Implementing self‐management within a group counseling context: Effects on academic enabling behaviors

Self‐management interventions have been adapted to serve as targeted interventions to increase academic enabling behaviors in groups of students. However, a trade‐off exists between adapting these interventions to feasibly fit group contexts and maintaining theoretical intervention components. This study examines the use of self‐management within fourteen 40‐minute group counseling sessions delivered by school psychology personnel to increase the academic enabling behaviors of three middle school students as rated by their teachers. Results of a multiple baseline design across students revealed slight to moderate improvements in academic enabling behaviors for two of the three students. Furthermore, usability results suggested that students found the intervention to be generally acceptable, understandable, and feasible. Implications for both future research and applied practice are discussed.     

Children’s Cortisol and the Quality of Teacher–Child Relationships in Child Care

Teacher–child relationships were examined as predictors of cortisol change in preschool children. Saliva for assays was collected from one hundred and ninety‐one 4‐year‐olds (101 boys) in the mornings and afternoons on 2 days at child care, and before and after a series of challenging tasks and a teacher–child interaction session outside the classroom. Parents reported on children’s temperament, teachers and children reported on teacher–child relationship quality, and observers rated group‐level teacher insensitivity. Teacher‐reported relationship conflict predicted cortisol increases during teacher–child interaction and teacher‐reported overdependence predicted cortisol increases from morning to afternoon, even after controlling for individual teacher, child, and classroom characteristics. The findings extend earlier work by suggesting that cortisol change across the child‐care day is influenced by teacher–child relationship characteristics.     

Improving cancer caregivers’ emotion regulation and supportive message characteristics: Results of a randomized controlled expressive writing intervention*

This study tested whether a 17-day randomized controlled expressive writing (EW) intervention improved cancer caregivers’ emotion regulation ability and if improved emotion regulation predicted increases in verbal person-centered message characteristics present in caregivers’ recalled support conversations with cancer survivors. Participants (N?=?64) were spousal caregivers of hematopoietic stem cell transplant cancer survivors assigned to one of three writing conditions: traumatic disclosure (TD), benefit finding (BF), or a time-management control. Caregivers completed writings three times at one-week intervals, along with pre- and posttest reports of emotion regulation and written accounts of supportive conversations with spousal survivors. Both EW conditions (TD and BF) predicted reduced emotion regulation difficulty compared to the control condition. Cognitive, pronoun, and positive affect word usage within EWs did not predict emotion regulation improvement. However, use of negative emotion words predicted significant increases in emotion regulation difficulty across conditions. Verbal person-centeredness (VPC) message characteristics significantly increased from pre- to posttest for those assigned to the BF and control conditions. Despite change in VPC, emotion regulation did not mediate the relationship between condition assignment and message characteristic outcomes.     

Remembering me: big data,individual identity,and the psychological necessity of forgetting

Each of us has a personal narrative: a story that defines us, and one that we tell about ourselves to our inner and outer worlds. A strong sense of identity is rooted in a personal narrative that has coherence and correspondence (Conway in J Mem Lang 53:594–628, 2005): coherence in the sense that the story we tell is consistent with and supportive of our current version of ‘self’; and correspondence in the sense that the story reflects the contents of autobiographical memory and the meaning of our experiences. These goals are achieved by a reciprocal interaction of autobiographical memory and the self, in which memories consistent with the self-image are reinforced, in turn strengthening the self-image they reflect. Thus, personal narratives depend crucially on the malleable nature of autobiographical memory: a strong sense of self requires that one remember what matters, and forget what does not. Today, anyone who is active online generates a highly detailed, ever—expanding, and permanent digital biographical ‘memory’—memory that identifies where we go, what we say, who we see, and what we do in increasing detail as our physical lives become more and more enmeshed with electronic devices capable of recording our communications, online activities, movements, and even bodily functions. This paper explores the consequences of this digital record for identity, arguing that it presents a challenge to our ability to construct our own personal narratives–narratives that are central to a sense of ‘self’. In the end, the ‘right to be forgotten’ may be, above all else, a psychological necessity that is core to identity—and therefore a value that we must ensure is protected.     

Embodiment and Performance

ABSTRACT

Evidence suggests that some cognitive processes are based on sensorimotor systems in the brain (embodied cognition). The premise of this is that ‘Biological brains are first and foremost the control systems for biological bodies’. It has therefore been suggested that both online cognition (processing as we move through the world) and offline cognition (processing through reflection) might be body-based. We tested whether acting out or thinking movements relevant to a poem would therefore improve memory for the poem. Here, we discuss the results of this study in relation to embodied cognition.     

