction by addressing risk and ameliorated dysfunction through treatment. The authors propose linking prevention and treatment within an integrated model. The model suggests a research agenda: Identify effective programs for a broadened array of problems and disorders, examine ethnicity and culture in relation to intervention adoption and impact, clarify conditions under which programs do and do not work, identify change mechanisms that account for effects, test interventions in real-world contexts, and make tested interventions accessible and effective in community and practice settings. Connecting the science and practice of prevention and treatment will be good for science, for practice, and for children, adolescents, and their families.

A Proposal to Unite Two Different Worlds of Children's Mental Health.

615–627. President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. (2003). Achieving the promise: Transforming mental health care in America. Final report (DHHS Pub. No. SMA-03– 3832). Rockville, MD: Author. Tolan, P. H., & Dodge, K. A. (2005). Children’s mental health as a primary care and concern: A system for comprehensive support and service. American Psychologist, 60, 601–614. Weisz, J. R., Sandler, I. N., Durlak, J. A., & Anton, B. S. (2005). Promoting and protecting youth mental health through evidence-based prevention and treatment. American Psychologist, 60, 628–648.

Effects of Exercise on Dexterity

As musicians occasionally report that their dextral facility is improved by recent exercise, it was hypothesized that manual dexterity would be influenced by a task requiring exertion. Before and after exertion on the Harvard Step Test, the experimental groups (n = 25) manual dexterity was tested on a grooved peg board. The control groups (n = 40) manual dexterity was measured before and after an inactive period. In both groups learning was significantly faster with the nondominant hand than with the dominant hand. Reasons why the hypothesis was not fully supported are discussed and suggestions for research noted.

Parental Perception of Cognitive Abilities of Children with Cerebral Palsy

39 children ranging in age from 4 mo. to 9 yr. old were administered standardized intelligence tests while their parents responded to the Alpern-Boll Developmental Profile II. Analysis of IQ and the academic age scale of the Alpern-Boll profile as perceived by the childrens parents indicated that parental perceptions of intellectual functioning were highly correlated with actual ability. Results are discussed in terms of the counseling health-care professionals can provide parents.

Poggendorff illusion as a function of orientation of transversal and parallel lines.

Adult human subjects (8 male, 8 female undergraduates) with normal vision were required to judge various orientations of the Poggendorff illusion. The transversal and parallel line-segments of the illusion were manipulated to produce the orientations to be judged. Minimum illusion occurred when the transversal line-segment was oriented 90° with respect to true vertical or true horizontal. Magnitude of illusion increased as the transversal line-segment deviated from these positions. The findings suggested that there is a stability of horizontal and vertical orientations. In addition, the hypothesis that visual acuity plays a role in the perception of the Poggendorff illusion was proposed.

TRANSFER OF PERCEPTUAL LEARNING: ROLE OF TACTUAL-KINESTHETIC FEEDBACK REEXAMINED

Albino rats were pre-exposed to stimuli in an otherwise visually sparse environment, with visibility and opportunity to manipulate the forms controlled during rearing. Analysis indicated that pre-exposing animals to stimuli which provided either tactual-kinesthetic feedback or highly visible forms significantly facilitated subsequent discrimination learning. The findings question the adequacy of either an attention-getting or tactual-kinesthetic feedback to account for differences in transfer effects in studies using two- and three-dimensional forms. It is suggested that the visibility of the forms and the opportunity to inspect the forms during pre-exposure is the important variable in studies of this type.