The helping process as developmental existentialism

The purpose of this article is to present a new orientation toward the helping process in order to suggest additional practical strategies for helpers. The position is labeled “developmental existentialism” because it places existential principles within a developmental framework. The author examines the general features, assumptions, defining dimensions, and propositions of the position. The perspective of this new approach enables clients to be assessed in terms of their degree of health, types of anxieties, motivational levels, means of coping, and developmental strengths and weaknesses.     

The dynamic process of life satisfaction

Drawing from the Cognitive Affective Personality System (Mischel & Shoda, 1995, 1998), we argue for a need to examine within-individual variation in life satisfaction. Thus, employing a diary study of 76 fully employed, married adults we examined the magnitude, antecedents, and consequences of intra-individual variation in life satisfaction. Our findings establish a substantial amount of intra-individual variation, comparable to other personal evaluations assessed with a state approach (e.g., self-esteem), but less than that observed with major mood dimensions. In addition, concurrent changes in life satisfaction were systematically related to fluctuations in job and marital satisfaction; however, contrary to prediction, our results did not support a cross-level moderating role of Neuroticism in these associations. Our findings also lend support for the lagged influence of life satisfaction on next-day domain satisfaction ratings. Taken together, our findings demonstrate the systematic nature and importance of within-subject variation in life satisfaction.     

The complexity of developmental predictions from dual process models

Drawing developmental predictions from dual-process theories is more complex than is commonly realized. Overly simplified predictions drawn from such models may lead to premature rejection of the dual process approach as one of many tools for understanding cognitive development. Misleading predictions can be avoided by paying attention to several cautions about the complexity of developmental extrapolations. The complexity of developmental predictions follows from the fact that overall normative responding at a given age derives from several different mental characteristics: (1) the developmental course of Type 1 processing, (2) the developmental course of Type 2 processing, (3) the acquisition of mindware usable by Type 1 processing, (4) the acquisition of mindware usable by Type 2 processing, and (5) the practicing of the mindware available to Type 2 processing to the extent that it is available to be processed in an autonomous manner. The complexity of all these interacting processes and sources of information can sometimes result in U-shaped developmental functions on some heuristics and biases tasks, making younger children look like they are responding more optimally than older children. This is particularly true when the youngest groups are ill-equipped to even understand the task and thus respond randomly. A final caution concerns terminology: The terms normative or rational should be reserved for responses and not attributed to subpersonal processes.     

The psychoanalytic process: the developmental and the integrative

Psychoanalysis is a treatment that focuses on intrapsychic events and activates integrative tendencies to promote-insights. Almost from the time it originated, however, it was also promoted as a therapy informed by the interpersonal, inducing change through experiences generated within the psychoanalytic situation. In recent years the interpersonal or object relations approach has come to be categorized as "developmental," a term that fosters no end of ambiguities. The resulting confusion compromises the study of the actual developmental process on the one hand and the structure-enhancing features of transactions on the other. This encumbers research on the psychoanalytic process. The author distinguishes the intrapsychic from the interpersonal, the integrative from the developmental, and the two very different realms of psychological activities currently advanced as "developmental."     

Group process: A developmental view

Group process is a phenomenon which is still only partly understood. This paper investigates different factors which might contribute to group process and possible group developmental sequences. Theoretical ideas are illustrated in the context of a two-day therapeutic group experience.     

The priority of primary process categorizing: experimental evidence supporting a psychoanalytic developmental hypothesis

Earlier work has provided experimental evidence for the existence of the primary and secondary process mental organization posited by Freud and has demonstrated that primary process effects are the more active unconsciously (Brakel et al. 2000). Primary and secondary processes were assessed by a categorization test in which qualitatively different principles could be used. In new experiments using the same stimuli, another significant implication of Freud's model was tested: that primary process mental organization has developmental priority. In these experiments, which studied 559 participants ranging in age from 3 to 80, it was found (1) that primary process mentation predominates in preschoolers; (2) that it is not until around age 7 that primary process organization is supplanted by secondary process organization; and (3) that after age 7 the predominance of secondary process organization remains remarkably stable throughout the life span.     

The dynamic nature of the stress appraisal process and the infusion of affect

Very little is known about the process in which people reappraise a stressful environment or the factors that may influence this process. In the current study, we address the several limitations to previous research regarding stress reappraisals and explore the role of affect on this process. A total of 320 participants (mean age = 20 years, 60% male) completed an increasingly demanding team-based coordination task. Mood and stress appraisals were assessed at three time points using self-report surveys during four different waves of data collection. The longitudinal design enabled us to assess primary and secondary reappraisals (change in appraisals during the experiment), task-irrelevant affect (affect assessed prior to experiment participation), and task-relevant affect (change in affect experienced during the experiment). Guided by the Transactional Theory of Stress, we argue that the relationship between primary reappraisal and secondary reappraisal is an accurate representation of a dynamic stress appraisal process. We found that participants were more likely to engage in the stress appraisal process when they experienced less task-irrelevant positive affect and greater task-relevant positive affect. Both task-irrelevant and task-relevant negative affect were not found to influence the stress appraisal process.     

