Faculty Bibliography

Two curricula designed to enhance the early literacy skills of 4-year-old preschool children were evaluated against a third, comparison condition. Thirty-five Head Start preschool classrooms were assigned randomly to incorporate one of two early literacy curricular approaches, Let's Begin with the Letter People (R) or Waterford Early Reading Program (R) Level 1, into their current curriculum, the High/ Scope (R) Educational Approach, or to use the High/Scope method alone. Results indicated that children in the literacy intervention classrooms demonstrated significantly stronger outcomes in the areas of emergent writing, book and print knowledge, and general reading readiness skills. Minority language status also played a significant role in outcome, regardless of intervention condition. Implications for early childhood literacy interventions, especially important for children of low-income families, are discussed.

OBJECTIVE: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV, 1994) included atypical features as an illness specifier for major depression and dysthymia. We asked whether subsequent literature supported its validity and addressed the relationship between depression with atypical features and melancholia. METHOD: Literature review focusing on studies addressing the validity of atypical depression, supplemented by the authors' previously unpublished data. RESULTS: Most studies support the discriminant validity of depression with atypical features relative to melancholia and depression having neither melancholic nor atypical features. However, studies addressing illness course suggest that criteria for depression with atypical features define a heterogeneous patient population. CONCLUSION: DSM-IV criteria for depression with atypical features define a valid, but heterogeneous disorder. Criteria including age of onset and chronicity may define a more homogeneous group that is distinct from both melancholia and other depressed patients.

Urban parents, particularly single mothers living within inner-city communities, often struggle to obtain sufficient social support for themselves and for parenting. Support for these parents is particularly important given the prevalence of risk-taking behaviors among youth in these communities, which necessitates vigilant monitoring of these youth. The current study explored from whom low-income mothers obtain social support, the influence of child externalizing on source of social support, and how social support and child behavior interrelate with parental monitoring and supervision. Contrary to expectations, parental monitoring at time 1 did not predict child externalizing at time 2, but, as expected, a significant negative association was noted at time 1 between these constructs. Higher time 1 child externalizing did predict lower time 2 maternal monitoring, suggesting frustrated efforts by mothers to monitor high externalizing children. Mothers reporting strong support networks, however, showed higher levels of monitoring, and mothers who turned to children for social support also showed a tendency to monitor more closely. Although mothers of high externalizing children reported poor support quality, mothers did not discriminate between high and low externalizing children when choosing source of social support. These findings suggest the importance of monitoring prior to child initiation into risk-taking behavior, and the possible role of children in strengthening support networks

This investigation sought to establish if anger is associated with PTSD among children and adolescents or with trauma exposure in the absence of PTSD. The State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory (STAXI) was administered to youth with PTSD (n=24), traumatized youth without PTSD (n=58), and a non-traumatized control group (n=38). In the absence of potentially confounding major comorbid disorders, the PTSD group had significantly higher scores on the STAXI State, Trait, and Angry Temperament scales. Trauma exposure in the absence of PTSD was not associated with higher anger scores.

There are limited data on the neurocognitive correlates of childhood anxiety disorders. The objective of this study was to examine whether visual and verbal memory deficits of nonemotional stimuli are (1) a shared feature of three common childhood anxiety disorders (social phobia, separation anxiety disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder) or whether these deficits are restricted to specific anxiety disorders, and (2) present in offspring who possess at least one of the following established risk factors for anxiety disorders, parental history of panic disorder (PD), or major depressive disorder (MDD). One hundred and sixty offspring, ages 9-20 years, were recruited from parents with lifetime diagnoses of PD, MDD, PD plus MDD, or neither illness. Different clinicians blindly administered semistructured diagnostic interviews to offspring and parents. Verbal and visual memory subtests of the Wide Range Assessment of Memory and Learning were administered to offspring. The results showed that offspring with ongoing social phobia demonstrated reduced visual but not verbal memory scores compared to those without social phobia when controlling for offspring IQ, separation anxiety disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder. No other offspring anxiety disorder predicted memory performance. Neither parental PD nor parental MDD was associated with offspring memory performance. These findings are relevant to understanding the phenomenology of childhood anxiety disorders and may provide insights into the neural circuits underlying these disorders

This article presents the results of a study examining correlates of urban African American youth HIV knowledge. The influence of family level factors (e.g., family communication, parental AIDS knowledge and myths regarding HIV transmission, along with family composition and family income) are examined. In addition, the current study explores the influence of racial socialization processes, specifically the influence of religious/spiritual coping, extended family caring, cultural pride reinforcement and racial awareness teaching (Stevenson, 1994; 1995; 1997) on youth HIV knowledge. Multivariate analyses revealed a significant association between youth HIV knowledge and being reared in a single parent home. Further, in every model, controlling for all types of racial socialization processes, family communication was significantly associated with youth HIV knowledge. Implications are drawn regarding the development of culturally and contextually specific HIV prevention programming for African American youth and their families

This study examines the relationship between child play-narratives and family drawings by children of violence-exposed mothers with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The Family Attachment Drawing Task (FAD-T) and MacArthur Story Stem Battery (MSSB) were administered. Of the 23 children (ages 4-7 years), 16 (70%) created drawings that were coded as being representative of insecure attachment. Attachment insecurity and disorganization of child-caregiver attachment on the FAD-T were significantly associated with trauma-related dimensions of the MSSB, but not to other factors. This study suggests that the FAD-T provides access to child mental representations, which may affect intergenerational transmission of violent trauma.