Teacher-Child Interaction Training: A Pilot Study With Random Assignment.

Teacher-Child Interaction Training (TCIT), adapted from Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), is a classroom-based program designed to provide teachers with behavior management skills that foster positive teacher-student relationships and to improve student behavior by creating a more constructive classroom environment. The purpose of this pilot study was to evaluate TCIT in more classrooms than previously reported in the literature, with older children than previously reported, using random assignment of classrooms to TCIT or to a no-TCIT control condition and conducting all but two sessions within the classroom to enhance feasibility. Participants included 11 kindergarten and first grade classroom teachers and their 118 students from three urban, public schools in Manhattan, with five classrooms randomly assigned to receive TCIT and six to the no-TCIT control condition. Observations of teacher skill acquisition were conducted before, during, and after TCIT for all 11 teachers, and teacher reports of student behavior were obtained at these same time points. Teacher satisfaction with TCIT was assessed following training. Results suggested that after receiving TCIT, teachers increased rates of positive attention to students' appropriate behavior, decreased rates of negative attention to misbehavior, reported significantly less distress related to student disruptive behavior, and reported high satisfaction with the training program. Our study supports the growing evidence-base suggesting that TCIT is a promising approach for training teachers in positive behavior management strategies and for improving student disruptive behavior in the classroom.

Habitual response to stress in recovering adolescent anorexic patients.

OBJECTIVE: Although previous research has investigated the stress response in acutely anorexic patients, there is currently little research addressing this response in recovering adolescent anorexic girls. Therefore, this study investigated partially and fully weight-restored anorexic adolescent girls' psychological and physiological response to a standardized stressor. METHODS: We measured the heart rate and affect of 17 adolescent recovering anorexic patients and 40 healthy age-matched controls during two conditions of the Stress Induced Speech Task (SIST): Free Association and Stress Task. Recovering patients were either partially or fully weight-restored. RESULTS: Compared to the controls, the recovering anorexic girls reported greater overall habitual psychological distress and higher levels of negative affect during the standardized stressor. However, recovering patients did not show a muted heart rate response during the stressor. Neither recovering anorexics nor controls demonstrated a correspondence between heart rate and positive or negative affect. DISCUSSION: Although the physiological stress response of recovering adolescent anorexic patients was similar to controls, the psychological response of partially and fully weight-restored anorexic adolescents appears similar to that of acutely anorexic adolescents. Treatment implications are discussed in terms of the persistence of negative affect and treatment resistance.

Personality correlates of physiological response to stress among incarcerated juveniles.

BACKGROUND: To examine the relationship between personality type and physiological response to stress among juvenile delinquents. METHODS: Delinquent males (N = 42, mean age 16.5, SD = 1) recruited from a convenience sample at local juvenile detention facility were compared to a male control sample from a local high school (N = 79; mean age 16.1, SD = 0.8). All participants completed the Weinberger Adjustment Inventory and a Stress-Inducing Speech Task during both of which heart rate was measured. RESULTS: Compared to controls, delinquent youths showed significantly lower heart rates under both free association and stress conditions (p < 0.05) and a lower rate of increase during stressful stimuli (p < 0.05). Among delinquents, those with a non-reactive personality type appeared to show consistently lower levels of physiological arousal as measured by heart rate. CONCLUSIONS: Delinquents consistently had lower overall levels of arousal as measured by heart rate. In delinquent boys, we also found a persistently low arousal group with a non-reactive psychological pattern. This combination may be a forerunner of future psychopathy or a product of the developmental trajectory that leads to and results from psychopathic behavior.

The stress response in anorexia nervosa.

Patients with eating disorders have been found to have problems with Interoceptive Awareness. This study seeks to examine this issue in an experimental paradigm. In the present study, we investigated the hypothesis that, in addition to lowering a body's autonomic stress response, a state of starvation also lowers the psychological stress response. Results indicated that those with anorexia nervosa showed a muted physiology, but they did not show a complete denial of negative emotion. No relation was seen, however, between their affective and physiological responses to a stress task, which contrasted results found for the controls.