Grief Counseling: An Investigation of Counselors' Training,Experience, and Competencies

Grief is prevalent in counseling, but little is known about the current status of counselors’ preparation and competencies to provide effective care. This exploratory study surveyed counselors (N= 369) on grief training, personal and professional experiences with grief, and grief counseling competence. Multiple regression analyses found training and experience were statistically significant predictors of competence. The strong relationship between variables suggests these concepts may be understood as synonymous. Implications for training, practice, and research are discussed.     

Executive function in early childhood: longitudinal measurement invariance and developmental change

This study tested the longitudinal measurement invariance and developmental changes of a newly developed battery of executive function (EF) tasks for use in early childhood. The battery was administered in the Family Life Project-a prospective longitudinal study (N = 1,292) of families who were oversampled from low-income and African American families at the birth of a new child-at assessments conducted when the child was 3, 4, and 5 years old. All 6 individual EF tasks exhibited strong measurement invariance over time. The EF battery, which was derived from the 6 individual tasks, exhibited partial strong invariance over time. Second-order latent growth curve models revealed individual differences in the levels but not rates of change in latent EF ability. The functional form of change was nonlinear; 60% of the total change in EF ability that was observed between the 3- and 5-year assessments occurred between the Year 3 and Year 4 assessments. Results are discussed with respect to the importance of establishing scalable measures of EF ability prior to investigating experiences that predict or are predicted by changes in EF during early childhood.     

Developmental changes in anger expression and attention focus: learning to wait

Being able to wait is an essential part of self-regulation. In the present study, the authors examined the developmental course of changes in the latency to and duration of target-waiting behaviors by following 65 boys and 55 girls from rural and semirural economically strained homes from ages 18 months to 48 months. Age-related changes in latency to and duration of children's anger expressions and attention focus (e.g., self-initiated distraction) during an 8-min wait for a gift were found. On average, at 18 and 24 months of age, children were quick to react angrily and slower to shift attention away from the desired object than they were at later ages. Over time, children were quicker to distract themselves. By 36 months, distractions occurred before children expressed anger, and anger expressions were briefer. At 48 months, children typically made a quick bid to their mothers about having to wait before distracting themselves; on average, they did not appear angry until the latter half of the wait. Unexpectedly, children bid to their mothers as much at age 48 months as they had at 18 months; however, bids became less angry as children got older. Developmental changes in distraction and bidding predicted age-related changes in the latency to anger. Findings are discussed in terms of the neurocognitive control of attention around age 30 months, the limitations of children's self-regulatory efforts at age 48 months, and the importance of fostering children's ability to forestall, as well as modulate, anger.     

Demographic and familial predictors of early executive function development: Contribution of a person-centered perspective

Executive function (EF) skills are integral components of young children’s growing competence, but little is known about the role of early family context and experiences in their development. We examined how demographic and familial risks during infancy predicted EF competence at 36 months of age in a large, predominantly low-income sample of nonurban families from Pennsylvania and North Carolina in the United States. Using latent class analysis, six ecological risk profiles best captured the diverse experiences of these families. Profiles with various combinations of family structure, income, and psychosocial risks were differentially related to EF. Much of the influence of early risks on later EF appears to be transmitted through quality of parent-child interactions during infancy. Findings suggest that early family environments may prove to be especially fruitful contexts for the promotion of EF development.     

The relationship between religion and thought-action fusion: Use of an in vivo paradigm

Research has demonstrated that higher levels of religiosity are positively correlated with thought-action fusion (TAF), a set of cognitive biases found to be associated with obsessive-compulsive symptoms. However, previous studies have exclusively relied on a nomothetic approach to measuring TAF using a single self-report instrument, the thought-action fusion scale. The current study examined the relationship between religiosity and TAF using an in vivo behaviorally-based assessment in which participants thought about and wrote down thoughts of negative events involving loved ones. Forty-three highly religious Protestant Christians were compared to 30 Atheists/Agnostics on their in vivo ratings of anxiety, estimates of likelihood, and moral wrongness related to the negative thoughts. Results indicated that compared to the non-religious participants, those who were highly religious believed that writing and thinking about the negative events was more morally wrong and increased the likelihood of the event. Results are discussed in terms of the potential relationship between certain religious teachings and TAF-related beliefs about the importance, significance, and influence of thoughts.     

The Motivational Impact of Perceived Control on Behavioral Intentions

This research explores the moderated influence of perceived control and its underlying motivational processes. Perceptions of control can change one's motivation to engage in deliberative or nondeliberative processing when forming a behavioral intention. Studies were designed to test the moderated relationships of perceived control on decision theoretic variables (Study 1), to provide experimental evidence of differences in processing relative to levels of perceived control (Study 2), and to examine how levels of control induce motivation to engage cognitive resources toward a decision (Study 3). Findings support predictions that lower vs. higher levels of control result in the formation of behavioral intention based on deliberative rather than nondeliberative processing. Theoretical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Trust and distrust: the perception of trustworthiness of faces in psychopathic and non-psychopathic offenders

Psychopathy is a disorder linked to impairments in social cognition. Individuals with psychopathy and comparison individuals, as defined by the Hare Psychopathy Checklist Revised (Hare, 1991), completed a task requiring complex social judgments. Participants viewed a series of male faces, and made judgments concerning how trustworthy they considered the person pictured to be and the degree to which each face was displaying specific emotions. Judgments of trustworthiness did not differ between the individuals with psychopathy and the comparison individuals. Trustworthiness judgments of the faces negatively correlated with, in particular, ratings of anger in the faces for both groups of participants. The data are discussed with reference to the neural systems, including the amygdala, considered to be involved in the mediation of task performance and also neuro-cognitive models of psychopathy.     

The relation between employee organizational and professional development activities

A model is presented showing hypothesized common and parallel antecedents of employee organizational development activity (ODA) versus professional development activity (PDA). A common antecedent is expected to affect both ODA and PDA, while a parallel antecedent is expected to affect its corresponding work referent. This model was tested using a sample of 197 medical technologists over a four year time period. Prior ODA and PDA were controlled for before testing hypotheses. Results showed that the common antecedent of learning motivation was a robust indicator of both ODA and PDA. Looking at parallel antecedents, job satisfaction and affective organizational commitment had a positive impact on ODA, while occupational satisfaction and affective occupational commitment had a positive impact on PDA. ODA had a negative impact on subsequent intent to leave organization, but PDA did not have a similar impact on intent to leave profession. Study limitations, issues around operationalizing ODA and PDA, and future research directions are discussed.     

Maternal and child contributions to cortisol response to emotional arousal in young children from low-income, rural communities

Relations of maternal and child characteristics to child cortisol reactivity to and recovery from emotional arousal were examined prospectively at approximately 7 months of age (infancy) and then again at approximately 15 months of age (toddlerhood). The sample was diverse and population based (N = 1,292 mother-infant dyads) and included families from predominantly low-income, rural communities. Maternal behavior, family income-to-need ratio and social advantage, and child temperament, attention, and mental development were assessed, and children's saliva was sampled before and after standardized procedures designed to elicit emotional arousal. Maternal engagement in infancy was associated with greater cortisol reactivity at the infancy assessment and with reduced overall cortisol level at the toddler assessment. Also at the toddler assessment, child attention, mental development, and temperamental distress to novelty were associated with increased cortisol reactivity and regulation, whereas temperamental distress to limitations and African American ethnicity were associated with reduced cortisol reactivity. Findings are consistent with prior work linking early caregiving to the development of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis stress response system and with a conceptual model in which developing temperament is characterized by the interplay of emotional reactivity and the emergence of the ability to effortfully regulate this reactivity using attention.