Filling in the Gaps: Listening Through Dialogue

Over the past 30 years, technology has been introduced into higher education shifting the ways in which learning and student engagement occurs. While the literature suggests that technology offers benefits for improving educational outcomes, few studies have examined how benefits are achieved. This case study presents how the students and instructor of a course on postmodern theory and family therapy developed a praxis-based approach using a digital platform to improve pedagogy. Specifically, using a reflective approach based on ethnomethodology, this paper presents how the members of this course achieved a transformative generative dialogue using an online, simultaneous multi-user document, file-sharing and editing platform. This paper stresses the importance of all members of a course participating in the use of an interactive technological platform to facilitate open dialogue and collaboration.     

Developmental parallels in understanding minds and bodies

A recent article by Onishi and Baillargeon presents evidence that 15-month-old infants attribute false beliefs (FBs) to other people. If correct, it lends dramatic new support to the idea that mental state concepts ("theory of mind") emerge from a specialized neurocognitive mechanism that matures during the second year of life. But it also raises new puzzles concerning the FB task--puzzles that have intriguing parallels in results from infants' reasoning about solid bodies.     

Mindfulness and Marital Satisfaction

This study investigated the relationships among mindfulness, marital satisfaction, and perceived spousal similarity. All 95 subjects responded to a questionnaire measuring each of these variables, and an additional series of demographic variables. A significant positive relationship was found between mindfulness and marital satisfaction, with no statistically significant relationship found between perceived spousal similarity and marital satisfaction. There was a stronger correlation between mindfulness and marital satisfaction than the correlation between marital satisfaction and any of the other variables, including similarity. These results carry meaningful implications for the role of mindfulness techniques within the context of building and maintaining happy marital relationships and general well-being.     

Brain lesion and memory functioning: Short-term memory deficit is independent of lesion location

We analyzed the effects of patterns of brain lesions from penetrating head injuries on memory performance in participants of the Vietnam Head Injury Study (Grafman et al., 1988). Classes of lesion patterns were determined by mixture modeling (L. K. Muthén & B. O. Muthén, 1998-2004). Memory performance was assessed for short-term memory (STM), semantic memory, verbal episodic memory, and visual episodic memory. The striking finding was that large STM deficits were observed in all classes of brain-injured individuals, regardless of lesion location pattern. These effects persist despite frequent concomitant effects of depressive symptomatology and substance dependence. Smaller deficits in semantic memory, verbal episodic memory, and visual episodic memory depended on lesion location, in a manner roughly consistent with the existing neuropsychological literature. The theoretical and clinical implications of the striking, seemingly permanent STM deficits in individuals with penetrating head injuries are discussed.     

Sleep in children improves memory performance on declarative but not procedural tasks

Sleep supports the consolidation of memory in adults. Childhood is a period hallmarked by huge demands of brain plasticity as well as great amounts of efficient sleep. Whether sleep supports memory consolidation in children as in adults is unclear. We compared effects of nocturnal sleep (versus daytime wakefulness) on consolidation of declarative (word-pair associates, two-dimensional [2D] object location), and procedural memories (finger sequence tapping) in 15 children (6-8 yr) and 15 adults. Beneficial effects of sleep on retention of declarative memories were comparable in children and adults. However, opposite to adults, children showed smaller improvement in finger-tapping skill across retention sleep than wakefulness, indicating that sleep-dependent procedural memory consolidation depends on developmental stage.     

Do Childhood Externalizing Disorders Predict Adult Depression? A Meta-Analysis

Childhood externalizing disorders have been linked to adult affective disorders, although some studies fail to substantiate this finding. Multiple longitudinal cohort studies identifying childhood psychopathology and their association with adult psychiatric illness have been published. To examine the association between childhood externalizing symptoms or disorders and the development of adult depression across cohorts, a meta-analysis was performed. Potential studies were identified using a PubMed search through November 2013. All published, prospective, longitudinal, community-sampled cohort studies of children (≤ 13 years) with externalizing symptoms or disorders (aggression, conduct problems, oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder), reassessed in adulthood (≥ 18 years) for depressive disorders (major depressive disorder, depressive disorder NOS, or dysthymic disorder) were included. A random effects model was used to summarize the pooled effect sizes. Ancillary analyses considered covariates that could account for variance among studies. Ten studies representing eight cohorts of children initially assessed at age 13 or younger (N?=?17,712) were included in the meta-analysis. Childhood externalizing behavior was associated with adult depressive disorders (OR?=?1.52, 95 % confidence interval?=?1.27–1.80, p?相似文献   

Malingering on the Personality Assessment Inventory: identification of specific feigned disorders

Profile validity is a primary consideration in the clinical assessment of psychopathology. Several indicators of negative impression management have been developed for the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI; Morey, 1991) that can both indicate its presence and help differentiate effortful negative distortion from distortion arising from cognitive sets associated with psychopathology. In this study, we tested a method designed to delineate the specific Clinical scales relevant for interpretation of deliberately feigned disorders. We used associations between the Negative Impression Management (NIM) scale and Clinical scales in the normative standardization sample to derive NIM predicted scale scores in a regression framework. We contrasted these predicted scores with observed scores on Clinical scales to yield NIM predicted discrepancies hypothesized to identify those Clinical scales most salient for the interpretation of negative distortion. We found this method to be effective in identifying particular distortion on the relevant scales for individuals attempting to feign 3 specific diagnoses (major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and schizophrenia).     

Stage-environment fit during adolescence: trajectories of family relations and adolescent outcomes

Within the framework of stage-environment fit theory, the authors examined the contribution of family relations to adolescent outcomes concurrently and longitudinally, as well as the moderating effects of gender and ethnicity in these associations. Data came from a longitudinal study of European American and African American families from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds. Results demonstrated that gender and ethnicity influenced both the level and rate of change in family relations and adolescent outcomes. Family relations contributed either concurrently or longitudinally to at least 1 of the adolescent outcomes. The effects of gender and ethnic moderation differed according to both the time frame and the outcome assessed.     

Experiencing education in the new Christian schools in the United Kingdom: listening to the male graduates

The new independent Christian schools developed by parents and evangelical churches in the United Kingdom since the late 1960s remain controversial among both Christian and secular educators. In response to this controversy, the present study traced 106 men who had graduated from these schools between 1985 and 2003 and analysed their evaluation of the education they had received in these schools within four main themes: the quality of the education, the context of Christian and moral nurture, the quality of relationships (among the pupils, with the teachers and with the wider world) and preparation received for life after leaving school. Although there were some issues of criticism, the balance of opinion among the former pupils within all four areas was generally supportive of the new independent Christian schools, which were generally perceived as having prepared them well for life.