Family Correlates of Adolescent Self-Monitoring and Social Competence

The purpose of this study was to investigate linkages between adolescent self-monitoring, global social competence, and parenting and family environment dimensions of support and encouragement of autonomy. The sample consisted of 233 young women and 199 young men at 2 southwestern universities. The primary measures used were the Family Environment Scale (R. H. Moos, 1981), the Parent Behavior Form (L. Worell & J. Worell, 1974), the revised Self-Monitoring Scale (M. Snyder, 1987), and the Texas Social Behavior Inventory (R. Helmreich, J. Stapp, & C. Ervin, 1974). Findings indicated that family variables are more strongly associated with social competence than with self-monitoring; family support was, overall, a more important ingredient of social competence than was autonomy. Women and men had different patterns of associations among specific variables.     

The Unravelling of Identities and Belonging: Criminal Gang Involvement of Youth from Immigrant Families

Grounded in the experiences of 30 gang-involved respondents in Calgary, this Canadian study examined criminal gang involvement of youth from immigrant families. Our analysis showed that gang-involved youth had experienced multiple, severe and prolonged personal and interpersonal challenges in all facets of their lives and that gradual disintegration of their relationships with family, school and community had resulted in the unravelling of self-concept, ethnic identity, sense of belonging and sense of citizenship and progressively propelled them towards membership in high-risk social cliques and criminal gangs. Our findings brought attention to the need for coordinated, comprehensive support for youth from immigrant families through family-based, school-based and community-based programs.     

Development and Validation of the Constructivist Supervisor Scale

The purpose of this research was to develop an instrument for assessing constructivist counselor supervision practices. In an exploratory mode, we also tested supervisee preferences regarding constructivist supervision. Items consistent with constructivist supervision were developed based on a thorough review of the literature and rated by experts in constructivist supervision. Counselors currently receiving supervision (n = 308, 81% female) responded to these items, indicating the extent to which their current or most recent supervisor adhered to these constructivist practices during supervision. Principal components analysis results revealed three main components of constructivist supervision practice: warm and nondirective relationship, past and present experiences, and acceptance of various styles. Preliminary evidence for internal consistency, test–retest reliability, and convergent and discriminant validity of the scale items are reported. Participants also indicated the degree to which they preferred their supervisors’ constructivist practices. The final version of the constructivist supervisor scale, consisting of 29 items, may be used in future research focused on supervision processes as well as in practice to assess the degree to which these core constructivist methods are used during supervision.     

The history,origin, and meaning of Nietzsche’s slave revolt in morality

Abstract

While it is uncontroversial that the slave revolt in morality consists in a denial of the nobles as objects of value, Nietzsche’s account in the Genealogy’s first essay invites ambiguities concerning its origin, ressentiment’s relationship to value creation, and its meaning. In this paper, I address these ambiguities by analyzing the morality of good and evil as an historical artifact of Judeo-Christian tradition, and I argue for a two-stage, non-strategic interpretation of the slave revolt, according to which Judaism and Christianity each made essential and different contributions. The inversion of values began with the Jewish prophets, who claimed the poor were holy and ‘good’ and the rich ‘evil’ (BGE 195), and it was sustained throughout the Second Temple period by the Jewish priests in relation to a ‘priestly-noble’ (GM I 7) conception of the virtuous person as holy and pure. Christ, through his espousal of egalitarianism (A 27), negated the pathos of distance essential to noble values, thus beginning the second phase of the slave revolt where goodness became associated with a distinctly slavish conception of virtue.     

An antinomy of political judgment: Kant,Arendt, and the role of purposiveness in reflective judgment

This article builds on Arendt’s development of a Kantian politics from out of the conception of reflective judgment in the Critique of Judgment. Arendt looks to Kant’s analysis of the beautiful to explain how political thought can be conceived. And yet Arendt describes such Kantian reflection as an empirical undertaking that justifies itself only in relation to the abstract principle of the moral law. The problem for such an account is that the autonomy of the moral law appears to be at odds with the social cohesion of Kantian political life. The ensuing contradiction can be deemed the antinomy of political judgment. Kant’s conception of reflective judgment offers such an inquiry considerably more to work with than Arendt uncovers. In particular, the regulative principle of the purposiveness of nature that is shown to direct all reflection can be seen to offer the solution to this antinomy.     

