Spirituality in Occupational Therapy: Do We Practice What We Teach?

This mixed-method study examined the responses of 97 occupational therapists on the subject of spirituality in occupational therapy practice. The inclusion of spirituality into the Occupational Therapy Practice Framework (2008) implies that clinicians address spirituality as a component of client-centered practice. This research revealed a gap between education, theory, and practice as evidenced in the quantitative and qualitative data. Although occupational therapy is intended to be holistic, therapists require a more complete understanding of what spirituality is and what the role of the occupational therapist is when addressing spirituality in evaluation or treatment. The discussion of this research provides information for future occupational therapy educators and educational programs as they seek to incorporate the construct of spirituality into curricula.     

Family Therapy with Couples and Individuals with Parkinson’s Disease

Family therapists are increasingly called upon to work with individuals and families with medical issues, but often do not have sufficient background on the issue to be most helpful. The purpose of this paper is to help family therapists understand Parkinson’s Disease (PD) and its impact on the individual and his or her family. PD is the second most prevalent neurodegenerative disorder in the United States, following Alzheimer’s disease (Hirtz et al., Neurology 68:326–337, 2007). According to the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation, approximately 60,000 individuals are diagnosed with PD every year, and approximately one million Americans are currently living with PD. In this paper, we provide an overview of PD based on research and the second author’s many years of providing services for individuals with PD, as well as offer specific recommendations for providing family therapy using narrative, solution-focused and emotionally focused therapy based on the first author’s work as a family therapist with individuals, groups, and couples dealing with PD.     

Perceived Patient Responsibility and Belief in a Just World Affect Helping

Three experiments reported here uniquely test the effectiveness of warm versus competent advertising strategy as a function of congruence with other elements of the advertising context. These are product involvement (Experiment 1, n = 96), consumers’ smartphone anxiety (Experiment 2, n = 60), or self-versus other-profitability (Experiment 3, n = 100). As expected, the “golden quadrant” (optimum warmth and competence for advertising effectiveness) does shift: Competence is more important for high-involving products, but warmth wins for highly anxious participants or when the highly involving service is accompanied by people-focused appeals. An expansion of the stereotype content model is discussed in the context of the congruity principle.     

Great Expectations: Career Planning and Training Experiences of Graduate Students in Sport and Exercise Psychology

The success of upcoming professionals in the field of sport and exercise psychology is critical for its growth. A history of limited applied opportunities may lead to retention issues among trainees interested in applied careers. The current study investigated the career goals and perceptions of training among current graduate students. Results found that many master's- and doctoral-level students were seeking a career that involved applied work, and the majority of these students desired to work with collegiate athletes. These findings can be used to prepare students for the existing market conditions and offer insight for future professionals.     

Meta‐Analysis of Counseling Outcomes for the Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

This meta‐analysis of 152 published posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) clinical trials from 1990 to 2012 concluded that counseling generally produced a small to large effect of treatment across all comparison conditions at termination (d+ = 0.30 to 0.89). These gains were maintained at longest follow‐up (d+ = 0.58 to 0.86) for the wait‐list, treatment‐as‐usual, and single‐group comparisons, but not for the follow‐up placebo comparison (d+ = 0.15), probably because of the low power (j = 3 placebo studies). Clinical trial findings were synthesized using a random‐effects model. No effects of publication bias or moderating variables were evident. No difference was found between trauma‐focused and non‐trauma‐focused approaches. Implications for counseling practice and future PTSD outcome research are addressed.     

Body Surveillance on Instagram: Examining the Role of Selfie Feedback Investment in Young Adult Women’s Body Image Concerns

Sex Roles - Selfies are self-taken self-portrait photographs captured with mobile phones, and they are among the most common forms of self-expression on the photo-based social network Instagram....     

Increasing meal consumption in individuals with competing protective equipment

Individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder may engage in self‐injurious behavior that can cause tissue damage. Protective equipment is sometimes used to decrease the severity of tissue damage when self‐injury occurs. However, wearing protective equipment may be incompatible with some forms of adaptive behavior, such as meal consumption. The purpose of the present analysis was to identify a treatment for increasing meal consumption in two adolescent males diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder who wore protective equipment that interfered with self‐feeding. Three interventions were evaluated: modifying the protective equipment, manipulating the reinforcing efficacy of the meal, and arranging additional positive reinforcement for meal consumption in the absence of protective equipment. Modifying protective equipment and manipulating the reinforcing efficacy of the meal were effective for both participants. Additional positive reinforcement was evaluated and effective for one participant.     

Interactions of reading and semantics along the ventral visual processing stream

Converging evidence supports a distributed-plus-hub view of semantic processing, in which there are distributed modular semantic sub-systems (e.g., for shape, colour, and action) connected to an amodal semantic hub. Furthermore, object semantic processing of colour and shape, and lexical reading and identification, are processed mainly along the ventral stream, while action semantic processing occurs mainly along the dorsal stream. In Experiment 1, participants read a prime word that required imagining either the object or action referent, and then named a lexical word target. In Experiments 2 and 3, participants performed a lexical decision task (LDT) with the same targets as in Experiment 1, in the presence of foils that were legal nonwords (NW; Experiment 2) or pseudohomophones (PH; Experiment 3). Semantic priming was similar in effect size regardless of prime type for naming, but was greater for object primes than action primes for the LDT with PH foils, suggesting a shared-stream advantage when the task demands focus on orthographic lexical processing. These experiments extend the distributed-plus-hub model, and provide a novel paradigm for further research.     

Evaluating the Psychometric Properties of a Measure of Ethnic Identity Among Black South African Youth

The authors examined the dimensionality and psychometric properties of the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM) among Black South African adolescents (ages = 13–14; 52% female) representing several ethnic groups (Ndebele, Pedi, Sotho, Swati, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa, Zulu) and evaluated the measure for differential item functioning primarily among four ethnic groups (Sotho, Tswana, Xhosa, and Zulu). Results indicated that a two-dimensional model best represented the data, reflecting ethnic search/clarity and ethnic affirmations. Subsequently, we evaluated the equivalence of the MEIM among the four South African ethnic groups and a sample of African American adolescents (M_age = 15.57 years; SD = 1.22; 51% female). Further analyses revealed that configural and metric models were excellent across the four South African ethnic groups and the African American group. However, scalar invariance (i.e., intercept) was not found; the item intercepts were different for the South African ethnic groups and African Americans. Findings are discussed with consideration for conducting research on ethnic identity among youth in South Africa.