Counselling psychology in New Zealand

This article offers a brief overview of the history of counselling psychology in New Zealand. It describes current postgraduate study options and registration pathways as well as the institutions and organisations that provide legislative and professional membership and support to counselling psychologists in New Zealand. Data collected from a national survey in 2014 provide insight into the demographics of the profession in New Zealand, the theoretical frameworks that are utilised and employment opportunities that exist for counselling psychologists. The article also highlights the uniqueness of a cultural and contextual approach that aligns itself with New Zealand’s founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi/te Tiriti o Waitangi which is based on the principles of partnership, participation and protection. It concludes with the challenges the profession face as a new scope of practice. These challenges include establishing a professional identity in the mental health delivery system in New Zealand and responding to an ever increasing multicultural society.     

Connecting to belonging: a cross-disciplinary inquiry into rural Australian Anglican Church engagements with people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds

People from diverse backgrounds enrich the rural, regional, and remote communities where they relocate and settle. Research about rural diversity tends to focus on demographics (age, gender, country of origin) while ignoring personal narratives of integration, for example, engagements with religious institutions (such as the local Christian church). This article presents the research themes from an investigation using co-operative inquiry into rural diversity and the Anglican Church, with specific reference to the Australian experience. It is a cross-disciplinary dialogic exchange between social workers and theologians. Positive narratives about connection, welcome, participation, and belonging are shared.     

Do Parent and Teacher Report of ADHD Symptoms in Children Differ by SES and Racial Status?

Parent and teacher reports of symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children often differ from each other. These informant report differences may occur in systematic ways that vary by child socioeconomic status (SES) and race, but little is known about how SES and race together relate to parent and teacher report of ADHD symptoms in school-aged children. We examined the relationship between child SES, child race and parent and teacher reports of ADHD symptoms in two samples of school-aged Caucasian and African American children being evaluated for ADHD (N = 1056; N = 317). Multivariate regression was used to predict parent and teacher reports of ADHD symptoms from child SES, race, age, gender and interaction terms. The Wald test of parameter constraints was used to test the contrast between the predictors of interest and parent and teacher report of symptoms. In the second sample, we also examined observer report measures of ADHD symptoms during one-to-one testing and in the classroom. In both samples, lower SES was associated with higher levels of inattention symptoms, as reported by teachers, but not by parents. Lower SES was also associated with higher levels of hyperactivity/impulsivity symptoms, as reported by both teachers and parents. African American race was associated with higher levels of inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity symptoms reported by teachers than reported by parents. Observer report measures showed a different pattern of associations with SES and race. Investigating how children’s SES and race influence cross-informant agreement on ratings of children’s behavior might lead to the development of better assessment practices and more accurate diagnoses for diverse child populations.     

Value Priorities and Organ Donation in Young Adults

This research identifies major personal values among American university students that predict organ-donation registration with the Department of Motor Vehicles. Participants responded to a factual test of their knowledge about organ donation, indicated whether or not they had registered as posthumous donors, and filled out a personality inventory measuring their personal values (Schwartz, 1992, 1994). The data indicated a high level of factual knowledge about organ donation; and the greater the level of knowledge, the more likely participants were registered to donate their organs. Also, participants higher in benevolence, universalism, achievement, and stimulation were more likely to have registered to donate their organs. The results are discussed in terms of the need to develop more effective health-communication campaigns by using specific health-education messages tailored to students majoring in different disciplines or to people in various occupations as a means of increasing their willingness to donate.     

The Association Between Current Intergenerational Family Relationships and Sibling Structure

The authors examined the relationship between sibling structure variables (i.e., gender, number of sisters, number of brothers, sibling spacing, number of siblings, and birth order, all men, and all women siblings) and current relationships with parents and spouse/partners. Participants included 519 adults between the ages of 19 and 59 years. Two separate canonical correlations were conducted. The results for men indicated that being a younger man with an all‐male sibling group was related to more intimacy with parents and more intimidation by parents. For women, being an older woman with more brothers and more siblings was related to less intimidation by parents and less intimacy with parents and spouses/partners.     

Haptic object recognition: how important are depth cues and plane orientation?

Raised-line drawings of familiar objects are very difficult to identify with active touch only. In contrast, haptically explored real 3-D objects are usually recognised efficiently, albeit slower and less accurately than with vision. Real 3-D objects have more depth information than outline drawings, but also extra information about identity (eg texture, hardness, temperature). Previous studies have not manipulated the availability of depth information in haptic object recognition whilst controlling for other information sources, so the importance of depth cues has not been assessed. In the present experiments, people named plastic small-scale models of familiar objects. Five versions of bilaterally symmetrical objects were produced. Versions varied only in the amount of depth information: minimal for cookie-cutter and filled-in outlines, partial for squashed and half objects, and full for 3-D models. Recognition was faster and much more accurate when more depth information was available, whether exploration was with both hands or just one finger. Novices found it almost impossible to recognise objects explored with two hand-held probes whereas experts succeeded using probes regardless of the amount of depth information. Surprisingly, plane misorientation did not impair recognition. Unlike with vision, depth information, but not object orientation, is extremely important for haptic object recognition.     

Paranormal Encounters as Eyewitness Phenomena: Psychological Determinants of Atypical Perceptual Interpretations

Many people who report paranormal sightings (e.g., Bigfoot and UFO aliens) are apparently sincere. This places many such sightings in the category of eyewitness errors, rather than of deliberate deception. Recent research has supported this idea; in an earlier paper, we demonstrated that paranormal beliefs are facilitated by tendencies toward attention deficit hyperactive disorder, dissociation, and depression. These characteristics predicted specific patterns of beliefs in several paranormal phenomena. The present research addressed the question of whether such psychological tendencies would tend to create bias in perception and interpretation as well as in belief- in whether a person’s identification of a given stimulus as paranormal in nature would be influenced by the same factors previously demonstrated to influence paranormal beliefs. This hypothesis was supported. Specifically, those with dissociative tendencies were significantly more likely to identify given stimulus items as paranormal in nature than were those with lower dissociation scores. Dissociation was further shown to be related to paranormal beliefs, consistent with earlier findings. Results are discussed in terms of the reconfigurative dynamics known to operate in areas of human cognition such as eyewitness identification, and in terms of the generality of those effects to the realm of paranormal sightings.