Negotiating professional and personal biographies in a liquid world: creating space for reflexive innovation in career counselling

This paper explores the constraints to innovative, creative and reflexive careers counselling in an uncertain neo-liberal world. We draw on previously reported research into practitioners’ use of a narrative model for career counselling interviews in England and a Europe-wide auto/biographical narrative study of non-traditional learners in universities. The latter draws on a number of narrative interviews with an asylum seeker, to debate whether such a way of working with people, ‘in a clinical style’, offers contextualised insight into people's struggles to construct a career and a methodology for doing so. The paper also examines the difficulties of creating a ‘good enough’ professional, psychosocial space for experimentation with creative approaches in a marketised guidance world, where more is expected from less.     

Practicing what we know: Multicultural counseling competence among clinical psychology trainees and experienced multicultural psychologists

Multicultural (MC) competence is considered a necessary skill for clinical and counseling psychologists; however, there is little to no research on the assessment of demonstrated multicultural counseling competence (DMCCC) of clinical psychology graduate students. In this study, we developed a MC assessment instrument to assess DMCCC of clinical psychology graduate students compared with MC-experienced psychologists. In addition, we assessed for differences between the endorsement of MC-appropriate strategies and actual use of these strategies in clinical practice, both by MC-experienced psychologists and clinical psychology students. Results revealed significant differences between the DMCCC of clinical psychology graduate students and MC-experienced psychologists. Significant differences also emerged between endorsement of strategies as multiculturally appropriate and likelihood of actual use of these strategies. Findings suggest that future training and competence models should incorporate participants' ability to not only identify multiculturally appropriate strategies but also use these strategies in therapy.     

Keeping up day-specific effects of transformational leadership: the role of followers’ emotion regulation

This diary study examines the role of day-specific transformational leadership for followers’ personal initiative. Building on Affective Events Theory, we proposed a direct effect of day-specific transformational leadership on followers’ personal initiative on the same day. Furthermore, we took a closer look at lagged effects of day-specific transformational leadership. More specifically, we hypothesized that positive effects of one day’s transformational leadership can endure until the next day for followers who apply beneficial emotion regulation strategies. We conducted a diary study over five consecutive working days among 97 employees. Two-level hierarchical linear modelling supported our hypotheses. As expected, day-specific transformational leadership positively predicted followers’ personal initiative on the same day. Furthermore, concerning the association between day-specific transformational leadership and followers’ personal initiative on the following day, there was a positive relation for followers applying beneficial emotion regulation strategies in terms of high cognitive reappraisal and low expressive suppression, respectively.     

Revised Diagnostic Profile 2016: Revisions,Rationale, and Further Thoughts

ABSTRACT

In 2001, a working party at the Anna Freud Centre undertook the task of looking at Anna Freud’s original Provisional Diagnostic Profile and seeing if, in the light of current knowledge, modifications should be made. A broad view of the mind as a complex dynamic system sculpted out of biopsychosocial forces underpins the chapter with reference to allied disciplines and research. The chapter considers the rationale for adding certain features and highlighting and/or reframing others. In shifting the emphases from the original drive theory perspective to an explicitly object relational one, the authors acknowledge the altered metapsychology while arguing that the revisions preserve the original psychoanalytic and developmental template, including the importance of the psychosexual organization. The authors offer their suggestions to the question in 2015: would yet further revisions need to be made and if so which? The working party reconvened in 2016 to further revise the Provisional Diagnostic Profile.     

Real‐World Correlates of Performance on Heuristics and Biases Tasks in a Community Sample

In the current study, we sought to examine whether performance on several heuristics and biases tasks and thinking dispositions was associated with real‐life correlates in a community sample of adults. We examined performance on five heuristics and biases tasks (ratio bias, belief bias in syllogistic reasoning, cognitive reflection, probabilistic and statistical reasoning, and rational temporal discounting), three thinking dispositions (actively open‐minded thinking, future orientation, and avoidance of superstitious thinking), and a questionnaire assessing real‐world correlates in several domains (substance use, driving behavior, financial behavior, gambling behavior, electronic media use, and secure computing). Our heuristics and biases tasks and thinking disposition measures were modestly associated with several real‐world outcomes, including the domains of secure computing, financial behaviors, and the total scores. That is, better performance on the heuristics and biases measures was associated with fewer negative outcomes. We found that the associations were generally higher in males than in females. Heuristics and biases performance and thinking dispositions were unique predictors of real‐world outcomes after statistically controlling for educational attainment and sex differences. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The differential outcomes effect in children with autism

The differential outcomes procedure uses reinforcement unique to each alternative in a conditional discrimination, leading to faster and more accurate learning relative to non‐differential outcomes procedures. In this study, the differential outcomes procedure was used to teach novel tacts of musical instrument sounds to children with autism. For one set of instruments, response‐specific reinforcers were used in combination with social reinforcement. For the other set, reinforcers were provided non‐differentially. Two out of three participants showed enhanced learning in the differential outcomes condition, providing some support of the differential outcomes procedures as a useful tool for teaching individuals with autism. Future research into the differential outcomes effect is warranted to identify the procedural and individual factors that predict its effectiveness.     

Evolution of the neural language network

The evolution of language correlates with distinct changes in the primate brain. The present article compares language-related brain regions and their white matter connectivity in the developing and mature human brain with the respective structures in the nonhuman primate brain. We will see that the functional specificity of the posterior portion of Broca’s area (Brodmann area [BA 44]) and its dorsal fiber connection to the temporal cortex, shown to support the processing of structural hierarchy in humans, makes a crucial neural difference between the species. This neural circuit may thus be fundamental for the human syntactic capacity as the core of language.