Psychology Commons^™

An Evaluation Of Wayfinding Abilities In Adolescent And Young Adult Males With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Yingying Yang, Weijia Li, Dan Huang, Wei He, Yanxi Zhang, Edward Merrill

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Background

Wayfinding refers to traveling from place to place in the environment. Despite some research headway, it remains unclear whether individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) show strengths, weaknesses, or similarities in wayfinding compared with ability-matched typically developing (TD) controls.

Method

The current study tested 24 individuals with ASD, 24 mental-ability (MA) matched TD (MA-TD) controls, and 24 chronological-age (CA) matched TD (CA-TD) controls. Participants completed a route learning task and a survey learning task, both programmed in virtual environments, and a perspective taking task. Their parents completed questionnaires assessing their children’s everyday wayfinding activities and competence.

Results

Overall, CA-TD …

Spatio-Temporal Distribution Of Negative Emotions In New York City After A Natural Disaster As Seen In Social Media, Oliver Gruebner, Sarah R. Lowe, Martin Sykora, Ketan Shankardass, Sv Subramanian, Sandro Galea

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Disasters have substantial consequences for population mental health. We used Twitter to (1) extract negative emotions indicating discomfort in New York City (NYC) before, during, and after Superstorm Sandy in 2012. We further aimed to (2) identify whether pre- or peri-disaster discomfort were associated with peri- or post-disaster discomfort, respectively, and to (3) assess geographic variation in discomfort across NYC census tracts over time. Our sample consisted of 1,018,140 geo-located tweets that were analyzed with an advanced sentiment analysis called ”Extracting the Meaning Of Terse Information in a Visualization of Emotion” (EMOTIVE). We calculated discomfort rates for 2137 NYC census …

Locus Of Control And The Age Difference In Free Recall From Episodic Memory, Paul Amrhein, Judith K. Bond, Derek Hamilton

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The authors investigated the relation of locus of control (LOC) to age differences in free-recall memory performance. Older and younger participants completed P. C. Duttweiler's (1984) Internal Control Index (ICI) and subsequently performed free-recall memory tasks. Compared with the younger participants, the older participants exhibited poorer recall with more intrusions and uncorrected repetition errors as well as reduced categorical clustering. For the older participants with less internal LOC, recall proportion and item-pair associative recall clustering were lower than for the older participants with more internal LOC. By contrast, the younger participants did not exhibit any LOC effects in their recall …

Markers Of Marijuana Use Outcomes Within Adolescent Substance Abuse Group Treatment, Paul Amrhein, Brett Engle, Mark Macgowan, Eric Wagner

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Objectives: Despite their popularity, little is known about what distinguishes effective from ineffective or even iatrogenic adolescent group interventions. Methods: Audio recordings and transcripts from 19, 8—10 session, school-based treatment groups comprised of 108, substance abusing 10- to 19-year olds were analyzed. Group leader empathy was measured globally, while two new constructs, group commitment, and peer response, were measured using discourse analysis. All variables were measured at the group level. Results: Associations among these process variables were tested and supported, as were the hypothesized associations between both group member language constructs and marijuana use outcomes. Conclusions: These findings were consistent …

A Pilot Study Of Bibliotherapy To Reduce Alcohol Problems Among Patients In A Hospital Trauma Center, Paul Amrhein, Timothy Apodaca, William R. Miller, Carol R. Schermer

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Because alcohol use plays a major role in many injuries that require hospital care, there is increasing interest in developing interventions to address alcohol problems among emergency department and trauma center patients. The aim of the current study was to extend past research on brief interventions by investigating the use of a self-help manual to treat problem drinkers in a hospital trauma center. Forty injured patients who were either intoxicated at the time of injury or screened positive for harmful drinking were randomly assigned to receive either a brief assessment and a self-help booklet with no more than 5 minutes …

Manual For The Motivational Interviewing Skill Code (Misc), Paul Amrhein, William R. Miller, Theresa Moyers, Denise Ernst

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Over years of using MISC 1 we have learned much about which categories were redundant or unreliable, and also about which processes are most important to the effectiveness of MI. The MISC has also helped us to clarify the points at which skill acquisition in MI is more challenging.

Based on this experience, we have developed Version 2.0, which is intended to improve on the original MISC in reliability, efficiency, and relevance to training and clinical practice. A disadvantage of revising an instrument, of course, is that one must start over in demonstrating its reliability and validity. Although many strong …

Client Commitment Language During Motivational Interviewing Predicts Drug Use Outcomes, Paul Amrhein, William R. Miller, Carolina Yahne, Michael Palmer, Laura Fulcher

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Client language from a motivational interview (MI) and drug use outcome were investigated. Interview videotapes of 84 drug abusers were coded for frequency and strength of utterances expressing commitment, desire, ability, need, readiness, and reasons to change or maintain their habit. Cluster analysis of proportion days abstinent (PDA) revealed 3 groups: high PDA at intake and follow-up (3, 6, 9, 12 months; maintainers); low intake PDA/high follow-up PDA (changers); and low intake PDA/low to moderate follow-up PDA (stragglers). Distinct group patterns emerged for commitment strength (CS) during MI. Clients dishonest in checklist self-report exhibited CS similar to stragglers. CS for …