William A. Griffin

The family bereavement program: efficacy evaluation of a theory-based prevention program for parentally bereaved children and adolescents.

This article presents an experimental evaluation of the Family Bereavement Program (FBP), a 2-component group intervention for parentally bereaved children ages 8-16. The program involved separate groups for caregivers, adolescents, and children, which were designed to change potentially modifiable risk and protective factors for bereaved children. The evaluation involved random assignment of 156 families (244 children and adolescents) to the FBP or a self-study condition. Families participated in assessments at pretest, posttest, and 11-month follow-up. Results indicated that the FBP led to improved parenting, coping, and caregiver mental health and to reductions in stressful events at posttest. At follow-up, the FBP led to reduced internalizing and externalizing problems, but only for girls and those who had higher problem scores at baseline.

An experimental evaluation of theory-based mother and mother–child programs for children of divorce.

This study evaluated the efficacy of 2 theory-based preventive interventions for divorced families: a program for mothers and a dual component mother-child program. The mother program targeted mother-child relationship quality, discipline, interparental conflict, and the father-child relationship. The child program targeted active coping, avoidant coping, appraisals of divorce stressors, and mother-child relationship quality. Families with a 9- to 12-year-old child (N = 240) were randomly assigned to the mother, dual-component, or self-study program. Postintervention comparisons showed significant positive program effects of the mother program versus self-study condition on relationship quality, discipline, attitude toward father-child contact, and adjustment problems. For several outcomes, more positive effects occurred in families with poorer initial functioning. Program effects on externalizing problems were maintained at 6-month follow-up. A few additive effects of the dual-component program occurred for the putative mediators; none occurred for adjustment problems.

An extensible simulation environment and movement metrics for testing walking behavior in agent-based models

Abstract Human movement is a significant ingredient of many social, environmental, and technical systems, yet the importance of movement is often discounted in considering systems’ complexity. Movement is commonly abstracted in agent-based modeling (which is perhaps the methodological vehicle for modeling complex systems), despite the influence of movement upon information exchange and adaptation in a system. In particular, agent-based models of urban pedestrians often treat movement in proxy form at the expense of faithfully treating movement behavior with realistic agency. There exists little consensus about which method is appropriate for representing movement in agent-based schemes. In this paper, we examine popularly-used methods to drive movement in agent-based models, first by introducing a methodology that can flexibly handle many representations of movement at many different scales and second, introducing a suite of tools to benchmark agent movement between models and against real-world trajectory data. We find that most popular movement schemes do a relatively poor job of representing movement, but that some schemes may well be “good enough” for some applications. We also discuss potential avenues for improving the representation of movement in agent-based frameworks.

Symptom Study in Context: Effects of Marital Quality on Signs of Parkinson’s Disease during Patient-Spouse Interaction

Hypokinesia, the inability to initiate or maintain movement, represents one of the most disabling aspects of Parkinsons disease (PD), and displays intriguing moment-to-moment variability from environmental stressors. Correlates of orofacial hypokinesia (characteristics of spontaneous eye blink and speech) were coded from videotaped interactions for PD patients in maritally distressed and nondistressed dyads. Significant changes occurred only for the patients in distressed relationships on the two strongest neurophysiologic measures of orofacial hypokinesia, rate and duration of spontaneous eye blink. Further analyses suggest two possible explanations for these temporal symptom changes. Distressed spouses may exacerbate symptoms by exposing the patient to negativity. Alternately, nondistressed spouses may compensate for the demands of the interactional task by assuming a greater share of the conversation relative to the patients contribution. Results are linked to existing literature; the role of social and familial support in chronic illness is discussed.

