The suggestion of Krueger (1973) and others that wholistic processes underlie certain perceptual judgments is taken up in this paper. It is argued that properties such as bilateral symmetry can have a "diagnostic" significance for visual matching tasks. Diagnosticity means that if the property is present the appropriate response to a stimulus could theoretically 'be determined without any other analysis of the stimulus. Experiments 1 and 2 indicate that symmetry is exploited as a diagnostic property for the simultaneous same-different judgment. Displays that show the diagnostic form produce short reaction times. These experiments also show that the diagnosticity effect can be demonstrated independent of potentially confounding factors such as simplicity or redundancy. Experiments 3, 4, and 5 discount further confounding factors and also show that other properties, notably parallelism and colinearity of stimulus elements, can also be exploited as diagnostics in the simultaneous matching task. Diagnostics can have a structural or relational form. Diagnostic features are viewed as two-place structural predicates. Whether these diagnostics always have the same underlying form or not, the need for some representation of structure is a prerequisite for understanding even these simple recognition phenomena.When pairs of letters of the alphabet are simultaneously presented to an observer the time taken to judge the items the same is often less than the time taken to judge them different (see Nickerson, 1972, for a review). This finding has led a number of authors (e.g., Bamber, 1969;Krueger, 1973) to suggest that a wholistic analysis of the stimuli underlies the same judgment whereas an analytic process underlies the different judgment. The reasoning behind the two-process theory of character comparison is that if an analytic process were always used (in which stimulus elements were separately selected and compared) one would expect same judgments to be slower
Early identification of disease and intervention when necessary are a cornerstone of contemporary medical practice. This approach has been successful in reducing suffering associated with the progression of unchecked medical problems to full-blown disease. Many healthcare systems, in turn, support this approach via routine checkups. The same cannot be said for mental health care. This article evaluates a school-based mental health checkup approach in the context of anxiety and depression in children and adolescents. We outline how checkups can identify children with emotional disorders, along with risk factors that, if left unchecked, may contribute to eventual onset. We conclude by discussing the benefits and limitations of this approach.
With training, school counselors are effective treatment providers to adolescents with social anxiety, yielding benefits comparable to those obtained by specialized psychologists. Questions remain regarding means to maintain counselors' practice standards without external support.
SUMMARY
School-based empirically supported treatments for anxiety disorders are a promising avenue for providing necessary intervention to distressed youth who would otherwise never receive treatment. Sustaining such programs in school settings should be viewed as a multiple-stage process, from integration of the program into the institution and maintenance of the intervention to responding to institutional change and ownership of the program by the school.51 Given the scarce resources available to schools, additional research on embedding programs into the school culture and maximizing existing resources is essential to enhancing the sustainability of school-based interventions for anxiety disorders and reaching youth in need.
The high prevalence and early onset of anxiety disorders have inspired innovative prevention efforts targeting young at-risk children. With parent–child prevention models showing success for older children and adolescents, the goal of this study was to evaluate a parent–child indicated preventive intervention for preschoolers with mild to moderate anxiety symptoms. Sixteen children (ages 3–5) and at least one of their parents participated in Strengthening Early Emotional Development (SEED), a new 10-week intervention with concurrent groups for parents and children. Outcome measures included clinician-rated and parent-rated assessments of anxiety symptoms, as well as measures of emotion knowledge, parent anxiety, and parental attitudes about children’s anxiety. Participation in SEED was associated with reduced child anxiety symptoms and improved emotion understanding skills. Parents reported decreases in their own anxiety, along with attitudes reflecting enhanced confidence in their children’s ability to cope with anxiety. Reductions in child and parent anxiety were maintained at 3-month follow-up. Findings suggest that a parent–child cognitive-behavioral preventive intervention may hold promise for young children with mild to moderate anxiety. Improvements in parent anxiety and parental attitudes may support the utility of intervening with parents. Fostering increased willingness to encourage their children to engage in new and anxiety-provoking situations may help promote continued mastery of new skills and successful coping with anxiety.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.