Construct and Criterion Validity of the Comprehensive Trail Making Test in Children and Adolescents with Traumatic Brain Injury

The current study examined the construct and criterion validity of the Comprehensive Trail Making Test (CTMT) when used to evaluate children and adolescents with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Participants included 100 children and adolescents, 50 who had sustained TBI and 50 normal comparisons (NC). Analyses indicated that the CTMT factor scores were significantly correlated with tests of perceptual organizational ability, processing speed, and motor function and provided support for its construct validity. Additionally, correlations between the various CTMT scores suggested that a different pattern of associations was present in the TBI group compared to the NC group. Finally, the TBI group performed significantly worse (p < .001) on all of the CTMT scores, including each of the five CTMT trails as well as the factor and composite index scores. Results support the construct and criterion validity of the CTMT when used to assess children and adolescents with TBI.     

A dyadic examination of the role of relationship characteristics and age on relationship satisfaction in a formal mentoring programme

Research was conducted to test ideas derived from Wanberg, Welsh, and Hezlett's (2003) dynamic process model of formal mentoring to examine (1) the role of respect and communication in mentorship relationship satisfaction, and (2) whether the age of the mentor or the protégé would impact those relationship qualities. The sample was comprised of 117 matched mentor–protégé pairs from an organization's formal mentoring programme. We received survey data from both partners and used the Actor–Partner Interdependence Model to examine individual and dyadic effects. Data suggest that protégés' respect for the mentor and communication quality, as perceived by both partners, were independent predictors of mentorship relationship satisfaction. Protégés rated their relationships as more satisfying than did their mentors. Hypotheses regarding age differences in relational qualities were not supported. We suggest that researchers continue to examine formal relationships at the dyadic level, and that practitioners designing formal mentoring programmes consider interventions to enhance communication and respect.     

Responding to unemployment and inequalities in income and health

This paper discusses the social and economic context in which counselling and psychotherapy are practised. The use of ‘outplacement counselling’ and personal skills training programmes for dealing with unemployment and redundancy is criticized. It is argued that they involve a form of psychological reductionism which fails to acknowledge socio-economic realities. Research showing a strong link between inequalities of income and physical and mental health is reviewed. It is suggested that counsellors and psychotherapists have a professional obligation to acknowledge the social and economic circumstances likely to contribute to clients' mental distress and avoid the dangers of reductionism.     

‘Down With Multiculturalism,Book-burning and Fatwas’

Since the 7/7 London bombings, much has been said about the end and at times, the ‘death’ of multiculturalism in both the public and political spaces. Considering whether much of this discourse is little more than a thinly veiled discourse about the presence, role and responsibilities of Muslims in today's Britain, the paper takes the findings of the 1997 Runnymede Report into Islamophobia and uses this as a premise from which to explore those arguments and ideas that have ensued. Taking its title from an article written by Norman Lamont in The Daily Telegraph, the paper questions the sometimes tenuous relationship between ‘multiculturalism’ and notions of ‘Britishness’ as well as their effect and resonance contemporarily on perceptions and attitudes shown towards Muslims.     

Extracting Intrinsic Functional Networks with Feature-Based Group Independent Component Analysis

There is increasing use of functional imaging data to understand the macro-connectome of the human brain. Of particular interest is the structure and function of intrinsic networks (regions exhibiting temporally coherent activity both at rest and while a task is being performed), which account for a significant portion of the variance in functional MRI data. While networks are typically estimated based on the temporal similarity between regions (based on temporal correlation, clustering methods, or independent component analysis [ICA]), some recent work has suggested that these intrinsic networks can be extracted from the inter-subject covariation among highly distilled features, such as amplitude maps reflecting regions modulated by a task or even coordinates extracted from large meta analytic studies. In this paper our goal was to explicitly compare the networks obtained from a first-level ICA (ICA on the spatio-temporal functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data) to those from a second-level ICA (i.e., ICA on computed features rather than on the first-level fMRI data). Convergent results from simulations, task-fMRI data, and rest-fMRI data show that the second-level analysis is slightly noisier than the first-level analysis but yields strikingly similar patterns of intrinsic networks (spatial correlations as high as 0.85 for task data and 0.65 for rest data, well above the empirical null) and also preserves the relationship of these networks with other variables such as age (for example, default mode network regions tended to show decreased low frequency power for first-level analyses and decreased loading parameters for second-level analyses). In addition, the best-estimated second-level results are those which are the most strongly reflected in the input feature. In summary, the use of feature-based ICA appears to be a valid tool for extracting intrinsic networks. We believe it will become a useful and important approach in the study of the macro-connectome, particularly in the context of data fusion.