RELATIONAL SCHEMATA

One key task of research in relational communication is to understand how relational knowledge guides communicative processes. A necessary step in that direction is to determine what form of relational knowledge guides the cognitive processes involved in producing and comprehending messages. Based on tests of other forms of social knowledge, the best unobtrusive indicator of relational knowledge was determined to be systematic distortions in memory. Three forms of relational knowledge—general dimensional knowledge, situation-specific knowledge, and behavior-specific knowledge—were contrasted for their ability to account for biases in memory for relational implications of remarks in conversations. Two sets of results were noteworthy. First, very strong effects on both accuracy and direction of memory were found, indicating that some form of relational knowledge guided memory for conversations. Second, when the three forms of relational knowledge were contrasted, only one—behavior-specific knowledge—accounted for a significant proportion of those memory effects (83% for accuracy and 85% for errors). The findings challenge the validity of well-established dimension- and situation-based approaches to relational knowledge and suggest alternative approaches that may be more compatible with the uses to which relational knowledge is put in communication.     

Conflict in relational treatments

Various features of relational perspectives on conflict are outlined. Points of contact and difference between relational and modern conflict theory are discussed. Five approaches to considering conflict are examined: countertransference conflict as the site of interfaces between the social and the intrapsychic; conflict within the register of speech; conflict within a theory of multiple identifications; conflict as the site of psychic change; and conflict in the context of intersubjectivity. Clinical vignettes are introduced to illustrate the scope and function of conflict within one relational perspective.     

Interpersonal Justice,Relational Conflict,and Commitment to Change: The Moderating Role of Social Interaction

Drawing from Conservation of Resources theory, this study examines the hitherto unexplored mediating role of relational conflict in the link between interpersonal justice and commitment to change, as well as how social interaction might moderate this mediating effect. Data were captured from employees directly affected by a large‐scale restructuring in a European‐based organisation. The analyses show that interpersonal justice positively affects commitment to change and that relationship conflict fully mediates the relationship. Further, social interaction moderates both the interpersonal justice–relational conflict and the relational conflict–commitment to change relationships, such that they get invigorated at higher levels of social interaction. The findings also reveal that the indirect effect of interpersonal justice on commitment to change, through relational conflict, is more pronounced at higher levels of social interaction, in support of a moderated mediation effect. These findings have significant implications for research and practice.     

Integrating Social Information Processing and Attachment Style Research with Cognitive-behavioral Couple Therapy

The majority of the empirically validated interventions for relational distress focus primarily upon improving behavioral functioning, particularly couples’ communication patterns in conflict situations. However, although communication is highly predictive of relationship distress and later divorce, research on the effectiveness of premarital and marital interventions based on communication training has shown limited results. Therefore, although the skills-based approaches can be effective in treating relational discord and instability, they also often neglect another potentially powerful mechanism in the development of relational distress: the social cognitions and/or schemata regarding relationships that individuals carry into their marriages that stem from negative attachment experiences. Thus, this article describes how blending information gleaned from attachment style research with the body of literature addressing social information processing can enhance current methods for the treatment of relational discord. The existing research on adult romantic attachment styles is placed within a social-cognitive information processing framework and a case study demonstrating the utility of this approach with difficult couples is described.     

Context Matters for Social-Emotional Learning: Examining Variation in Program Impact by Dimensions of School Climate

This paper examines whether three dimensions of school climate—leadership, accountability, and safety/respect—moderated the impacts of the INSIGHTS program on students’ social‐emotional, behavioral, and academic outcomes. Twenty‐two urban schools and N = 435 low‐income racial/ethnic minority students were enrolled in the study and received intervention services across the course of 2 years, in both kindergarten and first grade. Intervention effects on math and reading achievement were larger for students enrolled in schools with lower overall levels of leadership, accountability, and safety/respect at baseline. Program impacts on disruptive behaviors were greater in schools with lower levels of accountability at baseline; impacts on sustained attention were greater in schools with lower levels of safety/respect at baseline. Implications for Social‐Emotional Learning program implementation, replication, and scale‐up are discussed.     

