Counseling Adult Males

This article suggests that counselors must examine their own gender-role issues, become aware of the body of knowledge about men which is emerging in the literature, examine the implications of that literature on counseling men, and develop an effective approach to counseling men. The author presents a counseling focus on male gender-role issues similar to a decision model for counseling and explores the use of that focus for both counseling and research with adult males.     

Attribution Processes and Stages of Adult Life Development Among Adult University Students1

This study investigated the relationship between stages of adult life development and causal attributions for attending college among a sample of nontraditional students. It was hypothesized that the meaning of attending school is reflected in the kinds of attributions that are given for attending school. It was also hypothesized that internal attributions are more common at later stages of adult life development. The findings confirmed the existence of internal and external (career and situational) cognitive attributional dimensions, with the internal dimension being the strongest. Coherent stages of adult life development were identified, which corresponded to a transitional stage, an early adult stage, and a mid-adult stage. Students in the transitional stage were less likely to give external situational attributions, and students in the mid-life stage were more likely to give external situational attributions. There was also a tendency for internal attributions to increase during the mid-life phase, although the relationship was not highly significant. The findings are discussed in the context of attribution theory and adult life development theory as well as in terms of implications for educational policy.     

Neurotherapy in Adult Management of Stress: Developmental Aspects of the Adult Immune System

Stress, defined as a stimulus, a response, and an interaction between the person and the environment is eventually present in everyday life. Nevertheless, stress can be both dangerous and uncomfortable. Stress influences the corticotropin??releasing factor and the locus ceruleus-norepinephrine systems, which in turn impact the hypothalamic?Cpituitary?Cadrenal axis and the autonomic nervous system. At the same time, stress directly affects the immune system. Treatment by means of an alternative approach such as neurotherapy can enhance the immune system and thereby improve the patient??s overall wellbeing.     

Adult counting is resource demanding

Several recent studies on both the development of counting and working‐memory span tasks have provided results that could be interpreted as ruling out any cognitive resource model for counting. The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that, even in adults, counting is a demanding task that requires the allocation of cognitive resources. In a first experiment, we asked adults to count arrays of dots while maintaining 5 items in memory (either digits or letters). As we predicted, the concurrent memory load did not increase the rate of errors but induced longer counting times. In a second experiment, we asked adults to count using either the numeric chain or the alphabet while they maintained 1, 3 or 5 items in memory (digits or letters). First, we replicated the load effect observed in Experiment 1. Second, though both types of counting required similar amounts of time, counting with the less automatized chain (i.e. the alphabet) resulted in a poorer recall performance. Finally, this detrimental effect in recall was all the more pronounced the greater the number of items to be recalled. These results are interpreted within theoretical frameworks that consider cognitive resources as attentional capacities.     

Adult attachment and emotional control

The connection between attachment style and affect regulation, proposed by attachment theorists, was explored in the context of long-term dating relationships. Seventy-two couples completed questionnaire measures of attachment (using a four-group forced-choice item, together with scales tapping Comfort with closeness, and Anxiety over relationships) and emotional control (in which subjects rated own and partner's control of anger, sadness, and anxiety, and the extent to which partners wanted them to control these emotions). Couples in which both partners endorsed insecure attachment styles (using the forced-choice measure) reported greater emotional control than did couples with two secure partners. Data from the attachment scales also supported the link between insecure attachment and emotional control: Comfort with closeness was negatively related both to one's own emotional control and to perceptions that partners wanted subjects to control their sadness; Anxiety over relationships was associated with perceptions that partners controlled sadness and wanted subjects to control their anger and sadness. The link between insecure attachment and the control of negative emotion remained significant when the frequency of experiencing such emotion was controlled. The association between attachment dimensions and other responses to negative emotions was also explored, and was consistent with attachment theory.     

Morphological Processing in Adult Dyslexia

This study employed the masked-priming paradigm [Forster and Davis (J Exp Psychol bearn Mem Cogn 10: 680–698, 1984).], along with traditional methods of evaluation of morphological awareness and phonological processing, to obtain a finer-grained picture of the relationship between morphological abilities and reading in adult dyslexic readers. Participants were 21 dyslexic and 21 normally reading native Hebrew-speaking male college students. The results with masked priming demonstrated almost normal status of morphological knowledge in adult dyslexic readers with the presence of characteristic processing slowness. Phonological processing and morphological awareness were also shown to contribute primarily to word decoding in the regular and dyslexic group alike. At the same time, the contribution of different phonological skills to morphological priming effects (for pattern and root) dropped to zero. The findings demonstrated that weakness of dyslexic readers in morphological awareness tasks cannot be explained either by hypotheses on the structural deficit of morphological knowledge in dyslexia or by phonological deficit hypotheses. The explanation for this phenomenon seems to lie in the specific deficit of morphological processing, or even, more generally, in metalinguistic processing deficiency in dyslexia.     