Transitioning from congregate care: Preparation and outcomes

Of particular concern to child welfare professionals working with youth in foster care is the quality of services rendered to youth in foster care who are imminently making the transition to adulthood and independence, i.e., those at risk for aging out of foster care, many of whom live in congregate care facilities. This qualitative study focuses on the experiences of youth in congregate care in New York City's foster care system, the effectiveness of efforts to prepare youth for life after foster care, and post-discharge outcomes for youth, particularly when discharged to independent living. The study included interviews with professionals as well as young adults who had exited foster care after placements in congregate care settings. Results indicated that professionals and young adults were concerned about the quality of independent living preparation, viewed housing as a serious issue for youth exiting foster care, attributed youth's lack of employment to poor pre-discharge educational and work preparation services, and emphasized the importance of personal connections after youth leave care.     

Virtual reality applications to agoraphobia: a protocol.

Recently, educators and instructional designers have focused on the development and implementation of virtual learning environments that effectively combine theoretical and applied knowledge to teach university students. One of the trusts of the Psychology Virtual Teaching Laboratory in collaboration with the IXTLI observatory is to develop dissemination programs to promote the insertion of virtual reality (VR) technologies applied to rehabilitation in their clinical practice. This paper describes the development of (1) agoraphobia VR learning objects to be use as a teaching support tools in class and (2) a multimedia teaching program that incorporate digital video and VR scenarios address to students in the field of mental health. Promotion among professors and students about the use of this technology will allow us to initiate research in our country as well as to validate contextualized applications for our culture, therefore contributing with new advances in this field.     

Examining HPA-axis functioning as a mediator of the relationship between depression and cognition across the adult lifespan

Altered HPA-axis functioning is a hypothesized mechanism for worsened cognition in depression. The current study examines the indirect effects of depression on processing speed, executive functioning, and memory as a function of the HPA-axis. 38 individuals with a depression diagnosis and 50 healthy controls (HCs) aged 18–86 underwent neuropsychological testing and at-home diurnal salivary cortisol collection. Depression was assessed via structured clinical interviews and rating scales. Cognitive composite scores were derived from factor analysis. Daytime cortisol exposure was estimated using area under the curve (AUC). Depression was associated with higher cortisol levels and slower processing speed . A significant suppression effect of AUC was present on the relationship between depression and processing speed. Limitations include the cross-sectional design and limited sample heterogeneity. Though poorly modulated HPA-axis is one proposed mechanism of cognitive alterations in depression, our results did not support this conclusion for processing speed. Alternative mechanisms should be considered to inform interventions to target cognitive alterations in depression.     

Improving organizational newcomers’ creative job performance through creative process engagement: The moderating role of a synergy diversity climate

Despite the mounting research demonstrating that employee seniority positively relates to creative job performance, we predict that a synergy diversity climate eliminates the employee seniority–creative job performance relationship by unleashing the creative potential of organizational newcomers. Drawing upon the integration-and-learning perspective for managing diversity, Study 1 finds that a synergy diversity climate moderates the relationship between employee seniority and supervisor-rated creative job performance lending support to our hypothesis. Study 2 provides an extension by showing how creative process engagement mediates this moderating effect on self-rated creative performance. Finally, Study 3 replicates and extends Study 2 by demonstrating the mediating role of creative process engagement but utilizing supervisor-rated creative job performance, while again showing synergy diversity climate to be an important boundary condition. In sum, we find that synergy diversity climate, as opposed to fairness and discrimination diversity climate, interacts with employee seniority by facilitating greater creative process engagement for newcomers subsequently impacting creative job performance. We discuss theoretical and practical implications for how the individual-level creative job performance effects may represent a microfoundation to creative team dynamics that confer a sustainable competitive advantage.     

Attention,competition, and the parietal lobes: insights from Balint’s syndrome

Simultanagnosia (resulting from occipito-parietal damage) is a profound visual deficit, which impairs the ability to perceive multiple items in a visual display, while preserving the ability to recognise single objects. Here we demonstrate in a patient presenting with Balint’s syndrome that this deficit may result from an extreme form of competition between objects which makes it difficult for attention to be disengaged from an object once it has been selected.