The relationship between maternal psychiatric disorder and very young children's coping behaviors

The coping behavior of high-risk infants aged 4 to 36 months was investigated. Two groups of infants (n = 60) (mothers with and without psychiatric disorders) were rated using the Early Coping Inventory (ECI), an observational measure. Results indicated that children whose mothers had chronic psychiatric disorders demonstrated significantly less effective coping behavior on all subscales of the ECI (Sensorimotor Organization, Reactive Behavior, and Self-Initiated Behavior) and on 47 of the 48 items. The at-risk children's behavior was found to be more “situationally effective”; that is, behavior used effectively in one type of situation was not generalized to other types of situations. The greatest discrepancy between the groups was in self-initiated behavior. No significant effects of demographic variables or type or severity of psychiatric disorder were found. Implications for treatment of this high-risk group are discussed. © 1997 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health     

Adverse Childhood Experiences: A 20-Year Content Analysis of American Counseling Association and American School Counselor Association Journals

The purpose of this content analysis was to illustrate trends related to the use of the term adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), or terms related to the 10 components of ACEs, within 140 peer-reviewed articles published in 22 journals affiliated with the American Counseling Association (ACA) and the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) between 1998 and 2018. Of the 9,120 articles published in the 22 ACA- and ASCA-affiliated journals in that time, only three articles (0.03%) explicitly mentioned the term adverse childhood experiences in the title, abstract, or keywords. Authors of 93 journal articles mentioned terms related to the original 10 categories of ACEs 104 times (1.0% of all published articles). The need for consistent language across research and practice is highlighted. Implications include ways that the counseling field may benefit from an increased clarity and focus around ACEs.     

Remembering personal change for better or worse: Retrieval context matters

We investigated how focusing on the details (experience focus) versus self-narrative significance (coherence focus) of valenced transitions informs appraisals and emotions at recall. Participants (N = 302) selected a negative or positive transition and rated their emotion. Two weeks later, they described their event using an experience or coherence focus, then rated emotion, event impact, self-relevance, and memory characteristics. A coherence (vs. experience) focus produced lower negative affect and greater psychological impact, particularly for negative transitions. The negative-coherence group showed the largest decrease in negation emotion over time. A coherence (vs. experience) focus resulted in less perceptual detail, reactivity, and re-experiencing. Positive (vs. negative) events were deemed more central to identity and connected to other events. Mental focus informed psychological impact and negative affect, while event valence influenced self-relevance. These findings remained when event type (interpersonal) was matched across groups. Motives for framing autobiographical memories and implications for adaptive self-reflection are discussed.     

Understanding Western-East Asian Differences and Similarities in Self-Enhancement

I present a roughly historical overview of the literature bearing on the universality of the self-enhancement motive, which I define as the need to cultivate and maintain a positive self-view. There is considerable evidence indicating that people from prototypically Western cultures demonstrate a strong need to self-enhance, which manifests itself in a number of tendencies involving attending to and elaborating upon positive self-relevant information at the expense of negative information. Recently, a lively debate about the universality of the self-enhancement motive emerged, with some researchers arguing that the motive itself is culture-specific and others contending that the motive is universal but that culture places important constraints on how it is expressed. I provide a review and synthesis of the existing evidence and conclude by discussing research on dialectical self-esteem, which offers another perspective on how culture shapes the expression of self-evaluative processes.     

The extent and nature of imagery during worry and positive thinking in generalized anxiety disorder

Clients in treatment for Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) were compared to a control group to assess the extent and nature of imagery during worry or while thinking about a personally relevant positive future event. Two methods were used to assess mentation and were completed in counter balanced order within the worry and positive conditions. One method assessed the occurrence of imagery by requiring participants to categorize their mentation as verbal thoughts or images every 10 s. The other method involved participants estimating the duration of any imagery that occurred in the previous 10 s. Imagery during worry occurred less often than while thinking about a positive event for both groups, but GAD clients had a more pronounced deficit of imagery during worry than the control group. Images that occurred were briefer during worry than while thinking about a positive future event and were briefer in the GAD than the control group for both worry and positive conditions. The results thus confirmed that imagery is less common during worry in clients with GAD but also demonstrated that the imagery that does occur in GAD is briefer.     