Adult attachment and sexual behavior

The relations between adult attachment processes and sexuality were examined in a community sample of 792 young adults (327 men and 465 women) from the Niagara region of Canada. Participants completed questionnaires that included Simpson’s (1990) measure of adult attachment, self‐reported physical attractiveness, erotophilia, and a variety of sexual behavior measures (e.g., number of sexual partners, age of first sexual experience, frequency of sexual behaviors in the past year, whether an affair had occurred in the past year, and consistent condom usage). The sexuality measures were factor analyzed to extract common factors. The results were modest, but a number of significant relationships between sexuality and attachment were observed. For example, people scoring higher on a secure attachment index perceived themselves as more physically attractive, whereas people scoring higher on an anxious attachment index perceived themselves as less physically attractive, had an early first intercourse (and more lifetime partners), more infidelity, and took more sexual precautions (e.g., condom usage). The results were generally stronger in women, with most of the attachment/sexuality associations in the full sample being driven by the results in women. Implications for understanding sexual variability, including high‐risk sexual behavior, are discussed.     

Adult attachment and declining birthrates

Attachment scores for 658 young adults living in the U.S.A. were obtained using the Experiences in Close Relationships scale. The participants came from a subsample of the RELATE data set, who had also filled out the adult attachment measure. Those young adults living in Utah County, Utah, an area of the country with a higher than normal birthrate (88% members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), also had higher than average adult attachment scores. While the methodology was not sufficient to assess causal direction nor eliminate the possibility of unidentified influences, an undiscussed psychological factor, adult attachment, may play a role in the numerical declines observed among nonimmigrant communities in the USA and Europe.     

Barriers to Adult Career Change

Adults have unique problems in making career changes. They face crucial economic, educational, and psychological barriers that require special guidance services. In this article, barriers to adult career change are identified and a five-county regional learning service using paraprofessionals is described. Results in working with more than 200 adults making career changes is reported. Suggestions for overcoming some of the problems adults face in making career changes are explained.     

Congregations and Older Adult Resources

This article defines ways in which a community can honor older adults as an invaluable resource to community life. A biographical study of a particular community is undertaken in order to extricate its theological convictions and ethical values. This study underscores the pivotal role of older adults in community function. Moreover, this article challenges scholars, caregivers, congregations to develop theories and strategies of care efficacious for healing.     

Adult Life and Career Counselling

The provision of life and career counselling for adults in the early 1970s is examined, distinguishing between counselling and other helping strategies. A major paradigm shift which is influencing counselling along with other aspects of society is identified. The range of provision of adult life and careers counselling existing in 1985 is summarised, and some speculations on future development are offered.     

Adult interpretations of child behavior

This study extends an earlier study (Meyer & Sobieszek, 1972) of the effects of the sex of a child on adult interpretations of its behavior. Videotapes of two 17-month-old children were shown to a sample of 69 adults, who were asked to rate each child's behavior on a number of sex-linked adjectives. Half of the time the sex of the child was wrongly misdescribed. Results from the present study support most findings of the earlier research. Female subjects, especially those reporting high contact with children, described children as possessing fewer stereotypical characteristics of their attributed sex than did male subjects. In addition, males and females attributed more of any qualities to same-sex children and also liked same-sex children more. Males also are more confident in rating same-sex children, while females are somewhat likelier to express more confidence in their ratings of male children.A version of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association, Toronto, 1974.     

The Adult Persistence in Learning Model: A Road Map to Counseling Services for Adult Learners

The Adult Persistence in Learning (APIL) model focuses on personal issues of the individual adult learner, learning process issues, and environmental issues related to the particular institution to guide counseling services for adult leaners. Factors that facilitate a realistic approach to adult learning provide the focus: self-awareness, willingness to delay gratification, clarification of career and life goals, mastery of life transitions, sense of interpersonal competence, educational competence, intellectual and political competence in learning, information retrieval from the institution, awareness of opportunities and impediments in the environment, and perceptions of the compati-bility of the learning environment. Counseling interventions for individuals and groups based on the factors in the model can aid retention of adult learners.     

Childhood Trauma, Adult Sexual Assault, and Adult Gender Expression among Lesbian and Bisexual Women

Several studies have demonstrated that lesbian and bisexual women are more likely than heterosexual women to report childhood abuse and adult sexual assault. It is unknown, however, which sexual minority women are most likely to experience such abuse. We recruited adult sexual minority women living in the US through electronic fliers sent to listservs and website groups inviting them to complete an online survey (N?=?1,243). We examined differences in both childhood abuse and adult sexual assault by women’s current gender identity (i.e., butch, femme, androgynous, or other) and a continuous measure of gender expression (from butch/masculine to femme/feminine), adjusting for sexual orientation identity, age, education, and income. Results indicated that a more butch/masculine current self-assessment of gender expression, but not gender identity, was associated with more overall reported childhood trauma. Although one aspect of gender expression, a more butch/masculine gender role, was associated with adult sexual assault, feminine appearance and a femme gender identity also significantly predicted adult sexual assault. These findings highlight the significance of gender identity and expression in identifying women at greater risk for various abuse experiences.     

Relationship of Adult Representations of Childhood Parenting and Personality Tendencies to Adult Stressors and Political Ideology

Undergraduate students in a Southeastern US University (n = 232) responded to an inventory that included retrospective measures of their parents’ style of parenting (authoritarian vs. authoritative) and their own childhood psychological tendencies (insecurity vs. confidence), as well as their adult stressors and political orientation. Authoritative parenting positively correlated with childhood confidence and negatively correlated with both childhood insecurity and adult stressors. Conversely, authoritarian parenting was positively associated with childhood insecurity and adult stressors but was not significantly correlated with childhood confidence. For the most part, parenting styles, early childhood tendencies, and adult stressors were unrelated to adult political ideology, contrary to previous longitudinal research reporting these connections.