Love in Action: An Integrative Approach to Last Chance Couple Therapy

This article presents an integrative approach to the special challenges of therapy with couples on the brink of dissolution or divorce—who often describe this therapy as their “last chance.” In some, one partner is considering ending the relationship, and in others, both partners are considering ending it. Often, these couples have had prior dissatisfying experiences in couple therapy. Four types of last chance couples are described: high‐conflict couples; couples in which partners have differing goals for their lives or different timelines for reaching shared goals; couples in which one or both partners have acted in a manner that violates the values, expectations, emotional comfort, or safety of the other; and couples in which there has been a gradual loss of intimacy. The Therapeutic Palette, a multiperspectival, theoretically eclectic integrative approach, is enlisted as a general framework for selecting and sequencing use of particular theories and their associated practices, based on the three “primary colors” of couple therapy: time frame/focus, level of directiveness, and change entry point. An additional complementary framework, the creative relational movement approach, is proposed to provide an integrative frame encompassing both language‐based and action‐based practices, suggesting that meaning is held and expressed as much through interaction or “relational motion” as it is through language. Principles of change are described. Due to the couple's level of crisis and desire for immediate evidence of possible improvement, priority is given to action‐based interventions in early stages of therapy, by engaging couples in “experiments in possibility.” Typical action approaches are described. An extended vignette follows.     

Symposium: On the Interface of Kleinian and Intersubjectivist Approaches to a Clinical Case

This symposium is the first of what we hope will be a series on the interface between Kleinian and intersubjective/relational approaches to psychoanalysis. There are some commonalities between these approaches that may not be entirely obvious. The Kleinian clinical approach organizes the internal world in terms of internal object relationships, and relies on attention to certain aspects of the countertransference as the central data source for analytic work. Both of these qualities provide an immediate link to the two-person model so central to the relational turn. At the same time, the Kleinians' radical insistence on the primacy of the internal world and in particular, the world of the primitive phantasies, runs counter to the relational interest in the equally important role of actual, social reality. This contrast is perhaps most acute in their approaches to the analyst's participation in the analytic dyad, which is meant to be limited to particular analytic functions in the Kleinian approach, but acknowledged and used as a part of an interpersonal relationship in the relational model. As the Kleinian perspectives gain currency in the United States and international interest in the relational approach grows, an exploration of these complex conceptual and clinical differences and similarities seems quite timely.     

Treatment preference and acceptability: Epistemology and locus of control

Abstract

Treatment preference and acceptability were investigated in 397 female university students. Three audiovisual vignettes depicting a client and therapist discussing a body image disturbance problem were presented to subjects. Predictions were that subjects would prefer one of three therapy approaches—behavioral, cognitive—rational, or cognitive—constructivist—as a function of personal epistemology and locus of control. Overall, subjects rated the constructivist therapy approach more favorably than either the cognitive—rational or behavioral approach. Similarly, subjects evaluated the constructivist therapist more positively than either the rational or behavioral therapist. After degree of subject identification with the target problem was controlled, results indicated that matching subjects who had an external locus of control orientation to a behavioral or cognitive-rational therapist resulted in more favorable assessments of that therapist. Matching subjects who had an internal locus of control orientation to a constructivist therapist resulted in more positive assessments of that therapist. Implications for matching in clinical practice are discussed.     

Resistance to change of operant variation and repetition

A multiple chained schedule was used to compare the relative resistance to change of variable and fixed four-peck response sequences in pigeons. In one terminal link, a response sequence produced food only if it occurred infrequently relative to 15 other response sequences (vary). In the other terminal link, a single response sequence produced food (repeat). Identical variable-interval schedules operated in the initial links. During baseline, lower response rates generally occurred in the vary initial link, and similar response and reinforcement rates occurred in each terminal link. Resistance of responding to prefeeding and three rates of response-independent food delivered during the intercomponent intervals then was compared between components. During each disruption condition, initial- and terminal-link response rates generally were more resistant in the vary component than in the repeat component. During the response-independent food conditions, terminal-link response rates were more resistant than initial-link response rates in each component, but this did not occur during prefeeding. Variation (in vary) and repetition (in repeat) both decreased during the response-independent food conditions in the respective components, but with relatively greater disruption in repeat. These results extend earlier findings demonstrating that operant variation is more resistant to disruption than is operant repetition and suggest that theories of response strength, such as behavioral momentum theory, must consider factors other than reinforcement rate. The implications of the results for understanding operant response classes are discussed.     

Making Music Together: Discussion of Gianni Nebbiosi’s “The Smell of Paper”

Finding life in our patients is a common goal for analysts. Historically this project had been defined as one of freeing unacceptable impulses from their imprisoning defenses with the analyst, via interpretation, then contrasting the patient’s internal fantasied reality with “actual” reality. Untangling fantasy from reality could free the impulses to provide energy for more realistic projects. This imagery stands in stark contrast to the fluidity of a contemporary relational conceptualization of human experience where our inner experience is now understood to be the lens through which we construct our vision of external reality, always a subjective perception. Clinical change—finding life—now depends more on the activation of a generative intersubjective process between patient and analyst, which contributes to the expansion of the patient’s subjective experience. Gianni Nebbiosi’s use of music and of mime to help him feel his way into his patient’s and ultimately into his own similarly defended experience demonstrates the creativity and idiosyncratic clinical approaches that emerge from a contemporary relational orientation. This orientation recognizes the analyst’s subjectivity as a fundamental tool of clinical change—a vehicle through which any theoretical approach will necessarily be shaped. Differing approaches to a clinical situation do not always simply reflect theoretical disagreements; they may also reflect the expression of the particular subjectivity of the analyst.     

