Sexual Minority Youth,Social Change,and Health: A Developmental Collision

Few societal attitudes and opinions have changed as quickly as those regarding sexual minority people and rights. In the context of dramatic social change, there have been multiple policy changes toward social inclusion and rights for lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people, and perceptions that the sociocultural context for LGB people—perhaps particularly for youth—has improved. Yet recent evidence from the developmental sciences points to paradoxical findings: in many cases there have been growing rather than shrinking health disparities. The authors suggest that there is a developmental collision between normative adolescent developmental processes and sexual minority youth identities and visibility.     

Developmental Play Therapy: A Treatment Approach for Child Victims of Sexual Molestation

The author describes the use of developmental play therapy as a treatment approach for young children who have been sexually molested.     

Multigenerational Sexual Abuse: A Cognitive Developmental Approach to Understanding Mothers in Treatment

This paper takes a cognitive developmental perspective in the qualitative analysis of 9 interviews of women who were sexually abused as children and whose children were also sexually abused. It discusses ways in which the development of cognitive self-understanding can by stymied by childhood sexual abuse and how this, in turn, can affect a woman's ability to parent her children and take full advantage of psychotherapy. It studies the recovery process that participants describe at various stages of a social cognitive developmental model of self-understanding. Finally, it promotes the use of a cognitive developmental perspective in clinical work and offers suggestions for counselors addressing issues of childhood sexual victimization.     

A Developmental Approach to Social Science: A Model for Analyzing Charles Alexander's Scientific Contributions

A seven-paradigm developmental model of social science is presented (behaviorism, gestalt sociologism, empirical positivism, multi-method eclecticism, postmodern interpretivism, cooperative ecological inquiry, and developmental action inquiry). Charles Alexander's research is interpreted as bridging aspects of several paradigms, using third-person empirical positivist experiments to demonstrate the effects of a first-person research/practice called Transcendental Meditiation. The author suggests the possibility of complementing current research on TM with explicit double- and triple-loop research on the second- and third-person practices within the TM movement.     

A Social Disorganization Perspective on Bullying-Related Attitudes and Behaviors: The Influence of School Context

Social disorganization theory suggests that certain school-level indictors of disorder may be important predictors of bullying-related attitudes and behaviors. Multilevel analyses were conducted on bullying-related attitudes and experiences among 22,178 students in 95 elementary and middle schools. The intraclass correlation coefficients indicated that 0.6–2% of the variance in victimization, 5–10% of the variance in retaliatory attitudes, 5–6% of the variance in perceptions of safety, and 0.9% of the variance in perpetration of bullying was associated with the clustering of students within schools. Although the specific associations varied somewhat for elementary schools as compared to middle schools, the hierarchical linear modeling analyses generally suggested that school-level indicators of disorder (e.g., student–teacher ratio, concentration of student poverty, suspension rate, and student mobility) were significant predictors of bullying-related attitudes and experiences. Student-level characteristics (i.e., sex, ethnicity, status in school) were also relevant to students’ retaliatory attitudes, perceptions of safety, and involvement in bullying. Implications for school-based research and violence prevention are provided.     

Childhood Sexual Abuse and Intimate Relationships: A Support Group for Male Partners

Individual and group therapy modalities are common approaches to treating survivors of child sexual abuse (CSA). Survivors have identified a number of interpersonal problems that they experience with romantic partners but little is known about the partner’s perspective. Additionally, partners of abuse survivors are generally excluded from the treatment process. A short-term support group for the partners of adult survivors of sexual abuse was conducted concurrently with an Incest Resolution Group. The goal of the Partner’s Support Group was to gain greater understanding of the interpersonal relational problems as experienced by the partners, and to provide support, insight, and education regarding the impact of CSA. Clinical implications are discussed.     

A Trajectory Approach to Causality

In this paper we propose a new approach to address the ramification problem in common-sense reasoning about action and change. We contrast the methods of McCain and Turner, Thielscher and Sandewall and, based on some of the limitations they encounter, we introduce a trajectory-based approach which keeps a history of the states through which a system evolves to characterise its dynamical state. We furnish an underlying state-transition semantics and a logic that admits an expressive, dynamical account of some typical scenarios which encounter modelling difficulties in the other approaches mentioned.     

Helping Spouses Cope with Partners Coming Out: A Solution-Focused Approach

This article reviews previous research on coping strategies of spouses with partners who have come out. The current research on coping strategies has come from the work of Amity Pierce Buxton. Next the article examines previous treatment methods used with spouses of gay, lesbian, and bisexual partners. Solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT) is discussed and suggested as an approach with this population. A case example is presented to show how SFBT was used with a client struggling with the news of her partner coming out. Finally, the implications of using SFBT and how the approach helps partners progress through Buxton's stages is discussed.     

Reviewing Videotape in Supervision: A Developmental Approach

The authors review the extant literature on the use of videotape technology in supervision and, on the basis of an empirically supported developmental model of supervision, offer guidelines to supervisors on the use of videotape feedback. Suggestions are also offered for future research in this area.     