Interpersonal Sensitivity in Computer-Mediated and Face-to-Face Conversations

Two studies were designed to assess the impact of computer-mediated communication (CMC) on the development of dominant/subordinate status roles and on the accuracy of interpersonal perceptions during dyadic, text-based conversations. Results comparing face-to-face (FtF) and synchronous CMC interactions indicated: (a) that dyads established dominant/subordinate roles in both communicative environments, although these roles were more clearly differentiated in the CMC interactions; and (b) that the accuracy of interpersonal perceptions did not differ substantially during CMC and FtF interactions. Considered together, these data pose problems for theoretical accounts of CMC suggesting that the impoverished social cues in this form of text-based communication tend to equalize hierarchical differences in the status of participants and undermine the accuracy of interpersonal perceptions.     

Higher Processes in Motor Learning

A linear displacement task was used to study the effects of post-KR verbal activity and the time of its introduction in the learning process on the acquisition of a simple discrete motor task. The temporal occurrence of the interpolated act was systematically varied (3 and 10 sec. immediately following KR). Reading polysyllables during the post-KR delay interval interfered with the learning process. Interference occurred whether the post-KR delay interval lasted 3 or 10 sec.     

What is a philosophical stance? Paradigms,policies and perspectives

Since van Fraassen first put forward the suggestive idea that many philosophical positions should be construed as ‘stances’ rather than factual beliefs, there have been various attempts to spell out precisely what a philosophical stance might be, and on what basis one should be adopted. In this paper I defend a particular account of stances, the view that they are pragmatically justified perspectives or ways of seeing the world, and compare it to some other accounts that have been offered. In Sect. 2 I consider van Fraassen’s argument for construing empiricism as a stance, and look at some responses to it. In Sect. 3 I outline my conception of stances as perspectives or ways of seeing, and explain how stances so understood may be justified. I illustrate this conception by way of a discussion of the model pluralist position with respect to the units of selection debate in biology, and suggest that on the model pluralist view different perspectives on the units of selection, such as the gene’s eye view, are in fact van Fraassian stances. In Sect. 4 I discuss the view put forward by Teller and Chakravartty among others that stances should be understood as epistemic policies, and argue that it is consistent with the conception of stances as perspectives. In the final section I criticise Rowbottom’s attempt to assimilate stances to Kuhnian paradigms. I argue that he has overlooked some important disanalogies between stances and paradigms, so that the comparison obscures more than it reveals.     

Reappraising Past and Future Transitional Events: The Effects of Mental Focus on Present Perceptions of Personal Impact and Self‐Relevance

This research examined how instructions to focus on the concrete details (experience focus) versus broader life significance (coherence focus) influence present perceptions of transitional impact and self‐relevance for past and future transitional events. Participants (Study 1, N = 119; Study 2, N = 251) selected a past or future transition and wrote about it using either an experiential or coherence focus. Participants then rated the event on transitional impact, self‐relevance, and other phenomenological characteristics. Individuals instructed to use a coherence focus on a past transition reported higher levels of material and psychological impact and rated the event as more self‐relevant, compared to those instructed to use an experiential focus. The manipulation did not influence ratings for future events. Controlling for temporal distance and emotional valence did not alter the findings. Future transitions were regarded as more personally important than past transitions. Appraisals of the impact and self‐relevance of transformative past events (but not future events) are affected by the mental focus adopted at retrieval. The findings are considered in light of essential differences between remembering and forecasting and support the notion that a coherence focus promotes adaptive self‐reflection by affording people the cognitive means with which to reconcile transitional experiences.