Approaching Emptiness: Subjective,Objective and Existential Dimensions

Clinicians have lacked a coherent approach to emptiness, which is both a pervasive metaphor for loss, deficiency, or alienation and a frequently cited spiritual goal. We suggest a framework for approaching emptiness that distinguishes among its subjective, objective, and existential dimensions. Clinicians can use psychodynamic and cognitive behavioral approaches to clarify schemas that distort patients’ perceptions of others and of themselves, behavioral and relational approaches to help them deal with real deficiency and loss, and spiritually oriented approaches to put these into a larger context.     

Investigating the role of E-contact and self-disclosure on improving Turkish-Kurdish interethnic relations

While recent research has started to pay more attention to the role of contact strategies on promoting intergroup harmony between Turkish and Kurdish communities, the effectiveness of a novel form of indirect contact strategy, E-contact—where participants engage in a cooperative and structured online interaction with an individual from the outgroup—has not yet been tested. Across two studies (N_{Study 1} = 110, N_{Study 2} = 176), we investigated the effects of E-contact among Turks on promoting positive attitudes and behavioral tendencies toward Kurds, testing outgroup trust and intergroup anxiety as mediators and incorporating a distinction between lower and higher self-disclosure conditions. As expected, E-contact led to more positive outgroup attitudes, as well as greater approach tendencies and decreased avoidance tendencies through increased outgroup trust (Studies 1 and 2) and reduced intergroup anxiety (Study 2). Study 2 also found that E-contact produced lower perceived interethnic conflict through increased outgroup trust. While both lower and higher personal disclosure conditions provided similar effects in the two studies, E-contact with heightened self-disclosure was especially effective at promoting more positive outgroup attitudes and reducing avoidance tendencies. Findings highlight potential benefits of using E-contact as a prejudice-reduction strategy in conflict settings.     

Meaning threat can promote peaceful,not only military‐based approaches to intergroup conflict: The moderating role of ingroup glorification

Most research on threat documents its negative consequences. Similarly, most research on intergroup contexts has emphasized their negative behavioral effects. Drawing on the Meaning Maintenance Model and recent perspectives on the potential for positivity in intergroup conflict, we predicted that meaning threat can produce both antisocial and prosocial responses to intergroup conflict, depending on people's preexisting meaning frameworks. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that under meaning threat, low ingroup glorifiers strengthened their support for peaceful conflict resolution, whereas high ingroup glorifiers strengthened their support for military‐based conflict resolution. In the context of the Israel–Palestinian conflict, Study 3 found that low glorification was associated with greater support for peace during “hot” (but not “cold”) conflict, because hot conflict reduced their meaning in life. These findings are consistent with the notion that when meaning is threatened, people affirm their preexisting values—whether prosocial or antisocial—even in the context of intergroup conflict.     

Having the will,finding the ways,and wishes for the future: A model of relational hope and well-being

Hope is a ubiquitous experience in daily life and acts as a force to help individuals attain desired future outcomes. In the current paper, we review existing research on hope and its benefits. Building on this work, we propose a new model of hope in romantic relationships. Our model seeks to expand the study of hope, addressing limitations of past research by bringing hope into the interpersonal domain and adding a future-oriented perspective. More specifically, we argue that relational hope encompasses three facets, including relational agency, relational pathways, and relational aspirations, or what we call the wills, ways, and wishes people have in their relationship. We outline specific ways that these three facets may promote well-being in romantic relationships. First, we propose that relational agency—the motivation to achieve relational goals—fuels approach-motivated goals, which in turn promotes higher quality relationships. Additionally, we posit that relational pathways—the perception of sufficient strategies to pursue relational goals—enhance self-regulation to support effective communication and conflict management with a romantic partner. Finally, we propose that relational aspirations—the positive emotions felt in anticipation of future relationship outcomes—foster growth beliefs which in turn promote relationship maintenance and commitment over time. While our model posits that relational hope has many potential benefits for relationships, we also discuss key contexts in which hope may undermine relationships and well-being. Overall, our proposed model of relational hope offers a new area of insight into how hope may shape well-being in romantic relationships.     

