Reflections on a Community Psychology Setting and the Future of the Field

The 50th anniversary of the Swampscott Conference offers an opportunity to reflect on a community psychology setting, The Consultation Center at Yale, that was formed in response to the 1963 Community Mental Health Act and the 1965 Swampscott Conference. The Center has flourished as a community psychology setting for practice, research, and training for 39 of the 50 years since Swampscott. Its creation and existence over this period offers an opportunity for reflection on the types of settings needed to sustain the field into the future.     

Role of Supportive Others in the Forgiveness Process

Forgiveness research is a focus of interpersonal relationships in counseling. This phenomenological study investigated the role of an individual's support systems in forgiveness. The research design included semistructured interviews with 11 participants. Key findings revealed that participants primarily forgave for peace of mind. Several resources used by participants were helpful in forgiveness, but use of friends, family, and therapists showed mixed results. In addition, participants wanted support systems to listen and not to give advice, and support persons need to be objective or be trained in forgiveness therapy. Recommendations for counselors who work with people struggling to forgive are provided.     

You can go your own way: effectiveness of participant-driven versus experimenter-driven processing strategies in memory training and transfer

Cognitive training programs that instruct specific strategies frequently show limited transfer. Open-ended approaches can achieve greater transfer, but may fail to benefit many older adults due to age deficits in self-initiated processing. We examined whether a compromise that encourages effort at encoding without an experimenter-prescribed strategy might yield better results. Older adults completed memory training under conditions that either (1) mandated a specific strategy to increase deep, associative encoding, (2) attempted to suppress such encoding by mandating rote rehearsal, or (3) encouraged time and effort toward encoding but allowed for strategy choice. The experimenter-enforced associative encoding strategy succeeded in creating integrated representations of studied items, but training-task progress was related to pre-existing ability. Independent of condition assignment, self-reported deep encoding was associated with positive training and transfer effects, suggesting that the most beneficial outcomes occur when environmental support guiding effort is provided but participants generate their own strategies.     

Assessing the Effect of Language Demand in Bundles of Math Word Problems

Differential bundle functioning (DBF) analyses were conducted to determine whether seventh and eighth grade second language learners (SLLs) had lower probabilities of answering bundles of math word problems correctly that had heavy language demands, when compared to non-SLLs of equal math proficiency. Math word problems on each of four test forms (two at Grade 7 and two at Grade 8) were bundled together if they used the passive voice, conditional clause, relative clause, or a combination of any two. The results showed that the average total scores for SLLs was significantly lower than that for non-SLLs on each test form. However, only two bundles (passive voice and conditional clause at Grade 7 on Form 2) indicated statistically significant DBF against SLLs in favor of matched non-SLLs. An additional step was taken to determine whether the two bundles that showed statistically significant DBF against SLLs had biased the mean total scores for this group.The Walker, Zhang, Banks, and Cappaert (2012) procedure established for this purpose showed that this was not the case. Implications of the results are provided as well as suggestions for future research.     

Differences in child rearing attitudes between immigrant Chinese mothers and Anglo-American mothers

In order to explore cultural differences in child rearing attitudes, we studied 30 Anglo-American mothers and 30 immigrant Chinese mothers in the US, together with their preschool children and the children's teachers. Mothers completed a measure of child rearing attitudes, children were assessed for perceived competence, and teachers rated children's competence. Results showed that immigrant Chinese mothers were more authoritarian overall, as expected from previous research, but that they also were more likely to encourage independence and demand maturity from their children. Chinese-American children scored higher than Anglo-American children on cognitive competence, and their cognitive competence was related to authoritarian child rearing. The results are discussed in the context of Confucian and American cultural values. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘We’ve shared a lifetime with one another’: using reflective visual/verbal journals to develop graduate student relationships

The success of graduate students relies on factors beyond mere cognitive ability, with fostering peer and professional relationships as definitive influences on achievement. Research shows that positive faculty/student relationships are a significant factor in the success of graduate students and that art-making is an effective way to encourage the reflective thinking needed to nurture these relationships. In this article, we examine the relationship between arts informed pedagogy, specifically the use of a visual/verbal journal, and the formation of graduate relationships. The majority of the students in this collaborative inquiry entered their doctoral program at the same time the research class began and all engaged in an artfully imagined introduction to qualitative research course.     

A correction for recruitment bias in norms derived from meta-analysis

Normative comparisons are an integral component of neuropsychological test interpretation and provide the basis for an inference of abnormal function and impairment. In order to remedy a deficit of normative standards for a large number of neuropsychology tests, Mitrushina, Boone, Razani, and D'Elia (2005) used the meta-analysis of studies that incorporated normal volunteers to create a type of normative standard for many tests in neuropsychology that were not adequately normed in the past. The present study examined this method by contrasting meta-analysis norms of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R; Wechsler, 1981) with its published quota norms. The study examined 12 experimental studies of the WAIS-R that included normal, control volunteers (N = 2,147). These were combined by meta-analysis, and the summary scores were compared. The meta-analysis revealed a significant sampling bias with studies recruiting more White and higher educated respondents than indicated by the U.S. Census. This bias was successfully corrected using Monte Carlo simulation and adjustments for quota sampling. The corrections could be applied to all meta-analysis norms currently in use and bring them in line with the U.S. Census demographics.     

Limits of generalization between categories and implications for theories of category specificity

Both domain-specific and expertise accounts of category specialization assume that generalization occurs within a domain but not between domains. Yet it is often difficult to define the boundaries and critical features of object domains. Differences in how categories are defined make it difficult to adjudicate between accounts of category specificity and may lead to contradictory results. For example, evidence for whether car experts recruit the fusiform face area is mixed, and this inconsistency may be due to the inclusion of antique cars in one of those previous studies (e.g., Grill-Spector, Knouf, & Kanwisher, 2004). The present study tested the generalization of expertise from modern to antique cars and found that modern-car experts showed expert discrimination and holistic processing of modern cars but not of antique cars. These findings suggest that the neural specialization underlying perceptual expertise is highly specific and may not generalize to distinct subclasses, even when they share some degree of perceptual and conceptual features.     

Shared and distinct factors driving attention and temporal processing across modalities

In addition to the classic finding that “sounds are judged longer than lights,” the timing of auditory stimuli is often more precise and accurate than is the timing of visual stimuli. In cognitive models of temporal processing, these modality differences are explained by positing that auditory stimuli more automatically capture and hold attention, more efficiently closing an attentional switch that allows the accumulation of pulses marking the passage of time (Penney, Gibbon, & Meck, 2000). However, attention is a multifaceted construct, and there has been little attempt to determine which aspects of attention may be related to modality effects. We used visual and auditory versions of the Continuous Temporal Expectancy Task (CTET; O'Connell et al., 2009) a timing task previously linked to behavioral and electrophysiological measures of mind-wandering and attention lapses, and tested participants with or without the presence of a video distractor. Performance in the auditory condition was generally superior to that in the visual condition, replicating standard results in the timing literature. The auditory modality was also less affected by declines in sustained attention indexed by declines in performance over time. In contrast, distraction had an equivalent impact on performance in the two modalities. Analysis of individual differences in performance revealed further differences between the two modalities: Poor performance in the auditory condition was primarily related to boredom whereas poor performance in the visual condition was primarily related to distractibility. These results suggest that: 1) challenges to different aspects of attention reveal both modality-specific and nonspecific effects on temporal processing, and 2) different factors drive individual differences when testing across modalities.