Affect pattern recognition: Using discrete hidden Markov models to discriminate distressed from nondistressed couples

SUMMARY Self-report affect sequences generated during a conversation between spouses were used to illustrate how Hidden Markov Model (HMM) methodology can classify couples according to marital quality. This pattern recognition technique allows an investigator to characterize processes that generate observable phenomenain these data, expressed affect. I introduce the conceptual foundations and, briefly, the methodology of HMM and discuss its potential use in social and behavioral research. To illustrate the potential value of this method, I show how sequences of self-reported affect, derived in real-time during a laboratory interaction between 30 married partners, can successfully discriminate between distressed and nondistressed marital relationships

Social Interaction and Symptom Sequences: A Case Study of Orofacial Bradykinesia Exacerbation in Parkinson’s Disease During Negative Marital Interaction

Evidence is rapidly accumulating that disease symptoms are influenced by psychological factors, and most potently, by familial relationships. This case study demonstrated the detrimental influence of negative marital interaction on orofacial bradykinesia and speech productivity in a 74 year old male Parkinsons disease patient. An increase in bradykinesia symptoms followed a series of specific negative comments by the wife during a conversation; these symptoms showed partial reversal during a subsequent conversation with a lab assistant. The analytic method and data summary strategies used to determine this relationship are discussed relative to their possible utility for other disorders.

Event History Analysis of Marital and Family Interaction: A Practical Introduction

This article provides definitions, concepts, and a general description of event history analysis relative to its potential application to marital and family interaction data. It discusses the differences between continuous-time and discrete-time analysis and the differences between parametric and proportional hazards models. Finally, the article addresses data collection and analytic issues relevant to the family interaction investigator.

Exploring the Micro-Social Geography of Children’s Interactions in Preschool A Long-Term Observational Study and Analysis Using Geographic Information Technologies

The authors describe an observational and analytic methodology for recording and interpreting dynamic microprocesses that occur during social interaction, making use of space–time data collection techniques, spatial-statistical analysis, and visualization. The scheme has three investigative foci: Structure, Activity Composition, and Clustering. In each case, these are associated with either acquiring resources or using socioenvironmental features to influence social intercourse. For each point of focus, the authors provide an analytic strategy and demonstration of its usefulness, using data generated from a 2.5-year observational study of young children’s play behavior. Each tool, and its associated concepts, is used to illustrate how early socializing behavior is embedded in time and space. The results show that geography is a significant catalyst for social dynamics in young children: It provides the opportunity for novel interpretations of sociality along with a better understanding of the influence that geographical factors (location, space, place, spatial structure, spatial composition, landmarks, site) have on the evolving reciprocal interplay between individuals and groups.

A conceptual and graphical method for converging multisubject behavioral observational data into a single process indicator

Typically, in observational research, each behavior of a subject is assigned a code that represents theoretically relevant and contextually sensitive events. These discrete behavioral acts are then strung together to denote a process. With multiple interactants, the investigator has two choices: ignore subject interdependence and analyze as if the data strings are discrete, or treat the strings as interdependent and create a summary index that represents the combined codes across subjects. This article illustrates a method of combining discrete within-subjects behavioral indicators into behavior-specific domains and then conglomerating the disparate domain strings across subjects in such a way that the aggregate reflects the observed process. This aggregation is represented by a coordination index, expressed as either interactant disparity or coherence. Also, animation and visualization methods are presented that illustrate how social processes can be modeled by using either the coordination index or the separate domain values.

Using Bayesian Nonparametric Hidden Semi-Markov Models to Disentangle Affect Processes during Marital Interaction.

Sequential affect dynamics generated during the interaction of intimate dyads, such as married couples, are associated with a cascade of effects—some good and some bad—on each partner, close family members, and other social contacts. Although the effects are well documented, the probabilistic structures associated with micro-social processes connected to the varied outcomes remain enigmatic. Using extant data we developed a method of classifying and subsequently generating couple dynamics using a Hierarchical Dirichlet Process Hidden semi-Markov Model (HDP-HSMM). Our findings indicate that several key aspects of existing models of marital interaction are inadequate: affect state emissions and their durations, along with the expected variability differences between distressed and nondistressed couples are present but highly nuanced; and most surprisingly, heterogeneity among highly satisfied couples necessitate that they be divided into subgroups. We review how this unsupervised learning technique generates plausible dyadic sequences that are sensitive to relationship quality and provide a natural mechanism for computational models of behavioral and affective micro-social processes.