Variation, repetition, and choice

Experiment 1 investigated the controlling properties of variability contingencies on choice between repeated and variable responding. Pigeons were exposed to concurrent-chains schedules with two alternatives. In the REPEAT alternative, reinforcers in the terminal link depended on a single sequence of four responses. In the VARY alternative, a response sequence in the terminal link was reinforced only if it differed from the n previous sequences (lag criterion). The REPEAT contingency generated low, constant levels of sequence variation whereas the VARY contingency produced levels of sequence variation that increased with the lag criterion. Preference for the REPEAT alternative tended to increase directly with the degree of variation required for reinforcement. Experiment 2 examined the potential confounding effects in Experiment 1 of immediacy of reinforcement by yoking the interreinforcer intervals in the REPEAT alternative to those in the VARY alternative. Again, preference for REPEAT was a function of the lag criterion. Choice between varying and repeating behavior is discussed with respect to obtained behavioral variability, probability of reinforcement, delay of reinforcement, and switching within a sequence.     

Family-focused management: Treatment of choice for deviant and dependent families

Abstract

Helping professionals working with troubled families takes two approaches. One approach, noting that the identified patient's family's behavioral interactions have positive and negative effects on the patient and his symptoms, advocates involving family members in the treatment process. The other approach, noting that the identified patient alone has the power to resolve his problem, advocates treating the patient independently of the family. This latter approach, in effect, relieves family members of the painful feelings of responsibility. At first glance, these two approaches appear to be in conflict, and it is no wonder that professionals choose to remain with one or the other. Both points of view are valid, so that approaches need to be developed which incorporate both.     

Cognitive‐Behavioral Tasks Accomplished in a Person‐Centered Relational Framework

The authors propose a person‐centered relational framework in which C. R. Rogers's (1957) core conditions remain the primary catalyst of therapeutic change and cognitive‐behavioral work is accomplished while adhering to person‐centered principles. Important ideas asserted include the following: Cognitive‐behavioral tasks occur naturally within the person‐centered approach, knowledge of cognitive‐behavioral theory can increase counselor empathy, and cognitive‐behavioral techniques can be carefully applied within a person‐centered relational framework. Finally, the person‐centered relational framework with other theories is addressed.     

Exploring Characteristics of Children Presenting to Counseling for Grief and Loss

To date, researchers exploring childhood bereavement have largely relied on unstandardized assessment instruments and/or have independently evaluated specific constructs rather than factoring in the dimensionality of loss. The purpose of this study was to utilize psychometrically established instruments to examine the multivariate shared relationship between characteristics of bereaved children referred for counseling--their ages, genders, ethnicities, types of loss, and life stressors—and their behavioral manifestations as well as the relationship between these characteristics and levels of parent-child relational stress. Utilizing archival clinical files, we examined these characteristics from bereaved children (N?=?98) whose parents sought counseling services from two university-based counseling clinics. Two canonical correlational analyses (CCA) were conducted to examine the following: (1) relationship between characteristics of bereaved children and their subsequent behavioral manifestations, (2) relationship between characteristics of bereaved children and levels of parent-child relational stress. Correlational findings from this study provided insight into bereaved children’s manifestations of loss and levels of parent-child relational stress as contingent upon these specific characteristics. Specifically, results indicated a strong relationship between age and bereaved children’s behavioral manifestations. This finding reinforced the importance for clinicians to understand developmental implications when working with bereaved children. Furthermore, caregivers who reported minimal overall external stressors also reported less parent-child relational interference. This finding further emphasizes the importance for caregivers to maintain utmost stability for bereaved children.     

Intrinsic/extrinsic

Several intrinsic/extrinsic distinctions amongst properties, current in the literature, are discussed and contrasted. The proponents of such distinctions tend to present them as competing, but it is suggested here that at least three of the relevant distinctions (including here that between non-relational and relational properties) arise out of separate perfectly legitimate intuitive considerations: though of course different proposed explications of the informal distinctions involved in any one case may well conflict. Special attention is paid to the question of whether a single notion of property is capable of supporting the various distinctions.     

The Role of Beliefs in Mother-Adolescent Conflict: An Application of the Theory of Planned Behavior

This mixed method study applies components of the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen and Fishbein 1980) to mother-adolescent conflict. We examine if three kinds of beliefs—behavioral, control, and normative—predict patterns of family conflict. Forty mother-adolescent dyads completed an open-ended interview, self-report measures of conflict, and an observational measure of family interaction. Hierarchical multiple regressions revealed that mothers’ and adolescents’ beliefs about the costs and benefits of conflict significantly predicted how they interacted and perceived conflict within dyads. Sex differences and differences between mothers and adolescents were identified. This work contributes to our understanding of the role of both general and specific beliefs in family conflict.