Introduction to special section of the Journal of Family Psychology, advances in mixed methods in family psychology: integrative and applied solutions for family science

Mixed methods in family psychology refer to the systematic integration of qualitative and quantitative techniques to represent family processes and settings. Over the past decade, significant advances have been made in study design, analytic strategies, and technological support (such as software) that allow for the integration of quantitative and qualitative methods and for making appropriate inferences from mixed methods. This special section of the Journal of Family Psychology illustrates how mixed methods may be used to advance knowledge in family science through identifying important cultural differences in family structure, beliefs, and practices, and revealing patterns of family relationships to generate new measurement paradigms and inform clinical practice. Guidance is offered to advance mixed methods research in family psychology through sound principles of peer review.     

A multidisciplinary treatment for encopresis in children with developmental disabilities

Achieving continence of one's bowel movements is a key step in development and failure to do so leads to many negative consequences. Treatments for encopresis appearing in the literature have employed behavioral strategies; medications such as suppositories, laxatives, or enemas; and in some studies a combination of these approaches. To date, attempts to extend successful treatments for encopresis in typically developing children to those with developmental disabilities have been limited. The current study included three participants diagnosed with developmental disabilities who had a history of encopresis. None of the participants had a continent bowel movement under baseline conditions. Continent bowel movements increased during treatment that included the addition of suppositories to elicit continent bowel movements. Two participants began having independent continent bowel movements (i.e., without requiring suppositories) and medication was successfully faded out for the remaining participant. Treatment took between 13 and 21 days.     

Reconsidering research on self-humanizing: The importance of mean comparative judgments

Self-humanization is defined as the tendency to view oneself as more essentially human than others. Researchers have claimed that people attribute human nature traits more strongly to themselves than to others, but not uniquely human traits. In this article we suggest that such claims are based on the misinterpretation of results. Most studies have not presented mean comparative judgments, making it impossible to determine whether people thought they possessed characteristics less strongly or more strongly than the average person. We found that people (N = 256) in Poland, Italy, and Korea perceived themselves as possessing desirable human nature and uniquely human characteristics more than others, as possessing undesirable uniquely human traits less than others, and as similar to others in terms of undesirable human nature characteristics. It seems that being more human than others means possessing some traits more than others and possessing some traits less than others.     

Frontal EEG alpha band asymmetry as a predictor of reasoning deficiency in depressed people

Cognitive deficits in depression are mostly apparent in executive functions, especially when integration of information and reasoning is required. In parallel, there are also numerous studies pointing to the frontal alpha band asymmetry as a psychophysiological marker of depression. In this study, we explored the role of frontal alpha asymmetry as a potential factor explaining the cognitive problems accompanying depression. Twenty-six depressed and 26 control participants completed a reasoning task and underwent 5 minutes of electroencephalography recording. In line with the previous studies, depressed people showed difficulties with reasoning but we did not observe the relationship between frontal asymmetry in the alpha band and depression. However, we found that in the depressed group the frontal alpha asymmetry index was characterised by larger variance than in the control group, and it was also a strong predictor of cognitive functioning exclusively in the depressed group. Our results point to the disruption of a psychophysiological balance, reflected in changed frontal alpha asymmetry (into more left-sided frontal asymmetry in the alpha band, reflecting more right-sided cortical activity) as a possible brain correlate of cognitive disturbances present in depressive disorders.     

The Social Construction of Emotions: A New Direction in the Pastoral Work of Healing

Interviews with pastoral practitioners revealed that exploration of feelings, both personal and interpersonal, is considered the sine qua non of pastoral care and counseling. This emphasis on personal and interpersonal feelings is largely attributable to the enduring influence of Carl Rogers on contemporary pastoral care and counseling. While recognizing that Rogers was not as narrowly focused on personal and interpersonal relationships and oblivious to the larger social order than is generally assumed, I contend that he did not give sufficient attention to the fact that emotions are socially constructed and draw on recent literature on the social construction of emotions and on critical race theory to argue for a new direction in the pastoral work of healing, one that takes more adequate account of the sociocultural factors that create and sustain unhealthy emotions and that recognizes that emotions are signals about the social order.     

The interface of mental and emotional health and pregnancy in urban indigenous women: Research in progress

Research among indigenous women in Australia has shown that a number of lifestyle factors are associated with poor obstetric outcomes; however, little evidence appears in the literature about the role of social stressors and mental health among indigenous women. The not‐for‐profit organization beyondblue established a “Depression Initiative” in Australia. As part of this they provided funding to the Townsville Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Service in the “Mums and Babies” clinic. The aim of this was to establish a project to (a) describe the mental health and level of social stressors among antenatal indigenous women and (b) assess the impact of social stressors and mental health on perinatal outcome. A purposive sample of 92 indigenous women was carried out. Culturally appropriate research instruments were developed through consultations with indigenous women's reference groups. The participants reported a range of psychosocial stressors during the pregnancy or within the last 12 months. Significant, positive correlations emerged between the participants' Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS; J. Cox, J. Holden, & R. Sagovsky, 1987) score and the mothers' history of child abuse and a history of exposure to domestic violence. A more conservative cutoff point for the EPDS (>9 vs. >12) led to 28 versus 17% of women being identified as “at risk” for depression. Maternal depression and stress during pregnancy and early parenthood are now recognized as having multiple negative sequelae for the fetus and infant, especially in early brain development and self‐regulation of stress and emotions. Because of the cumulative cultural losses experienced by Australian indigenous women, there is a reduced buffer to psychosocial stressors during pregnancy; thus, it is important for health professionals to monitor the women's emotional and mental well‐being.     

A Model of Knower-Level Behavior in Number Concept Development

Abstract We develop and evaluate a model of behavior on the Give- N task, a commonly used measure of young children's number knowledge. Our model uses the knower-level theory of how children represent numbers. To produce behavior on the Give- N task, the model assumes that children start out with a base rate that makes some answers more likely a priori than others but is updated on each experimental trial in a way that depends on the interaction between the experimenter's request and the child's knower level. We formalize this process as a generative graphical model, so that the parameters—including the base rate distribution and each child's knower level—can be inferred from data using Bayesian methods. Using this approach, we evaluate the model on previously published data from 82 children spanning the whole developmental range. The model provides an excellent fit to these data, and the inferences about the base rate and knower levels are interpretable and insightful. We discuss how our modeling approach can be extended to other developmental tasks and can be used to help evaluate alternative theories of number representation against the knower-level theory.     

Freedom as praxis: a comparative analysis of August Cieszkowski and Nikolaj Berdjaev

This essay attempts to elaborate a first thorough comparative analysis of August Cieszkowski and Nikolaj Berdjaev. Although the latter is well known as one of the most important Russian philosophers, the former is hardly known beyond the Polish borders. This general lack of recognition contrasts with the fact that Cieszkowski played a significant role in nineteenth century philosophy in Germany, France, Poland and Russia. A comparative analysis of Cieszkowski and Berdjaev will undergird the idea that Cieszkowski was not merely a ‘marginal’ figure in the history of philosophy. This essay has sought the reasons why Berdjaev considered himself to a large extent as a disciple of Cieszkowski. The stress is put on the central aspects of both philosophers’ thinking: freedom, praxis and the way they relate to morality in general.