Integrative problem-centered metaframeworks therapy II: planning, conversing, and reading feedback

This is the second of 2 articles presenting Integrative Problem Centered Metaframeworks (IPCM) Therapy, a multisystemic, integrative, empirically informed, and common factor perspective for family, couple, and individual psychotherapy. The first article presented IPCM's foundation concepts and Blueprint for therapy, focusing on the first Blueprint component—Hypothesizing or assessment. This article, focusing on intervention, presents the other 3 Blueprint components—Planning, Conversing, and Feedback. Articulated through the Blueprint, intervention is a clinical experimental process in which therapists formulate hypotheses about the set of constraints (the Web) within a client system that prevents problem resolution, develop a therapeutic Plan based on those hypotheses, implement the Plan through a coconstructed dialogue with the clients, and then evaluate the results. If the intervention is not successful, the results become feedback to modify the Web, revise the Plan, and intervene again. Guided by the therapeutic alliance, this process repeats until the presenting problems resolve. IPCM Planning sequentially integrates the major empirically and yet‐to‐be empirically validated therapies and organizes their key strategies and techniques as common factors. Conversing and Feedback employ empirical STIC^® (Systemic Therapy Inventory of Change) data collaboratively with clients to formulate hypotheses and evaluate interventions. This article emphasizes the art and science of IPCM practice.     

A perceptually based comparison of image similarity metrics

The assessment of how well one image matches another forms a critical component both of models of human visual processing and of many image analysis systems. Two of the most commonly used norms for quantifying image similarity are L1 and L2, which are specific instances of the Minkowski metric. However, there is often not a principled reason for selecting one norm over the other. One way to address this problem is by examining whether one metric, better than the other, captures the perceptual notion of image similarity. This can be used to derive inferences regarding similarity criteria the human visual system uses, as well as to evaluate and design metrics for use in image-analysis applications. With this goal, we examined perceptual preferences for images retrieved on the basis of the L1 versus the L2 norm. These images were either small fragments without recognizable content, or larger patterns with recognizable content created by vector quantization. In both conditions the participants showed a small but consistent preference for images matched with the L1 metric. These results suggest that, in the domain of natural images of the kind we have used, the L1 metric may better capture human notions of image similarity.     

Parsimony and Complexity: Developing and Testing Theories of Affective Intelligence

The theory of affective intelligence posits that an individual's emotions help govern a reliance on political habits or, alternatively, deliberation and attention to new political information. Some of the evidence adduced draws on the fact that voters who are anxious about their own party's candidate do not rely blindly on their partisanship but instead consider policy and personality when they vote. In a provocative paper, Ladd and Lenz (2008 ) argue that emotions reflect an evaluative judgment, akin to likes and dislikes, that has little to say about attention and habit. Here we examine the ANES data from 1980 to 2004 and find that the affective intelligence theory's original findings remain statistically robust. On closer examination, we also learn that Ladd and Lenz reformulated the theoretical test by using a different operationalization of affect and a different dependent variable and found results at variance from ours. We find it an inappropriate test. In the end, we agree with Ladd and Lenz that cross‐sectional data cannot crisply test the short‐term impact of emotions on attention and habit and concur that ultimately experiments will move the debate forward. We further observe that Brader's (2005, 2006 ) powerful field experiments explicitly test the special effect of emotions on attention and judgment and support the affective intelligence model.     

On Habermas’s Critique of Husserl

Over four decades, Habermas has put to paper many critical remarks on Husserl’s work as occasion has demanded. These scattered critical engagements nonetheless do add up to a coherent (if contestable) position regarding the project of transcendental phenomenology. This essay provides a comprehensive reconstruction of the arguments Habermas makes and offers a critical assessment of them. With an eye in particular to the theme of intersubjectivity (a theme of fundamental interest to both thinkers), it is argued that Habermas’s arguments do indeed show up deficiencies in Husserlian phenomenology and yet that they do not succeed in proving that we must abandon the methods and tasks of phenomenological research. On the contrary, it is argued that phenomenological methods may well be needed in order to investigate certain philosophical questions that Habermas’s theory of communication has thus far only partially addressed.     

Parenting in relation to child and adolescent vocational development

Processes of child and adolescent vocational development include acquisition of knowledge, beliefs, and values about work options and requirements, exploration of interests that will be relevant for occupational interest development, development of academic aspirations, self-efficacy, expectations, and attainment. These elements serve to provide preparation for entry into a range of occupations and provide for the establishment of vocational aspirations, occupational self-efficacy, expectations, planning, and attainment. Parenting occurs within a family context influenced by a myriad of factors, including availability of financial capital, human capital, social capital, child agency, work-family interfacing, family roles, family structure, and the historical conditions affecting parents. These family contextual factors promote our understanding of differences in parenting in relation to child and adolescent vocational development. Far more complex than specific steps to entering the labor market per se, child and adolescent vocational development includes the interfacing of parenting and developmental processes.     

Physical self-concept and self-esteem mediate cross-sectional relations of physical activity and sport participation with depression symptoms among adolescent girls.

The authors tested whether physical self-concept and self-esteem would mediate cross-sectional relations of physical activity and sport participation with depression symptoms among 1,250 girls in 12th grade. There was a strong positive relation between global physical self-concept and self-esteem and a moderate inverse relation between self-esteem and depression symptoms. Physical activity and sport participation each had an indirect, positive relation with global physical self-concept that was independent of objective measures of cardiorespiratory fitness and body fatness. These correlational findings provide initial evidence suggesting that physical activity and sport participation might reduce depression risk among adolescent girls by unique, positive influences on physical self-concept that operate independently of fitness, body mass index, and perceptions of sports competence, body fat, and appearance.     

Social Categorization Moderates Social Projection

When categorized into social groups, people view members of in-groups, but not members of out-groups, as being similar to themselves. In three experiments, social categorization moderated the spread of social projection in both minimal and value-tagged laboratory groups and regardless of whether individual perceivers judged both groups or only one. The categorization effect tracked changes in the perceiver's group status so that most perceivers projected only to present but not past in-groups. The lack of out-group projection supported an anchoring hypothesis, according to which self-referent information is engaged only when it is considered applicable to the judgment at hand. The induction hypothesis and the differentiation hypothesis, which predicted positive and negative out-group projection, respectively, were not supported. Implications for theories of intergroup perception and bias are discussed.     

The Effective Use of Secondary Data

In primary data analysis the individuals who collect the data also analyze it; for meta-analysis an investigator quantitatively combines the statistical results from multiple studies of a phenomenon to reach a conclusion; in secondary data analysis individuals who were not involved in the collection of the data analyze the data. Secondary data analysis may be based on the published data or it may be based on the original data. Most studies of animal cognition involve primary data analysis; it was difficult to identify any that were based on meta-analysis; secondary data analysis based on published data has been used effectively, and examples are given from the research of John Gibbon on scalar timing theory. Secondary data analysis can also be based on the original data if the original data are available in an archive. Such an archive in the field of animal cognition is feasible and desirable.