Adult Perception of Emotion Intensity in Human Infant Cries: Effects of Infant Age and Cry Acoustics

The relation between adult perception of emotion intensity in the cries of 1- and 6-month-old infants and the acoustic characteristics of the cries was examined. In the first study, adults who were inexperienced in child care rated 40 cries on 3 emotion intensity scales: anger, fear, and distress. The cries of 6-month-olds were rated as being significantly more intense. Different acoustic variables accounted for emotion intensity ratings for the 2 infant ages. Peak amplitude and noisiness of the cry predicted adult judgments of intensity ratings of 1-month-olds' cries; a measure of amplitude ratio (in 2 frequency bands) was the best predictor of intensity ratings of 6-month-olds' cries. In the second study, parents of infants rated the same cries on the same scales. They also rated the older infants' cries as being more intense. The 2 adult groups did not differ on their ratings, and a regression equation derived from one adult group predicted the other adult group's rating of the same infant age better than it predicted its own ratings for the other infant age. Infant age, and its associated acoustic features, seems to be a more important determinant of adults' perception of emotion intensity than are such adult characteristics as gender or infant-care experience.     

Epidemiology of child homicide in Jefferson County, Alabama

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to present the epidemiology of homicide among children younger than 6 years of age in Jefferson County, Alabama. This study focused on obtaining great detail on homicides and suspicious deaths occurring within a fixed population. METHODS: For purposes of this study, cases included Jefferson County deaths attributed to "homicide" or that were "undetermined" as noted in the coroner files among children younger than 6 years of age who were born and died between January 1, 1988 and December, 31, 1998. Victim and offender characteristics were obtained from the Jefferson County Coroner/Medical Examiner Office records. Environmental factors and circumstances surrounding the death were noted as well. RESULTS: The 53 study subjects were mainly female (55%), Black (69%), younger than 2 years of age (85%), had single mothers (38%), and a history of abuse (53%). Offenders were more likely to be male (64%), Black (73%), and a parent of the victim (53%). Homicides primarily resulted from an angry impulse (61%), with hands the most common weapon (61%). CONCLUSIONS: The majority of deaths in this study occurred among children younger than age 2, with a high proportion of fatalities among Black children of unmarried mothers. The offender most often knew the victim, with half of all homicides and two-thirds of all infant homicides involving a parent. More than half of the homicides resulted from an angry impulse, while the most common scenario for deaths with undetermined intent involved the caretaker finding the child unresponsive.     

Image quality in electronic journals: A case study of Elsevier geology titles

This study's purpose was to establish the image quality of photographs and figures in online journals verses the print format of five Elsevier titles. The images were evaluated on a point scale, taking three issues out of each journal every five years from 1970 to 2000. The study discovered that there is a significant loss of content in the online photographs from 1970 to 1995. The data found in this study provide important discussion points when considering the purchase of electronic journal backfiles.     

What are the chances? Evaluating risk and benefit information in consumer health materials

Much consumer health information addresses issues of disease risk or treatment risks and benefits, addressing questions such as “How effective is this treatment?” or “What is the likelihood that this test will give a false positive result?” Insofar as it addresses outcome likelihood, this information is essentially quantitative in nature, which is of critical importance, because quantitative information tends to be difficult to understand and therefore inaccessible to consumers. Information professionals typically examine reading level to determine the accessibility of consumer health information, but this measure does not adequately reflect the difficulty of quantitative information, including materials addressing issues of risk and benefit. As a result, different methods must be used to evaluate this type of consumer health material. There are no standard guidelines or assessment tools for this task, but research in cognitive psychology provides insight into the best ways to present risk and benefit information to promote understanding and minimize interpretation bias. This paper offers an interdisciplinary bridge that brings these results to the attention of information professionals, who can then use them to evaluate consumer health materials addressing risks and benefits.     

The Supervision of Practice-based Research Degrees in Art and Design

Literature on the supervision of practice-based research degrees in art and design is at present relatively underdeveloped, particularly in relation to empirical studies. This paper, which is based on qualitative interviews with 50 supervisors engaged in the supervision of practice-based doctorates in a range of UK universities and colleges, aims to begin to remedy this lacuna. It examines specific problems encountered by supervisors of practice-based research degrees, and portrays some of the strategies developed and employed by supervisors as they attempt to guide student endeavour towards the successful combining of creative and analytical work.