Women Surviving an Abusive Relationship: Grief and the Process of Change

The authors briefly survey the literature about women in abusive relationships and discuss key issues about the change process that arise from that work and are consistent with the grieving process. The constructs of depression, guilt, and decision-making difficulty among women abused by an intimate partner are examined and compared with the perspective of the normal grieving of a major loss. Implications for counseling practice are considered.     

Gender differences in attributions for triathlon performance

Causal attributions given by athletes for performance can influence performance satisfaction, expectation of future success, and persistence in training and competition. Young and inexperienced athletes often show gender differences in sport attribution, with males attributing success to controllable or stable factors like ability and effort, and females attributing success to uncontrollable or unstable factors like luck and social support. Would older, more experienced female triathletes also show a self-defeating attribution style and see themselves with little control over sport performance? Using questionnaires, 624 triathletes (mostly white, 443 males, 181 females) rated the importance of 13 attributions for triathlon performance. Unlike past research, female triathletes attributed more importance than males to factors they can attempt to control (psychological state, diet, and weight). After a recent success, female triathletes downplayed the importance of luck and social support.     

ASSESSING STIMULUS CONTROL IN NATURAL SETTINGS: AN ANALYSIS OF STIMULI THAT ACQUIRE CONTROL DURING TRAINING

When a learner is taught a new response, the stimuli that influence its display are often unknown. The presence or absence of these stimuli alters the probability of occurrence of the response. By identifying the stimuli influencing the probability of newly acquired responses, interventionists may program for their generalization more effectively and efficiently. This investigation describes the application of an operant methodology to assess functional relationships between responses and specific stimulus variables. Four young adults with moderate mental retardation were taught to include “please” as part of requests they made in school. Four environmental stimuli, present during training, were assessed for the controlling properties they acquired. Each of the four was assessed prior to and after training by presenting it in isolation (i.e., the other three were varied). If the presence of a single stimulus associated with training did not occasion “please,” then pairs of stimuli were probed. The results revealed that single-stimulus probing occasioned responding by only 1 learner; paired-stimulus probing set the occasion for including “please” by 2 others. Control of the 4th learner's responding was lost before training was introduced, because he began including “please” in his requests during baseline. The implications of these results are discussed in terms of analyzing stimulus control and promoting stimulus generalization.     

Thinking theologically about modern medicine

In the last century the dictates of modern science and technology have gained an unprecedented authority, sometimes heeded with a religious fervor once directed at religious bodies. Meanwhile, on many subjects, mainline Protestantism has withdrawn from the conversation. This is particularly the case when church and academy have tried to think theologically about the highly technical and at times dramatically nontheological problems of physical health. I propose to look at the ways in which this decline from dominance affects 1) mainline attitudes toward healing; 2) Protestant reflections on moral dilemmas in medicine; 3) religious ideals of ministry to the sick and the poor. After attending to the problems in each arena and then noting promising developments, I conclude with suggestions about reviving a vibrant theological witness in medical ethics and health care.     

Brief report: Cool down: A procedure for decreasing aggression in adults with traumatic head injury

The application of techniques for reducing verbal and physical aggression can be problematic when the procedures are applied to high functioning adults who have sustained a traumatic head injury. In this investigation, the effect of a ‘cool down’ training procedure on two adult males with brain injuries was examined using the same strategy, which was simultaneously applied to both behaviors for 1 subject and applied only to verbal aggression for a second subject. The cool down training procedure included 2 training sessions per week, plus implementation of a modified training program in the test situation. Results revealed that the cool down training program was effective in reducing both verbal and physical aggression and therefore provides an alternative treatment for adults with head injuries.     

Spatial representation of pitch height: the SMARC effect

Through the preferential pairing of response positions to pitch, here we show that the internal representation of pitch height is spatial in nature and affects performance, especially in musically trained participants, when response alternatives are either vertically or horizontally aligned. The finding that our cognitive system maps pitch height onto an internal representation of space, which in turn affects motor performance even when this perceptual attribute is irrelevant to the task, extends previous studies on auditory perception and suggests an interesting analogy between music perception and mathematical cognition. Both the basic elements of mathematical cognition (i.e. numbers) and the basic elements of musical cognition (i.e. pitches), appear to be mapped onto a mental spatial representation in a way that affects motor performance.     

Teachers' perceptions of the frequency and seriousness of violations of ethical standards

Despite nationwide efforts to professionalize public-school teaching, little attention has been given to the matter of standards of professional conduct for teachers. The authors examined teachers' perceptions of the frequency and seriousness of different categories of teacher misconduct. They administered a 34-item questionnaire to 235 school professionals in northwestern South Carolina. For each item, respondents rated the extent to which they agreed or disagreed that the behavior occurred frequently and represented a serious violation of professional ethics. Factor analysis of the ratings of seriousness yielded 3 domains of ethical concerns: (a) student-teacher boundary violations, (b) carelessness in behavior, and (c) subjectivity in grading and instruction. Teachers rated boundary violations as the most serious but least common violations and carelessness in behavior as the most frequent but least serious violation. Problems of subjectivity in grading were rated as moderately frequent and moderately serious. The authors found no differences between male and female teachers or between elementary and secondary teachers in their ratings of the seriousness or frequency of any of the 3 groups of ethical concerns. The authors discuss implications for development of a national code of teacher conduct.     

Congruence in Satir's Model: Its Spiritual and Religious Significance

This article casts into relief the essentialist-existential philosophy implicit in Satir's model of healing using Paul Tillich's systematic philosophical framework. Parallels between Satir's model of the person are drawn with Tillich's ontological categories of essence and existence, individualization and participation, and destiny and freedom. Congruence as the integration of elements in three vital human dimensions: the interpersonal, intrapsychic, and spiritual-universal, is correlated with Tillich's philosophical understanding of salvation. The religious quest is understood as a systemic, multidimensional process that brings the interactive and interdependent personal, interpersonal and spiritual dimensions into a restored unity. Thus Satir's rehumanization project and Tillich's religious quest are shown to coincide.