Use of Live Supervision in Counselor Preparation

This study investigates the use of live supervision in counselor preparation programs. The perceived impact of live supervision on program management and student development are also considered.     

Predictors of parents' physical disciplinary practices.

OBJECTIVE: This study examined how childhood history of discipline (1) related to ratings of how severe and typical punishments were; and (2) predicted parents' use of discipline techniques. The influence of child culpability on these ratings was also investigated. METHOD: Ninety-nine New Zealand parents rated 12 physical discipline scenarios varying in discipline severity and perceived child culpability. Parents judged how severe and typical they considered the disciplines depicted in the scenarios and reported on how often they had experienced such discipline as children and how often they had used them with their own children. RESULTS: When the child was perceived to be at fault, parents rated the discipline depicted as less severe, considered the technique more typical, reported they had been similarly disciplined more frequently, and applied such discipline to their child more frequently. Childhood history of a discipline was related to the parent's use of that method, and the parents judged techniques they used with their own children as less severe and more typical of methods of discipline. History of discipline and severity judgments were the best predictors of parents' disciplinary practices. CONCLUSIONS: Although the findings support the cycle of violence theory, more complex potential pathways to abusive parenting, including the variables in this study, are proposed.     

Adolescent survivors of childhood sexual abuse: the mediating role of attachment style and coping in psychological and interpersonal functioning

OBJECTIVE: To examine attachment style and coping strategies as potential mediating variables between childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and psychological and interpersonal functioning in an attempt to explain variability in extent of disorder and level of functioning. METHOD: Eighty adolescent females, aged 14-16 years, answered questions regarding abuse history, attachment style, coping with an interpersonal stressor, depression and trauma symptomatology, and conflict with a best friend. RESULTS: Structural equation modeling analyses indicated that attachment style mediates the effects of CSA and child abuse and neglect on coping and psychological distress. The indirect effects of CSA and other abuse through attachment accounted for most of the effects on coping and psychological distress. Avoidant and cognitive coping strategies also served as mediators in the models, accounting for most of the effects of the other variables on interpersonal conflict. CONCLUSIONS: The findings indicate that attachment style and coping strategies influence psychological and interpersonal functioning, mediating the direct effects of CSA and other types of child abuse and neglect. These results have implications for therapeutic intervention with children and adolescents who have experienced child abuse.     

The Central Asylum for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb, Canajoharie, New York, 1823-1835

The Central Asylum for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb, Canajoharie, NY, was a public school for the Deaf that existed from 1823 to 1835. Little has been written about it. This study draws upon as much information as appears to be available on the history of this school. The history of the Central Asylum adds to the understanding of the beginnings of public education for the Deaf in the United States.     

Early intervention for reading disabilities: teaching the alphabet principle in a connectionist framework

Forty-eight children referred by teachers at the end of first grade for difficulty in reading were randomly assigned to three treatments, all of which modeled connections between written and spoken words but did not teach phonics rules, for eight half-hour individual tutoring sessions. The children were taught 48 words of varying orders of spelling-sound predictability (Venezky, 1995) using a whole-word method, for making connections between a word's name and its constituent letters; a subword method, for making connections between each color-coded spelling unit and its corresponding phonemes; or a combined whole-word and subword method. Regardless of the method used, children improved reliably on standardized reading measures and the taught words, showing that they could make connections between written and spoken words at the whole word and subword levels, even when rules were not taught. By posttest, the subword method showed a reliable advantage on a standardized test of real word reading. Knowledge of sounds associated with both multiletter and single-letter spelling units predicted reading achievement. Order of spelling-sound predictability (easy, moderate, difficult) was correlated with standardized measures of reading at pretest and posttest, and the magnitude of the relationship increased as a result of the intervention. Individual differences in verbal intelligence, rapid automatized naming, and phonological and orthographic skills predicted response to the intervention. Instructional implications of the results are discussed.     

Conceptions of teaching held by academic teachers

This study examines conceptions of teaching held by academic teachers in the fields of science and social science, in two universities: a distance university in the UK and a traditional one in Australia. A five level classification of conceptions of teaching is proposed. A process of arriving at this scheme is discussed and a formalised coding system is presented which helps to delimit, with greater confidence, the boundaries of each conception, and helps to order conceptions, to compare conceptions proposed by other researchers, and to place individuals within conceptions. The same coding system is then used to define the concepts of student-centered and teacher-centered approaches to teaching. There is a strong suggestion that teaching conceptions are context-dependent.     