Procedural learning and automatization process in children with developmental coordination disorder and/or developmental dyslexia

ObjectiveThere is increasing evidence to suggest that developmental dyslexia (DD) and developmental coordination disorder (DCD) actually form part of a broader disorder. Their frequent association could be justified by a deficit of the procedural memory system, that subtends many of the cognitive, motor and linguistic abilities that are impaired in both DD and DCD. However, studies of procedural learning in these two disorders have yielded divergent results, and in any case no studies have so far addressed the issue of automatization (dual-task paradigm).MethodsWe administered a finger tapping task to participants aged 8–12 years (19 DCD, 18 DD, and 22 with both DD and DCD) to explore procedural learning and automatic movements in these three groups of children, comparing motor performances at the prelearning stage, after 2 weeks of training, and in a post-training dual-task condition.ResultsFirst, results indicated that all the children were able to learn a sequence of movements and even automatize their movements. Second, they revealed between-groups differences in procedural/automatization learning abilities, setting the DCD group apart from the other two. Third, contrary to our expectations concerning comorbidity, they suggested that the DD + DCD association does not have an additional impact on behavioral performances.     

The functional and developmental organization of cognitive developmental sequences

This study examines the organization and development of 5 domains of reasoning (categorical, quantitative, spatial, causal, and propositional) and the construct validity of a test designed to measure development from early adolescence to early adulthood. The theory underlying the test is first summarized and the conceptual design of the test is then illustrated. Each domain was addressed by tasks tapping abilities known to be acquired in this age period. The test was administered to 629 adolescents ranging in age from 12 to 18 years. Confirmatory factor analysis validated the 5 domains of reasoning and revealed a common factor underlying all domains. The Rasch model was used to scale the items and specify the reliability of the test across the whole sample and within different groups of participants (female, male, students of gymnasium, and students of lyceum). This model showed that the test is highly reliable and invariant across groups. Cluster analysis and the saltus model were applied to uncover successive developmental stage‐like levels of difficulty and showed the presence of five such levels. The procedural and representational characteristics of these levels were also specified and their implications for developmental and cognitive theory were discussed.     

Cognitive developmental biology: history, process and fortune's wheel

Biological contributions to cognitive development continue to be conceived predominantly along deterministic lines, with proponents of different positions arguing about the preponderance of gene-based versus experience-based influences that organize brain circuits irreversibly during prenatal or early postnatal life, and evolutionary influences acting through selection on small numbers of genes. This article discusses evolutionary, mechanistic and probabilistic aspects of developmental processes that cognitive scientists need to better integrate. Developmental processes inseparably fuse experience-dependent and experience-independent components, have important stochastic contributions, and exhibit a greater degree of mechanistic continuity between developing and adult nervous systems than previously thought. Their balanced integration leads to new models for "critical or sensitive" period phenomena and behavioral biases. A general understanding of behavioral development - cognitive developmental biology--will require better coordination between comparative animal and human developmental research programs.     

Client process in short term dynamic psychotherapy1

In this study, a single case design was used to examine significant client events in a process of short-term dynamic psychotherapy. The Category System of Client Good Moments (Mahrer, 1988) was used as a measure of therapeutic process. Client speaking turns were rated for three sessions (early, middle, and late) of the complete sixteen session treatment conducted according to davanloo's (1978) model of short-term dynamic psychotherapy (STDP), and categories of good moments identified. The results showed that the salient client change-events were related to the client's (a) provision of significant information, (b) exploration of feelings, and (c) insight and understanding across the three sessions. Additionally, the results also showed a statistically significant increase in client-reported behavior change and sense of well-being for the late session. The results suggest that in-session report of behavior change is an important component of therapeutic process. The implications of these results for an atheoretical, data-driven understanding of therapeutic change processes are presented.     

Primary process thinking in the same children at two developmental levels

Analysis of primary process thinking of the same children at kindergarten level and at grade four revealed that amount of primary process thinking was relatively constant with development, contrary to predictions based on psychoanalytic theory. However, the two facets of primary process thinking, i.e., drive related ideation and formal deviations of thought follow different lines of development with the former increasing and the latter decreasing in quality and type with age.     

Handwriting process and product characteristics of children diagnosed with developmental coordination disorder

Deficits in handwriting performance limit the school participation of children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD). The aim of this study was to compare the handwriting process and product characteristics of children with DCD to those of typically developing (TD) children in order to determine the best means of differentiation between the groups. Participants were 40 children, from 7 to 10 years old. The experimental group consisted of 20 children who met the criteria of DCD, and the control group consisted of 20 age- and gender-matched controls. The children were asked to perform three graded writing tasks on an electronic tablet, which was part of a computerized handwriting evaluation system (ComPET), in order to obtain measures of their handwriting process. The children's handwriting product was then evaluated by the Hebrew Handwriting Evaluation (HHE). Results showed significant differences between the groups for the handwriting process measures (on-paper and in-air time, mean pressure) and for the handwriting product characteristics (global legibility, number of letters erased or overwritten, spatial arrangement, and number of letters written in the first minute). The discriminant analysis yielded a high significant discrimination (80-90%), with the 'number of letters erased or overwritten' variable as the most differentiating variable (-.67). We concluded that an evaluation of both handwriting process and product characteristics among children with DCD provides a more comprehensive picture of their deficits. Using this method may enable practitioners to focus on children's main deficits and to tailor intervention methods so as to prevent academic underachievement and its consequences on their emotional well-being.