Grandparents' support for families who have children with disabilities

This study was designed to assess the levels of support provided by grandparents for families who had grandchildren with disabilities. A questionnaire survey of parents was used to assess the levels of practical, financial and emotional support they received from the children's grandparents. Parents were also questioned about their satisfaction with this support. Overall levels of support were low but most parents were nevertheless generally satisfied with the support they had received. However, a quarter of the grandparents were considered to have added to the parent's problems and almost a third of the parents expressed a wish for more support from grandparents.     

A client‐generated psychometric instrument: The development of ‘PSYCHLOPS’

PSYCHLOPS (Psychological Outcome Profiles) is a recently developed, client‐generated, psychometric instrument that can be used as an outcome measure. Based on a similar instrument developed primarily for use in physical illnesses (MYMOP — ‘Measure Your Medical Outcome Profile’), it seeks the client's perspective on their psychological distress. It asks them to describe and then score the problem that troubles them the most at the start of counselling. We describe the development of PSYCHLOPS, including the involvement of the Plain English Campaign and two national mental health organisations: the mental health charity and support group, Depression Alliance (DA) and Primary Care Mental Health Education (PRIMHE). We review the literature and suggest that PSYCHLOPS, by focusing on the problems of greatest priority to the client, might prove a sensitive measure of improvement after counselling.     

No One Wants to Look Cheap: Trade‐Offs Between Social Disincentives and the Economic and Psychological Incentives to Redeem Coupons

Existing research on price deals has largely demonstrated positive financial and nonfinancial consequences of obtaining a deal. In contrast, the research reported here suggests that certain price deals—in this case, coupons—can also produce negative social consequences, such as creating an impression of cheapness or stinginess. Decisions to redeem coupons are shown to involve a trade‐off between the social incentives to avoid coupons and competing economic and psychological incentives to redeem coupons. Consumers strategically adjusted their decision in response to factors that changed the relative strength of these incentives; specifically, they avoided coupons when they were concerned that coupon use would lead to negative social consequences but redeemed coupons when the circumstances reduced these concerns. Although decisions to refuse a coupon might violate principles of economic rationality, it is argued that such decisions are nevertheless functional as they serve important social goals. In this sense, it can be smarter for consumers to forgo a deal rather than obtain one.     

Recognizing rotated faces and Greebles: What properties drive the face inversion effect?

The fact that faces are strongly affected by picture-plane inversion has often been cited as evidence for face-specific mechanisms. It is unclear, however, whether this “face inversion effect” is driven by properties shared by faces or whether the effect is specific to faces as a category. To address this issue, we compared the recognition of faces and novel Greebles, which were specifically matched to faces along various stimulus dimensions. In two experiments, participants were required to name individual faces or Greebles following training at either single or multiple orientations. We found that performance systematically decreased with increasing misorientation from either the upright (Experiment 1) or nearest trained orientation (Experiment 2). Importantly, the magnitude of this orientation effect was similar for both faces and Greebles. Taken together, these results suggest that the face inversion effect may be a consequence of the visual homogeneity of the stimulus category, regardless of the category.     

Featured review article

The primacy of conversation

Steinar Kvale (1996). InterViews: An Introduction to Qualitative Research Interviewing. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc., pp 325. $42.00 (cloth), $19.95 (pb)