Brenda Dawson

Cognitive problem-solving training to improve the child-care judgment of child neglectful parents

Child neglect, the failure to adequately meet a youngsters care needs, is the most frequent form of child maltreatment reported to welfare authorities. However, there have been few empirical reports of treatment outcomes for adjudicated, child neglectful parents. In the current study, an initial assessment of three neglectful parents revealed substantial deficits in cognitive problem-solving skills related to child care judgment. Treatment, consisting of modeling, shaping, practice, and feedback was used to improve each parents child care problem-solving skills in a multiple baseline design. Skill enhancement was also found for untrained (generalization) problem situations, and independent caseworker ratings of each familys functioning provided external validation of the interventions clinical impact.

Long-term smoking status of cardiac patients following symptom-specific cessation advice

Although physicians routinely advise postcardiac event patients to stop smoking, the effect of a modified advice format targeting specific health concerns has not been investigated. Also, no studies of cessation advice with cardiac patients have used biochemical verification of self-reported abstinence. The present study included 48 veterans with a history of smoking and cardiac problems; of these, 31 were smoking and 17 were abstinent at initial assessment. Alveolar carbon monoxide (COa) levels served to: (1) augment cessation advice by demonstrating smoking risks and cessation benefits specific to cardiac patients and (2) verify self-report. At 12 months followup, following cessation advice, 18% of the abstinent subjects had resumed smoking while none of the smokers had become abstinent. Those who maintained abstinence significantly increased their estimates of the contribution of smoking to their cardiac problems whereas those who continued to smoke showed no change.

Behavioral and verbal responses of unabused externalizing children to anatomically detailed doll interviews

To see if unabused children with externalizing behavior disorders display more sexual behaviors and verbalizations than other children in their interactions with anatomically detailed dolls, sixteen 3- to 6-year-olds were compared with 44 nonexternalizing controls. A five-phase structured, detailed interview, and comprehensive coding of videotapes by external raters, was completed on 17 behaviors and verbalizations. As would be expected, externalizing children exhibited more overall activity than non-externalizing children. Also, externalizing children exhibited more behavioral sexual aggression during the body inventory phase, but no other differences in sexual behaviors or verbalizations occurred. Results suggest that most normative data on AD dolls generalize to externalizing children.