A counselling service as a growth centre

The Associates programme at the University of East Anglia is designed as an opportunity for self-development and as a testing ground for those who want to explore their own helping abilities. The structure and content of the programme are described; some examples are provided of the range of follow-up activities which have arisen from it; and attention is given to the potential of the programme as a contribution to the development of the institution as a community.     

Identities and Their Uses: Response to ��Rate, Probability And Matching�� by Rachlin And Locey

Some of the differences between Rachlin & Locey (2010) and Thorne (2010) are due to what assumptions are taken as givens versus questionable. Most of the other apparent differences are largely linguistic and can be resolved by agreeing on terminology. The identity combining both rate and probability of reinforcement is general, has already revealed order not previously noted, even in its currently simple form, and provides a way of incorporating additional variables known to influence and characterize behavior.     

Against Radical Enactivism’s narrowmindedness about phenomenality

Radical Enactivism rejects representationalism but nonetheless allows the phenomenal character of perceptual experience as supervening on brain bound elements. In this paper, I argue that Radical Enactivism should reject the possibility of wholly brain-bound phenomenal experience. I propose a way of individuating perceptual experiences that does not depend on representationalism and raises a problem to the view defended by Hutto and Myin (Radicalizing Enactivism: basic minds without content. MIT Press, Cambridge, 2012) according to which, with respect to phenomenality, it is possible to adopt a view that partly construes experience in terms of engagement with the environment. I argue that Radical Enactivism should change: either deny that the environment plays any role in an account of the phenomenal character or embrace the view that the phenomenal properties of experiences are at least partly constituted by the environment itself.

     

Posttraumatic stress severity is associated with coping motives for alcohol use among in-patient and community recruited adolescents

Background and Objectives: A growing body of work suggests individuals with more severe post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) are at higher risk for developing problematic alcohol use outcomes. Extending work from the adult literature, the present study was the first to examine the extent to which PTSS is related to drinking motives for alcohol use in both clinical and non-clinical samples of adolescents.

Design: Hierarchical regression analyses were used to predict coping motives for alcohol use from PTSS, above and beyond demographic variables, alcohol use frequency, and other alcohol use motives.

Methods: Trauma-exposed adolescents before entering treatment (Sample 1 n?=?41) and recruited from the local community (Sample 2 n?=?55) self-reported on PTSS and alcohol use motives.

Results: PTSS positively predicted coping motives for alcohol use after controlling for age, gender, and alcohol use frequency.

Conclusions: The current study highlights the need to consider both PTSS severity, as well as underlying cognitive mechanisms (e.g., motives), to better understand the etiology of problematic alcohol use among trauma-exposed youth. Future work focused on clarifying the trajectory of alcohol use motives and problems as a function of PTSS is needed.     

Robert Thompson: Karl Lashley's heir?

Robert Thompson spent a year as a research assistant at the Yerkes Laboratory of Primate Biology in Orange Park, Florida, where Karl Lashley was the director. After Lashley's death, Thompson began a search for the “locus of the engram,” which Lashley had been unable to find, eventually providing evidence supporting Wilder Penfield's conception of a centrencephalic system. Although Thompson's search was ultimately more successful than Lashley's, his name and accomplishments are little known outside a small circle of neuroscientists. The reasons for this lack of recognition of “Lashley's Heir” are discussed.     

Counselling in the United Kingdom: past, present and future

We chart the development of counselling in Britain since the Second World War through to the present and speculate about possible directions counselling may take in the future. Our major, but not exclusive, focus is on counselling as a developing profession and the particular role that the British Association for Counselling has played in this development. To this end, we consider some of the professional issues that have preoccupied practitioners in the field and those that may do so in the future. Thus, amongst others, we consider the relationship between counselling and psychotherapy, the costs and benefits of counselling's increasing visibility in British society, the role that supervision has come to play in the maintenance of professional standards, the debate that has surrounded the issue of counsellor accreditation/registration, the development of standards and ethics and the tension that exists between the relational and technical aspects of counselling. Counselling does not exist in a vacuum, and this is seen most strikingly in the speculations that we make about future developments of counselling. Thus, for example, we argue that counselling will have to grapple with the increasing emphasis that society places on the accountability of human services and with the inexorable progress occurring in the area of technological development. We note that counselling's response to these significant trends will have to be made against the backdrop of the continuing dissolution of barriers between previously distinct areas of human knowledge .     

Trend and rhythm analysis of time-series data using complex demodulation

Biological time-series data collected over long intervals generally show combined systematic and periodic fluctuations. Comprehensive analysis of such data requires separation of the trend and rhythmic components. Most available time-series analytic techniques do not explicitly extract the trend, and do implicitly assume the underlying rhythms are simple symmetrical sinusoids, whose amplitude and phase values remain constant throughout the recorded interval. Neither assumption is very accurate when dealing with biological data, and the stationarity assumption in particular becomes harder to defend as experiments extend over days or even weeks. Complex demodulation (CD) is described here as a technique for separation of trend from cyclic components, and multiple complex demodulation (MCD) as a technique for extraction of all possible frequencies in the data set, along with their moment-by-moment amplitude and phase values.     

Gender Differences in the Relationship of Language Development to Disruptive Behavior and Peer Relationships in Preschoolers

The present study examined whether there are gender differences among preschoolers in how language development is related to disruptive behavior and peer relationships. Participants were 185 largely minority, preschool children from low income families and their 16 teachers. Videotaped observations were coded to assess disruptive and off-task behavior in group learning situations. Teachers rated disruptive behavior and the quality of peer relationships and they provided information about service referrals. Language skills were assessed with standardized tests. Lower levels of language skills were more strongly associated with disruptive behavior and poor peer relationships for boys than for girls. Disruptive behavior was related to the probability that a child would be referred for services. Language development difficulties tended to be seen by teachers only when paired with behavior problems.