Conduct disorder and comorbidity

Conduct Disorder (CD) research is focusing on complex issues introduced by comorbidity because of its widespread existence, thoeretical importance and practical significance. This review provides critical examination of research published during the past ten years addressing CD and its comorbid conditions, specifically Attention‐Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), and internalizing disorders. It is concluded that comorbidity varies with age, gender, informant, diagnostic criteria, and nature of the sample (clinical vs. epidemiological). Implications of comorbidity for etiology, diagnosis, treatment, law, and policy and preventive efforts in work with children and adolescents with CD are offered for school psychologists. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Externalizing Problems in Two-Year-Olds: Implications for Patterns of Social Behavior and Peers' Responses to Aggression

A sample of 48 two-year-old children selected on the basis of parents' responses to two administrations of the Child Behavior Checklist for two to three-year-olds was observed in peer interactions. Twenty-four of these children displayed symptoms of aggressive/destructive (externalizing) problems that were in the borderline clinical range (labelled “high risk”) and 24 children displayed few such symptoms (“low risk”). The children were observed in matched dyads (one high risk and one low risk child) across four tasks designed to vary in the degree of social participation they would elicit from the children. Across all tasks, children in the high risk group displayed significantly and consistently more aggressive behavior than the children in the low risk group. However, these high risk children did not differ from other children in terms of several indices of social and nonsocial play. In addition, when children were classified as high aggressive versus average versus low aggressive on the basis of laboratory behavior, children who displayed high amounts of aggression during the play sessions did not differ from less aggressive children on these indices of social play. Finally, the responses of non-aggressive dyad partners to aggressive acts indicated that children are responsive, in relatively subtle ways, to aggression. These results are discussed in terms of the implications of early problematic behavior for later indices of maladjustment that include social competence and peer rejection.     

Interactional power and support in digital inclusion of an adult with intellectual disabilities: a case study analysis

Digital inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities is not commensurate with those without disabilities. Societal, political, financial, individual and interpersonal barriers help explain this disparity. Caregivers can act as both support and gatekeeper to internet access and use by adults with intellectual disabilities. This study investigated micro-level interpersonal factors influencing access and use of the internet by an adult with intellectual disabilities to explore the balance and interplay of power and support around the processes of digital inclusion and online risk taking. Taking a case study approach, perspectives of three key stakeholders were gathered via interviews: the person with intellectual disabilities, his mother and a paid support worker. Perspectives and experiences were contrasted using systemic functional linguistic analysis of discourse to explore the ways power and support were represented in the language of negotiated digital inclusion. Dynamics between the parent and person with intellectual disabilities and between the parent and paid staff clearly influenced processes of digital inclusion and were affected by varying priorities, positions and perceptions of power to allow, disallow and monitor access and use of the internet. These had the power to shape and drive internet access. Language choices by the person with intellectual disabilities showed that he was not fully aware of the risks involved in engaging with certain aspects of digital inclusion but how he spoke about the internet indicated some autonomy in technology use. Supporting the development of digital competence, confidence and resilience in people with learning disabilities should be combined with support to increase self-awareness regarding digital risk. Those supporting people with intellectual disabilities towards digital inclusion need additional guidance on how to do this effectively for the people they support.     

Assessing Marital Conflict from the Child''s Perspective: The Children''s Perception of Interparental Conflict Scale

Guided by Grych and Fincham's theoretical framework for investigating the relation between interparental conflict and child adjustment, a questionnaire was developed to assess children's views of several aspects of marital conflict. The Children's Perception of Interparental Conflict Scale (CPIC) was initially examined in a sample of 222 9-12-year-old children, and results were cross-validated in a second sample of 144 similarly aged children. 3 factor analytically derived subscales (Conflict Properties, Threat, Self-Blame) demonstrated acceptable levels of internal consistency and test-retest reliability. The validity of the Conflict Properties scale was supported by significant relations with parent reports of conflict and indices of child adjustment; the Threat and Self-Blame scales correlated with children's responses to specific conflict vignettes. The CPIC thus appears to be a promising instrument for assessing perceived marital conflict, and several issues regarding its interpretation are discussed.