Therapist competence refers to the extent that a given treatment is conducted in accordance with the instructions or intentions of the respective treatment manual. Despite this relatively straightforward notion, existing research on cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) processes have been unsuccessful in defining and measuring this construct. This article reviews the contemporary empirical research on therapist competence in CBT, outlines the development and psychometric evaluation of the commonly used measures of therapist adherence, and discusses how competence has been linked to treatment outcomes. The psychometric evidence for existing measures is mixed, and in particular, there has been difficulty in the demonstration of adequate interrater reliability, even among identified experts in the field. New measures of therapist competence hold promise — most notably, in the separation of therapist adherence and competence constructs. The assessment of therapist adherence, therapist competence, and the role of supervisor ratings in the clinical context are also discussed.

A focus on “positive psychology” in nonclinical populations provides an opportunity to improve psychological wellbeing for both community and clinical samples. Identification and assessment of stimuli associated with positive affect may be of particular value for promoting wellbeing. This was the purpose of the current study. Based on self-reports of 157 children (8 to 11 years), a Positive Affect Schedule for Youth (PAS-Y) was developed. This measure was subsequently psychometrically evaluated with a sample of 320 children. Demonstrating construct validity, the PAS-Y was found to factor into two scales comprising a Natural stimuli factor and a Non-natural stimuli factor. Convergent validity and divergent validity were demonstrated through significant associations with positive affect and no associations with negative affect, respectively. Internal consistency and split-half reliability analyses demonstrated good reliability for the PAS-Y. It was concluded that the PAS-Y provides a valid and reliable measure for the assessment of positive affect experiences in youth.

The present paper presents the results of a longitudinal study evaluating the effects of a universal school-based intervention for child anxiety at two developmental stages. The study involved a cohort of 733 children enrolled in grade 6 (n = 336, 45.6%) aged between 9 and 10 years, and grade 9 (n = 401, 54.4%) aged between 14 and 16 years. Participants were allocated to either a school-based cognitive-behavioural intervention or to a monitoring group, and completed standardised measures of anxiety, depression and coping style. Young people identified as “at risk” of an anxiety disorder were assessed for a clinical diagnosis with a structured diagnostic interview. Findings showed universal intervention as potentially successful in reducing symptoms of anxiety and increasing coping skills in children. Primary school children reported the greatest changes in anxiety symptoms, suggesting earlier preventive intervention was potentially more advantageous than later intervention. Developmental differences in anxiety, depression and coping strategies are discussed in addition to the implications and limitations of this study and directions for future research.

The present study examined the cognitive inhibition hypothesis (Kindt, Bierman, & Brosschot, 1997) which asserts that young children lack the ability to inhibit the processing of threat, but develop this with age. To examine this issue, high spider fearful children (N = 170) and low spider fearful children (N = 215) aged 7—11 years were tested by means of an emotional Stroop task. It was hypothesised that a processing bias for spider-related stimuli would be present in all 8- and 9-year-old children. That is, it was expected that responses to spider words would be slower compared to responses to control words. Furthermore, it was hypothesised that this processing bias would decrease with age in low fearful children, whereas it would persist in high fearful children. No support was found for these hypotheses. Instead of the predicted processing bias, data showed the reverse pattern; that is, children responded faster to spider words compared to control words. It is proposed that the reverse bias results from avoidance. More precisely, children may evade the processing of spider stimuli through fast responding.

Empirical evidence supports parental monitoring as a moderator of adolescent problem behaviours. A methodological review shows that monitoring has been measured using self-report questions based on parental knowledge of adolescent free-time use; however, inconsistencies in the definition of monitoring have created confusion. A process model of parental monitoring is proposed. This proposed model conceptualises monitoring interactions in a temporal sequence. It proposes that parental monitoring occurs in two distinct stages: before the adolescent goes out and when they return home. Parental and adolescent responses to monitoring interactions impact on future monitoring episodes. The proposed model demonstrates that a functional understanding of parent and adolescent monitoring behaviours is essential to clinical prevention and intervention.

The current study examined the effects of the “anti-monster letter” as a simple tool for reducing night-time fears in young children. One hundred and forty-two children aged 4 to 6 years were randomly assigned to either an experimental condition in which children and parents were provided with an “anti-monster letter” or a control condition in which no intervention was carried out. Results indicated that the “anti-monster letter” yielded positive effects. That is, child report data showed that night-time fears substantially decreased in the intervention condition as compared with the control condition. In parents, such positive effects could not be substantiated by standardised assessments, although some parents indicated that they considered the intervention as helpful.

