The Emergence of Counseling in Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone has endured a turbulent history, including a decadelong civil war and the devastation of Ebola virus disease. Despite the psychological consequences of such events, only limited therapeutic services are available. The authors review mental health services in Sierra Leone and document the emergence of counseling as a profession in the face of challenges. They conclude by highlighting the multiple contributions that professional counselors can make to address critical mental health needs in Sierra Leone.     

An Ecological View of School Counselor Ratios and Student Academic Outcomes: A National Investigation

The effect of student‐to‐school‐counselor ratios on academic outcomes has been widely studied, yet few researchers have taken a multilevel approach. Using the nationally representative High School Longitudinal Study: 2009 dataset, the authors found ratios were significantly associated with student grade point average (GPA) and graduation. Attending a Title I school also was associated with students’ GPA, advanced placement/international baccalaureate credits earned, and postsecondary course taking. The authors discuss implications for advocacy and practice, contextualizing their findings within an ecological framework.     

Are Words Easier to Learn From Infant‐ Than Adult‐Directed Speech? A Quantitative Corpus‐Based Investigation

We investigate whether infant‐directed speech (IDS) could facilitate word form learning when compared to adult‐directed speech (ADS). To study this, we examine the distribution of word forms at two levels, acoustic and phonological, using a large database of spontaneous speech in Japanese. At the acoustic level we show that, as has been documented before for phonemes, the realizations of words are more variable and less discriminable in IDS than in ADS. At the phonological level, we find an effect in the opposite direction: The IDS lexicon contains more distinctive words (such as onomatopoeias) than the ADS counterpart. Combining the acoustic and phonological metrics together in a global discriminability score reveals that the bigger separation of lexical categories in the phonological space does not compensate for the opposite effect observed at the acoustic level. As a result, IDS word forms are still globally less discriminable than ADS word forms, even though the effect is numerically small. We discuss the implication of these findings for the view that the functional role of IDS is to improve language learnability.     

Compensating for an Inattentive Audience

The common ground that conversational partners share is thought to form the basic context for language use. According to the classic view, inferences about common ground, or mutual knowledge, are guided by beliefs about the physical, cognitive, and attentional states of one's communicative partners. Here, we provide a first test of the attention assumption for common ground, the proposal that common ground for a co‐present entity—such as an object or an utterance—can only be formed if a person has evidence that his or her partner has also attended to it. In three experiments, a participant speaker and two partners learned names for novel monster pictures as a group. The speaker was then asked to describe the monsters to each partner separately in a referential communication task. The critical manipulation was the (in)attentiveness of one partner at different points in the study. Analysis of the speaker's referring expressions revealed that speakers assumed their partner shared common ground for the monster names only when that partner exhibited engaged attention as the names were learned. These findings provide key and novel support for the classic proposal that formation of common ground critically depends on assumptions about the attentional state of one's conversational partner.     

Cultural Effects Rather Than a Bilingual Advantage in Cognition: A Review and an Empirical Study

The bilingual advantage hypothesis contends that the management of two languages in the brain is carried out through domain‐general mechanisms, and that bilinguals possess a performance advantage over monolinguals on (nonlinguistic) tasks that tap these processes. Presently, there is evidence both for and against such an advantage. Interestingly, the evidence in favor has been thought strongest in children and older adults, leading some researchers to argue that young adults might be at peak performance levels, and therefore bilingualism is unable to confer an improvement. We conducted a large‐scale review of the extant literature and found that the weight of research pointed to an absence of positive evidence for a bilingual advantage at any age. We next gave a large number of young adult participants a task designed to test the bilingual advantage hypothesis. Reasoning from the literature that young adults from an East Asian (Korean) culture would likely outperform those from a Western (British) culture, we also compared participants on this factor. We found no evidence for a bilingual advantage but did find evidence for enhanced performance in the Korean group. We interpret these results as further evidence against the bilingual advantage hypotheses.     

A qualitative analysis of strategies for managing suicide-related events during deployment from the perspective of Army behavioral health providers,chaplains, and leaders

The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the use of strategies for managing suicide-related events (SREs; i.e., suicide deaths, suicide attempts, and suicidal ideation with a plan and intent to die) during deployment from the perspective of Army decision makers: behavioral health providers (BHPs), chaplains, and leaders. A total of 76 Army personnel participated in individual interviews or focus groups. Participants identified unit watch, weapon removal, medical evacuations, and debriefings as common strategies used to manage SREs in deployed settings. Many of these strategies were highlighted as short-term solutions only. Participants also underscored the importance of unit cohesion and communication among leaders, BHPs, and chaplains to effectively manage SREs. The need for structured guidelines for successfully managing SREs in deployed settings is discussed.     

Somali Women's Reflections on the Adjustment of Their Children in the United States

Somali women were interviewed regarding their children's adjustment. Qualitative analysis revealed 5 themes: cultural comparisons, concerns about children, parents' loss of disciplinary authority, available support, and the future. The women discussed changes in their children, such as loss of respect and threats to use law enforcement against parents. They also discussed their loss of parental authority and the lack of support from U.S. institutions. Implications for schools and mental health professionals are presented. Se entrevistó a mujeres Somalíes con respecto a la adaptación de sus hijos. Los análisis cualitativos revelaron 5 temas: comparaciones culturales, preocupaciones sobre los niños, la pérdida de autoridad disciplinaria de los padres, apoyo disponible y el futuro. Las mujeres hablaron sobre los cambios en sus hijos, como la pérdida de respeto y las amenazas de usar las fuerzas del orden contra sus padres. También hablaron de la pérdida de su autoridad paterna y la falta de apoyo por parte de las instituciones de los Estados Unidos. Se presentan las implicaciones para escuelas y profesionales de la salud mental.     

A Phenomenological Analysis of the Invisibility Syndrome

Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to explore 10 African American men's perceptions of invisibility. Participants perceived invisibility as an extra unwarranted burden that is accompanied by feelings of hopelessness, anxiety, and anger. Participants also coped with invisibility by finding safe havens within the Black community. Implications for counselors are discussed. Se empleó el análisis interpretativo fenomenológico para explorar las percepciones de invisibilidad de 10 varones Afroamericanos. Los participantes percibían la invisibilidad como una carga extra injustificada que va acompañada de sentimientos de desesperanza, ansiedad y rabia. Los participantes también afrontaban la invisibilidad encontrando refugio entre la comunidad Negra. Se discuten las implicaciones para consejeros.     

No Right to Resist? Elise Reimarus's Freedom as a Kantian Response to the Problem of Violent Revolt

One of the greatest woman intellectuals of eighteenth‐century Germany is Elise Reimarus, whose contribution to Enlightenment political theory is rarely acknowledged today. Unlike other social contract theorists, Reimarus rejects a people's right to violent resistance or revolution in her philosophical dialogue Freedom (1791). Exploring the arguments in Freedom, this paper observes a number of similarities in the political thought of Elise Reimarus and Immanuel Kant. Both, I suggest, reject violence as an illegitimate response to perceived political injustice in a way that opposes Locke's strong voluntarism and the absolutism of Hobbes. First, they emphasize the need to maintain the legal state as a precondition for the possibility of external right. Second, they share an optimistic view of the inherently “just” nature of the tripartite republican state. And finally, Reimarus and Kant both outline an alternative, nonviolent response to political injustice that consists in the freedom of public expression and a discourse on the moral enlightenment of man.