Unidimensionality and Developmental Trajectory of Aggressive Behavior in Clinically-Referred Boys: A Rasch Analysis

A majority of research investigating aggression and its development in children relies on rating scales such as the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). These scales typically are developed using a conventional factor analytic approach for the selection and retention of scale items, but may contain insufficient items to assess the unidimensionality and developmental trajectory of youths’ aggressive behavior. Rasch analysis was employed to determine the extent to which CBCL Aggressive and Delinquent clinical syndrome scale items reflect the unidimensionality and expected developmental trajectory of aggressive behavior based on parent endorsements of 455, 6 to 16 year old boys referred to community mental health centers. The two scales showed considerable promise as a unidimensional aggression scale and mimic the expected developmental pattern of aggressive behavior in extant literature. Future development of an aggressive CBCL dimensional subscale, however, must eliminate redundant and non-contributing items, and include severe aggressive behavior items exhibited by persistently aggressive youths.     

Family Bereavement and Cultural Diversity: A Social Developmental Perspective

This article offers an integrative, interdisciplinary model of bereavement as a family developmental process that unfolds in cultural context. A critique of cultural assumptions highlights the culture-bound nature of prevailing North American practices, which view grief as an isolated individual experience and emphasize detachment from the dead as a way to promote recovery. Death and grief precipitate two kinds of family change, both guided by culture yet uniquely experienced and interpreted by individual families: 1) recreating the family without a key family member; but capable of coping with both existing and new tasks; and 2) incorporating the death into an ongoing but irrevocably altered family life-cycle developmental process. In supporting family change after a death, family therapists need to collaborate with grieving families in examining the goodness of fit between their unique circumstances and the bereavement expectations of their community and culture. Four case examples are presented, two of which will apply this social developmental model to emphasize transformations of attachment to the deceased — rather than detachment — that will support the ongoing family development of grieving families.     

Evaluations of Sexually Active Men and Women Under Divided Attention: A Social Cognitive Approach to the Sexual Double Standard

Past research on the sexual double standard has generally shown that both men and women are evaluated similarly, not differently, for engaging in high levels of sexual activity. However, the settings in which this research has taken place may have allowed participants to devote almost all of their cognitive resources to the task of evaluating sexually active men and women. Devoting one's full attention to person evaluation may lead to individuation instead of stereotyping. This article reports a study designed to test the hypothesis that when attention is divided, people will evaluate men with many partners more favorably than women with many partners. Participants, under conditions of divided or full attention, evaluated male or female target persons with 1, 7, or 19 sexual partners. Participants in the divided attention condition exhibited a sexual double standard, whereas participants in the full attention condition did not.     

情绪调节效应的发展:一个V型发展趋势

从青少年早期到成人早期,个体情绪调节等高级社会认知功能得到进一步完善,对情绪调节的需求也日趋增长。情绪调节的发展是青少年情绪社会化发展一个重要的任务,学会采用有效的调节策略对自身情绪进行调节是青少年社会性发展的一个重要表现。在众多关于青少年社会行为研究中,对负性情绪调节能力的探究最为成熟与深入。以往研究指出,儿童青少年对负性情绪的体验激活和调控失败都是导致其非适应性行为的原因,情绪调节方式的错误选择会与其外化行为问题和和内化行为问题有很大的关联。由于青少年适应性行为的习得是多种社会性发展指标的重叠和交叉作用的体现,我们无法完全理清其中的复杂交互作用,因此从情绪调节策略的使用效应发展入手探讨个体的适应是寻求问题解决的一个可行手段。 以往研究者认为,成熟且有效的情绪调节指的是,个体能够通过控制自身的激活和唤醒以达到情绪性、生理性和社交的适应,最后达成个人的目标。情绪调节的发展也可被看作是从被动式的、有他人参与的调节（例如,社会性参照）逐渐进步为主动的、有意识的根据外部线索进行的情绪调节（例如,根据指导语提示调整自己情绪状态）。 本研究旨在探究不同年龄被试（青少年早期、青少年晚期、成人早期）在按照不同指导语提示要求下增强调节和减弱调节调节效应量的年龄差异。选取上海市初中生被试35名（22男,13女;M = 14.06岁,SD = 0.42 岁, 年龄范围：13-15岁）、高中生被试37名（13男,24女;M=16.56岁, SD=0.56岁, 年龄范围：16-18岁）以及成人被试35名（9男,26女;M = 23.60岁,SD = 1.96岁, 年龄范围：20-29岁）,采用3（年龄：初中生、高中生、成人,被试间变量）? 3（情绪刺激：正性、中性、负性,被试内变量）? 3（调节策略：增强调节、减弱调节、不调节,被试内变量）混合实验设计,使用情绪反应性—调节图片任务（Reactivity and Regulation-Image Task,REAR-I Task）对不同年龄被试情绪调节策略使用的效应量进行考察（Carthy, Horesh, Apter, Edge, & Gross, 2010）。 研究发现,从总体趋势来说,情绪调节策略的效应发展呈V型发展趋势。当不同年龄被试按照指导语要求对其情绪体验进行主动调节时,成人被试的调节效应是最大的,初中生次之,而高中生的调节效应则最低。情绪调节的V型发展趋势与以往研究中关于情绪调节态度以及自我发展的趋势相一致。另外,与增强调节策略的使用相比,减弱调节策略效应的发展是最大的。这可能与中国背景下减弱调节的适应价值有关。