Homicides are committed by a diverse array of individuals in all sectors of society for many different reasons. Any successful theory of homicide will have sufficient scope to encompass this diversity. Researchers in the fields of drunk driving and sexual offending have developed descriptive theories, using grounded theory approaches, which show promise in outlining the diversity of offence processes in these areas. This study uses a grounded theory approach to develop a descriptive multi-pathway model of the homicide process. The resulting model consists of three distinct phases and provides a fine grained description of the homicide process. A major finding is that individuals vary in terms of their goals, emotional states, degree of planning, and behaviour throughout the different phases of the model. Finally, the clinical and theoretical implications of the study are briefly discussed.

The present study examined common childhood fears in 9- to 13-year-old South-African children (N = 404) from white, coloured, and black cultural groups. Fears were assessed by means of two methods — the fear list method and the Fear Survey Schedule for Children-Revised (FSSC-R). Results showed that fear rank orders as obtained with the fear list method were quite different from those derived from the FSSC-R. Furthermore, clear differences in fear levels were found among the three cultural groups. More specifically, coloured and black South-African children displayed significantly higher fear levels than white children. Finally, differences were also found as to the content of prevalent fears in the three cultural groups. For example, common fears in coloured and black children were more frequently related to violence than in white children.

This analogue study investigated the social validity of classroom interventions designed to promote peer interactions in young children. The influences of child characteristics and diagnostic labels on social validity ratings were examined, as were the relationships among three components of social validity. Forty-two preschool teachers completed a 15-item social validity scale that yielded scores pertaining to intervention goals, procedures and effects. Participants rated three types of intervention, which varied according to individuals targeted and intensity of programming procedures, with reference to one of three case descriptions of children with social interaction problems. Half the participants were provided with the child's diagnostic label. Results indicated that social validity is affected by interactions between intervention methods and child characteristics. The inclusion of diagnostic labels in the case descriptions had no effect on social validity ratings. Strong positive relationships were found among the components of social validity. Implications for the use of empirically validated interventions in inclusive preschools are discussed.

The present study examined processing bias in children suffering from anxiety disorders. Processing bias was assessed using of the emotional Stroop task in clinically referred children with separation anxiety disorder (SAD), social phobia (SP), and/or generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) and normal controls. The aims of the present study were twofold: (a) to test whether clinically anxious children show a bias towards threat stimuli, and (b) to examine whether this bias is domain-specific. No evidence was obtained for either an anxiety-related bias towards threat, or a domain-specificity effect. Clearly, these findings diverge markedly from adult studies and stress the importance of further research on anxiety-related information processing in children.

In 2001 we evaluated a universal prevention trial of anxiety during childhood, and also examined the effects of the program on levels of depression. Participants were 594 children aged 10—13 years from seven schools in Brisbane, Australia, who were randomly assigned to an intervention or control group on a school-by-school basis. The intervention was based on the group CBT program FRIENDS (Barrett, Lowry-Webster & Holmes, 1999a, 1999b, 1999c). Results were examined universally (for all children) and for children who scored above the clinical cut-off for anxiety at pre-test. At 12-month follow-up, intervention gains were maintained, as measured by self-reports and diagnostic interviews. Eighty-five per cent of children in the intervention group who were scoring above the clinical cut-off for anxiety and depression were diagnosis free in the intervention condition, compared to only 31.2% of children in the control group. Implications of these findings are examined, alongside limitations and directions for future research.

The present study examined the relationship between anxiety and depression, on the one hand, and reduced evidence for danger (RED) bias and other threat perception abnormalities, on the other hand. A nonclinical sample of school children (N = 138) completed a brief measure of childhood anxiety and depression symptoms and were then exposed to a series of pictures taken from projective tests. Results showed that (a) anxiety was accompanied by RED bias and other threat perception abnormalities, (b) depression was less convincingly associated with such cognitive distortions, and (c) anxiety-related threat perception abnormalities were not merely the result of a stronger tendency to give affirmative responses. The role of threat perception abnormalities in the pathogenesis of childhood anxiety as well as the clinical implications of these cognitive phenomena are briefly discussed.

Although the content of sexual fantasy has been extensively researched, very little contemporary research has investigated the function of sexual fantasy within the context of offending. In this study, a qualitative analysis was used to develop a descriptive model of the phenomena of sexual fantasy during the offence process. Twenty-four adult males convicted of sexual offences provided detailed retrospective descriptions of their thoughts, emotions and behaviours before, during and after their offences. A data-driven approach to model development (grounded theory) was undertaken to analyse the interview transcripts. A preliminary model was developed to elucidate the function of sexual fantasy in the process of sexual offending, as well as the physiological and psychological variables associated with it. The sexual fantasy function model (SFFM) comprises four categories that describe the various functions of sexual fantasy in the offence process. These categories are affect regulation, sexual arousal, coping, and modelling. The strengths of the SFFM are discussed and its clinical implications are reviewed. Finally, the limitations of the study are presented, and future research directions discussed.

