Interdisciplinary research and interprofessional collaborative care in a memory clinic for rural and northern residents of western Canada: Unique training ground for clinical psychology graduate students

Abstract: In Canada, interprofessional education (IPE) and interdisciplinary health research initiatives are beginning to transform the academic health sciences, including graduate training programs for clinical psychologists. In response to mandates and directives from national health policy and research funding bodies, academic training programs are re‐structuring course offerings, practicum training experiences, and research activities to better prepare students for their future roles within interdisciplinary research groups and collaborative patient‐centred clinical teams. As an example of this transformative movement in IPE, described herein are the recent training initiatives in the Graduate Program in Clinical Psychology at the University of Saskatchewan, and the role of clinical neuropsychology in an innovative interprofessional rural and remote memory clinic.     

Advancing the assessment of parent-child interactions: development of the Parent Instruction-Giving Game with Youngsters

This study investigates the validity of the Parent Instruction–Giving Game with Youngsters (PIGGY), a newly developed direct-observation system. The PIGGY is a derivative of the Dyadic Parent-Child Interaction Coding System II [DPICS-II; Eyberg, S. M., Bessmer, J., Newcomb, K., Edwards, D., Robinson, E. (1994). Manual for the Dyadic Parent-Child Interaction Coding System-II. Social and Behavioral Sciences Documents (Ms. No. 2897)] and the Behavior Coding System [BCS; Forehand, R. L., McMahon, R. J. (1981). Helping the noncompliant child. New York: Guilford Press] and utilizes a format similar to the more structured Compliance Test [Roberts, M. W., Powers, S. W. (1988). The Compliance Test. Behavioral Assessment, 10, 375–398]. Using the PIGGY, parents provide standardized commands to their child (e.g., “Put the book on the table”). The parenting skills used to gain compliance (e.g., instruction giving, praise, discipline techniques) as well as child behavior (e.g., noncompliance) are coded on an observation form. In Study 1, 14 “noncompliant” and 14 “compliant” children and their mothers were selected based on parent report of child behavior. The PIGGY differentiated between the two groups on repeat commands, defiant child behavior, and overreactive parenting. Other forms of validity are also reported. In Study 2, the PIGGY was used to monitor the effectiveness of behavioral parent training with a mother and her 3-year-old daughter with oppositional-defiant disorder. Changes in both child and parent behavior were reflected in PIGGY scores. Overall, these studies suggest that the PIGGY may be valuable as both a screening tool and a measure of response to treatment.     

The family of fundamental social categories includes kinship: evidence from the memory confusion paradigm

Kinship is a fundamental component of human sociality influencing a range of behaviors including altruism, aggression, and mating. Though a central focus in psychology's neighboring disciplines, kinship has been largely neglected within psychology. An illustrative example – and the focus here – is research on social categorization. Researchers investigating the categories into which our mind carves the social world have focused primarily on sex, age, and race. Here we present evidence that kinship belongs in the family of fundamental social categories. In a series of experiments using a memory confusion paradigm, we show that participants implicitly encode the kinship relations of social targets and do so to the same extent as sex and age, two previously established robust dimensions of social categorization. The functional framework applied here provides useful guide‐rails for investigating how the human mind naturally parses the social world, and, more broadly, helps unite psychology with its neighboring disciplines in which kinship is treated as an important conceptual tool. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The multidetermined nature of idiom processing

Models of idiom comprehension differ in their predictions concerning compositionality: Some claim that idiomatic meaning is the result of compositional analysis initiated at the earliest stages of comprehension, whereas others claim that compositional analysis occurs only at late stages, subsequent to direct retrieval--especially for idioms that are highly familiar. We evaluated these alternatives in four experiments by using a variety of online and offline comprehension measures. In Experiment 1, we analyzed the normative characteristics of 219 idioms with respect to these predictions. Dimensions of interest included several measures of decomposability, familiarity, and word frequency of the idioms' verbs and nouns. In Experiments 2 through 4, we determined how these dimensions relate to several online measures of idiom comprehension. High familiarity was associated with good comprehension across all experiments; however, facilitative effects of decomposability were found only for tasks that required an overt semantic judgment. Word frequency, but not semantic decomposability of the idiom-initial verb, was associated with comprehension for some measures. These data support a model of idiom comprehension, according to which figurative meaning arises from the time-dependent availability of multiple linguistic constraints, and in which decomposability plays a limited role in the earliest stages of idiom comprehension. Normative data for 210 of the idiomatic phrases may be downloaded from the Psychonomic Society Web archive at www.psychonomic.org/archive/.     

