The impact of an emotional self-management skills course on psychosocial functioning and autonomic recovery to stress in middle school children

Unmanaged emotional reactions to stress not only lead to behavior problems in young people but also create physiological conditions that inhibit learning and potentially increase the risk of disease later in life. For these reasons, the integration of emotional self-management skills training programs has become an increased priority in some schools. In this study, middle school students enrolled in a course in emotional competence skills learned techniques designed to intercept stressful responses during emotionally challenging situations. Behavioral outcomes were assessed using the Achievement Inventory Measure and autonomic function was measured by heart rate variability (HRV) analysis during and after a stressful interview. Following the program, students exhibited significant improvements in areas including stress and anger management, risky behavior, work management and focus, and relationships with family, peers and teachers. These improvements were sustained over the following six months. Students using the skills taught in the course to recover from acute emotional stress were also able to positively modulate their physiological stress responses. As compared to a control group, trained students demonstrated significantly increased HRV and more rhythmic, sine wave-like heart rhythm patterns during recovery. This response pattern reflects increased parasympathetic activity, heart rhythm coherence, and entrainment of other biological oscillatory systems to the primary heart rhythm frequency. Increased physiological coherence is associated with improved cognitive performance, emotional balance, mental clarity and health outcomes. These physiological shifts could promote the sustained psychological and behavioral improvements associated with the use of emotional management skills. It is suggested that learning emotional competence skills in childhood establishes healthier physiological response patterns which can benefit learning and long-term health. Results provide support for the integration in school curricula of courses designed to teach effective self-management skills to children.     

Testing and assessment ethics for all persons: beginning and agenda

The previous American Psychological Association (APA) assessment ethics code (APA, 1990) and the new code (APA, 1992) differ in content that is relevant to culturally sensitive practices (i.e., culture-specific assessment technologies, culture-specific service delivery styles, use of clients' first language, and recognition of non-Anglo-American belief systems). The new code falls short in areas that are in the process of development or remain controversial. Suggestions for implementation and supplementation are included.     

An aversive conditioning unit for ants

An apparatus is described for studying aversive conditioning in ants. The aversive stimulus is mechanically produced vibration. Responses are recorded automatically by an infrared photocell system.     

Boundaries for career success? How work–home integration and perceived supervisor expectation affect careers

The necessity to actively manage the work–home boundaries has drastically increased. We postulate that work–home integration may affect individuals' subjective career success via its positive effects on work goal attainment and exhaustion. Furthermore, we study perceived supervisor expectation for employee work–home integration as a boundary condition. Our three-wave online survey with 371 employees showed support for the two hypothesized moderated mediation effects. Work–home integration preference is indirectly related to subjective career success: (1) positively via home-to-work transitions and work goal attainment and (2) negatively via home-to-work transitions and exhaustion. Perceived supervisor expectation constrained work–home integration preference's direct effect on home-to-work transitions and indirect effects on subjective career success. Exploratory analysis revealed that exhaustion negatively affected all career success dimensions, whereas work goal attainment was only related to some. Our results indicate that supervisor expectation can override the effect of employee's work–home integration preference on home-to-work transitions which have a double-edged sword effect on subjective career success. Our study contributes to integrating the careers and work–life interface literature and incorporating contextual factors. Furthermore, with the exploration of differential effects on subjective career success, we advance our understanding of this outcome's nomological network.     

The Cultural Self as Locus for Assessment and Intervention With American Indians/Alaska Natives

The author compares mental health services from Anglo‐American and Native perspectives, focusing on the cultural self as a suggested locus for greater credibility and increased use of these services. Cultural competence is recommended as a model for community‐specific policy for the design and implementation of services to increase the probability of generalization to various tribal settings. Cultural competence of Anglo‐American providers with this population is discussed.     

Drawing: its contribution to naming in aphasia

Drawing in aphasia therapy has been used predominately as a substitution for speech or to augment communication when other modalities are non-functional. The value of drawing as a route for facilitating verbal expression has not been a focus of prior research. We compared the usefulness of drawing and writing as compensatory strategies for improving naming in individuals with aphasia. Activation patterns of writing and drawing in healthy adults were examined using fMRI. Clinical results suggest that drawing facilitated naming whereas writing diminished accurate naming responses, and that drawing quality is not relevant to this facilitatory effect. Functional MRI findings revealed strong bi-hemispheric activation of semantic and phonological networks while drawing that may support our clinical findings.     

Semantical archaeology: A parable

A somewhat fictionalized account of several interpretations of implication is presented together with comparisons between classical, modal, tense, and intuitionistic logics.     

A teaching method for multicultural assessment: psychological report contents and cultural competence

An earlier training model emphasized systematic feedback on accuracy of concepts contained in student assessment reports prepared with common data sets from standard tests. This feedback resulted in consistent increments in concept agreements between reports prepared by students and more experienced assessors. This model was applied in courses with multicultural students by contrasting standard and multicultural assessment and using data sets from multicultural assessees. These students experienced greater difficulty in demonstrating consistent increments of agreement in report concepts due to uneven knowledge of specific cultures, inapplicability of available norms, and interpretation issues. The effectiveness of combining standard and multicultural training should be compared with conventional standard training followed by culturally focused specialized assessment courses.     

Fast temporal dynamics of visual cue integration

The integration of information from different sensors, cues, or modalities lies at the very heart of perception. We are studying adaptive phenomena in visual cue integration. To this end, we have designed a visual tracking task, where subjects track a target object among distractors and try to identify the target after an occlusion. Objects are defined by three different attributes (color, shape, size) which change randomly within a single trial. When the attributes differ in their reliability (two change frequently, one is stable), our results show that subjects dynamically adapt their processing. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that subjects rapidly re-weight the information provided by the different cues by emphasizing the information from the stable cue. This effect seems to be automatic, ie not requiring subjects' awareness of the differential reliabilities of the cues. The hypothesized re-weighting seems to take place in about 1 s. Our results suggest that cue integration can exhibit adaptive phenomena on a very fast time scale. We propose a probabilistic model with temporal dynamics that accounts for the observed effect.