Depression is a highly complex mental disorder that for many years was believed to be absent in children and adolescents. It is now accepted that depression not only exists in this age group, but also is a major mental health problem (Weller & Weller, 2000a). Research suggests that the prevalence of depression in Australian children and adolescents is around 14% (Boyd, Kostanski, Gullone, Ollendick, & Shek, 2000). As depression appears to be highly prevalent, it is essential that efficacious treatments are identified, and that effective treatment strategies are established that best alleviate depressive symptoms in children and adolescents. In light of this need, this article details the criteria used to identify depression in children and adolescents, and examines the available evidence for the use of pharmacological and psychotherapeutic approaches in the treatment of depression in children and adolescents.

This paper analyses the contribution of behaviourally-oriented psychologists to the field of rehabilitation. Following a brief description of the prominent contribution of behavioural psychology in the period 1950—1970, an analysis of the contents of four contemporary North American behaviour therapy and rehabilitation journals suggests that there is currently little behaviourally-oriented rehabilitation research being published, even though rehabilitation settings in North America have provided the most positions of employment for psychologists over the recent past. It is concluded that, locally, Australian behavioural psychologists could make a valuable contribution to the nation's public health effort by increasing their prominence as researchers and practitioners within the field of rehabilitation.

The present study investigated whether children with high symptom levels of either social phobia (SP), separation anxiety disorder (SAD), or generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) are characterised by a specific set of dysfunctional interpretations that are consistent with the cognitive model of their specific fear (“content-specificity of interpretations”). It was also examined whether such cognitive bias is predominantly activated in those ambiguous situations that are relevant for the pertinent fear (“content-specificity of situations”). Children high on symptoms of SP, SAD, and GAD and low-anxious control children were exposed to stories describing ambiguous situations and asked to give their interpretations and action plans. Results showed that high-anxious children displayed a negative cognitive bias compared to control children, but did not differ from controls with respect to the action plans given. Some evidence was found for the content-specificity of this cognitive bias. That is, consistent with the hypothesis of content-specificity of interpretations, children high on SAD reported more interpretations consistent with the content of their fear than children high on SP and GAD. Further, children high on SP and SAD predominantly displayed a negative cognitive bias in response to respectively social and separation situations. Children high on GAD did not show content-specificity for interpretations or situations. The theoretical implications of these findings are briefly discussed.

This study investigates whether hyperaccessibility occurs for supraliminally or subliminally presented sweets-related stimuli after prior suppression of thoughts about sweets. Thirty-three students (all female; 18—25 years old) participated in the experiment. In the first phase, half of the experimental group was instructed to suppress all sweets-related thoughts. The other participants were given control instructions. In the second phase, as part of a modified Stroop task, participants were asked to state the colour of a stimulus as quickly as possible. This stimulus could be presented either subliminally or supraliminally. In both conditions, neutral control words as well as sweets words were used. It was found that the participants in the suppression group, compared to those in the control group, showed attentional bias for the sweet-related suppressed thoughts, but that this effect was determined by the reaction times of subliminally presented sweets words. No differences were found for the control words. In addition, the study explored whether there was a relationship between thought suppression and dietary restraint attitudes. The link to dietary behaviour, however, remains unclear.

This paper presents a pilot study of a brief, group-based, cognitive-behavioural intervention for anxiety-disordered children. Five children (aged 7 to 13 years) diagnosed with a clinically significant anxiety disorder were treated with a recently developed 6-session, child-focused, cognitive-behavioural intervention that was evaluated using multiple measures (including structured diagnostic interview, self-report questionnaires and behaviour rating scales completed by parents) over four follow-up occasions (post-treatment, 3-month follow-up, 6-month follow-up and 12-month follow-up). This trial aimed to (a) evaluate the conclusion suggested by the research of Cobham, Dadds, and Spence (1998) that anxious children with non-anxious parents require a child-focused intervention only in order to demonstrate sustained clinical gains; and (b) to evaluate a new and more cost-effective child-focused cognitive-behavioural intervention. Unfortunately, the return rate of the questionnaires was poor, rendering this data source of questionable value. However, diagnostic interviews (traditionally the gold standard in terms of outcome in this research area) were completed for all children at all follow-up points. Changes in diagnostic status indicated that meaningful treatment-related gains had been achieved and were maintained over the full follow-up period. The results would thus seem to support the principle of participant-intervention matching proposed by Cobham et al. (1998), as well as the utility of the more brief intervention evaluated.