What do students remember? Episodic memory and the development of schematization

Research examining changes in memory and memory awareness during learning suggests that early in the process, students primarily have representations that are episodic in nature and experience ‘remember’ awareness during recall. However, as learning continues and schematization occurs, students' knowledge is more likely to be dominated by semantic memory representations and ‘just know’ awareness is experienced during recall. The greater the amount of remembering experienced early in learning, the more likely it is that the shift to knowing will occur in students. In this study, university students studied either material rich in distinctive features that may serve as cues to episodic memory, or material lacking in these features. Students' knowledge was tested after a 2‐day and a 5‐wk interval. In contrast to students who studied the material lacking distinctive features, students who studied the distinctively rich material showed a predominance of remember awareness on the first test, and on the follow‐up test showed a predominance of know awareness and were able to recall more details of the learning material. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Abusive relationships: Is a new category for traumatization needed?

The concept of a spectrum of posttraumatic disorders has been postulated by a variety of major contributors to the field of psychotraumatology. Although Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is one trauma-based mental health disorder, there are other posttraumatic illnesses that do not qualify for PTSD, nor are they accurately described by other diagnostic categories in the DSM-IV. The present paper proposes and delineates a new syndrome, entitled Posttraumatic Relationship Syndrome (PTRS), which is a function of the experience of trauma in the context of an emotionally intimate relationship. It differs from PTSD in four fundamental ways: (1) the nature of the Stressor criterion; (2) the response to the Stressor; (3) the inclusion of a category of relational symptoms; and (4) the way of coping with the trauma (i.e., it lacks the emotional numbing and avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma). The latter is the most salient difference as it involves a qualitatively different experience of the “world of trauma”-a primarily conscious experience in PTRS and an often unconscious experience in PTSD.     

Acoustic features of infant crying related to intended caregiving intervention

The present study investigated the acoustic features of crying associated with intended caregiving intervention. One hundred eighty‐eight parents (138 females, 50 males) viewed a videotape depicting a healthy 4‐week‐old infant progressing from fussing to crying over the course of 4 minutes, and indicated if and when they would pick up the infant in a real‐life situation. There was a distinct peak in responding corresponding to an increase in duration but not fundamental frequency of the infant's cries. This finding is discussed in terms of the existing empirical literature. It is hypothesized that, whereas frequency may convey information about a newborn's neurological integrity and health status at birth, duration and other acoustical variables provide information about slightly older, normal infants' level of distress. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Regrets and Advice from Mothers who have Disclosed their HIV + Serostatus to their Young Children

Qualitative interviews were conducted with mothers (N = 47) who had disclosed their HIV status to their child. Mothers described their preparation and the process of the disclosure event, and discussed any regrets they had about disclosing or the process of disclosing. They were also asked what advice they had for other HIV-positive mothers who were trying to determine whether to disclose their serostatus to their young children. Overall, the majority of the mothers (68%) did not regret disclosing their HIV status. Regrets fell into five categories: preparation, timing, context, content, and outcomes of the disclosure event. Based on these findings, mothers who have not disclosed their serostatus to their children need assistance with behavioral practice and support in order to prepare for the process. Furthermore, follow-up support for the children may be beneficial.     

An emerging theory of apology

There is no consensus in the psychological literature regarding the operational definition of an apology, nor is there a comprehensive theory of apology. The object of this study was to use a hermeneutic phenomenological approach and grounded theory methodology to develop a theory of apology based on lay people's interpretation of apologetic responses. Data were methodically gathered by interviewing 23 people who had been wronged by an intimate partner. The analysis of the data suggests that there is not a single discrete definition of an apology, but that it is more appropriate to conceptualise apology as a process that consists of one or more of three components: affect, affirmation, and action. Each of these components has two categories; one that reflects a self‐focus on the part of the wrongdoer, and the other a self–other focus. What will be accepted as a good enough apology appears to depend on the severity of the consequences of the wrong, the level of responsibility attributed to the wrongdoer, and the perceived wrongfulness of the behaviour.     

Skilled adult readers activate the meanings of high-frequency words using phonology: Evidence from eye tracking

We examined whether highly skilled adult readers activate the meanings of high-frequency words using phonology when reading sentences for meaning. A homophone-error paradigm was used. Sentences were written to fit 1 member of a homophone pair, and then 2 other versions were created in which the homophone was replaced by its mate or a spelling-control word. The error words were all high-frequency words, and the correct homophones were either higher-frequency words or low-frequency words—that is, the homophone errors were either the subordinate or dominant member of the pair. Participants read sentences as their eye movements were tracked. When the high-frequency homophone error words were the subordinate member of the homophone pair, participants had shorter immediate eye-fixation latencies on these words than on matched spelling-control words. In contrast, when the high-frequency homophone error words were the dominant member of the homophone pair, a difference between these words and spelling controls was delayed. These findings provide clear evidence that the meanings of high-frequency words are activated by phonological representations when skilled readers read sentences for meaning. Explanations of the differing patterns of results depending on homophone dominance are discussed.