Examines the convergence of 6 measures of aggression in a group of 43 children and adolescents with disruptive behavior disorders. The results suggest that measurement of clinically salient physical aggression requires multiple informant sources and that the Child Behavior Checklist and Iowa Conners Aggression Factor are assessing dimensions other…

Discusses distinguishing and overlapping features of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and conduct disorder. Notes that conclusions regarding comorbidity, treatment efficacy, and long-term outcome can be influenced by several factors, including diagnostic procedures and sample characteristics. Sees need to distinguish between referred and…

Behavior-disordered students (n=18) were trained to apply general self-management strategies to affect improvement in performance on independent mathematics calculation practice sheets. Compared student performance under two separate conditions, baseline and self-management. Based on weekly mean percentage of correct responses to daily mathematics…

This introduction to a special issue on postmodernism and behavior disorders discusses problems with the definition of postmodernism, including the trend for people to label whatever they wish as postmodern, the inability to separate postmodern from the modern, and the subjectivity of defining which ideas are about "reality" or "truth." (CR)

Twenty adolescents who had made suicide attempts are compared with 20 nonpsychiatric subjects on measures of problem solving, stress, and coping. Findings support a transactional model of adolescent suicidal behavior whereby inaccuracies in the appraisal of problem solving while under high stress lead to a reduction in the use of adaptive coping…

Extensive experience with the diagnosis of childhood-onset schizophrenia indicates a high rate of false positives. Most mislabeled patients have chronic disabling, affective, or behavioral disorders. The authors report the cases of three children who passed stringent initial childhood-onset schizophrenia "screens" but had no chronic psychotic…

Objective: To present data from a general infant psychiatry clinic, including range and frequency of presenting symptoms, relationship between symptoms and diagnoses, and comparison of two diagnostic systems, DSM-IV and Diagnostic Classification of Mental Health and Developmental Disorders of Infancy and Early Childhood (DC: 0-3). Method: A…

A fundamental problem that organisms face in a changing environment is how to regulate dynamically the balance between stable maintenance and flexible switching of goals and cognitive sets. The authors show that positive affect plays an important role in the regulation of this stability-flexibility balance. In a cognitive set-switching paradigm,…

Using a quasi-experimental design, this study examined longitudinal outcomes for families previously enrolled in a study of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), a treatment program for young children with disruptive behavior disorders. Comparisons were made between 23 families who completed treatment and 23 families who dropped out of the…

This article considers potential roles of orbital frontal cortex in the modulation of antisocial behavior. Two forms of aggression are distinguished: reactive aggression elicited in response to frustration/threat and goal directed, instrumental aggression. It is suggested that orbital frontal cortex is directly involved in the modulation of…

Current legislation requires school personnel to identify indicators of quality instruction for all students--including students with emotional and behavioral disorders (E/BD). While competency standards provide a measure of highly qualified teachers, questions remain whether or not there are inherent differences in what is expected by teachers…

Mode Deactivation Therapy (MDT) has been shown to be an effective treatment for a variety of adolescent disorders including emotional dysregulation, behavioral dysregulation, physical aggression, sexual aggression, and many harmful symptoms of anxiety and traumatic stress. MDT Family Therapy has been effective in reducing family disharmony in case…

Teaching mathematics to students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) is one of the most challenging tasks educators face today. Students with EBD are reported to have the most dismal outcomes of any other group of students with disabilities including the lowest grades, the most failing grades, higher retention rates, the highest dropout…

When we attend to other people in pain, the neural circuits underpinning the processing of first-hand experience of pain are activated in the observer. This basic somatic sensorimotor resonance plays a critical role in the primitive building block of empathy and moral reasoning that relies on the sharing of others' distress. However, the…

Despite important clinical and nosological implications, the comorbidity of oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) has received little attention. A clinic-based sample of 243 boys (ages 6-10 years), their parents, and teachers participated in an evaluation that involved assessments of behavioral, academic, and…