The anticipated future of counselling psychology in the United States: A Delphi poll

A Delphi poll of the institutional members of the Council of Counselling Psychology Training Programmes in the United States revealed anticipations regarding the future of the speciality in relation to three broad areas of contemporary concern. These included the speciality's anticipated core identity, the future role of science and research training in the speciality, and its probable developments in relation to professional training. In general, a commitment to cultural diversity and life-span development occupied pre-eminent positions in relation to the speciality's anticipated identity. Significant attention to methodological diversity and scientific and professional reform were also noted within the context of continuing challenges to the speciality's identity and its future.     

Separation-individuation as a family transactional process in the transition to parenthood

This is a study of the impact of prebirth level of parental and marital individuation on the course of parent-infant and infant development during the first postnatal year. Support was found for the first hypothesis, namely, that a couple's composite individuation profile, taking into account the prebirth separation-individuation of the father and the mother, and their marriage, would be associated with positive infant development and parent-infant transactions related to separation-individuation and mutuality during the first postnatal year. A second hypothesis, that maternal individuation would most strongly predict infant and parent-infant development at 6 months, while paternal individuation would emerge at 1 year as a strong predictor, was not supported. It was found instead that prebirth maternal and paternal individuation were equally strong predictors at six months, while maternal individuation was the primary predictor at 12 months. Other findings on the direct and indirect associations between prebirth parental and marital individuation and postnatal parent-infant transactions suggest that early separation-individuation processes result from a complex configuration of triadic mother-father-infant transactions.     

Exploring Exceptions and Discovering Solutions: A Case Presentation of Autism and the Family

As the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) continues to rise, there is a rapidly increasing need for treatment services among individuals diagnosed with ASD and families. Currently, the majority of the evidence-based treatments, such as Applied Behavior Analysis, overlook the notable systemic effects of ASD and maintain a problem-focused lens. There is a growing body of research calling for strength-based, relational interventions that build on existing resources to enhance coping, efficacy, and well-being among families affected by ASD. Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) is a widely practiced clinical approach that is increasingly being used among clinicians to address the systemic effects of developmental disabilities in the family. However, particular modifications to specific interventions may better accommodate autism-associated deficits in executive functioning (e.g., goal development and impulsivity), perspective taking, or restricted interests when using an SFBT approach. This article offers recommendations for adapting a solution-focused approach by modifying commonly used SFBT interventions to address family-driven treatment goals using a collaborative stance with families of children with ASD. A case presentation is included to demonstrate SFBT as informed by the unique challenges and inherent resources of families affected by ASD that have been identified in the extant literature.     

Engaging reluctant adolescents in family therapy: an exploratory study of in‐session processes of change

Informed by a trans‐theoretical model of the therapeutic alliance in conjoint family therapy, this exploratory study was the initial stage in a task analysis of critical shifts in adolescent engagement. Specifically, we compared sessions in which a resistant adolescent either did or did not shift from negative to positive engagement during the session. Two successful and two unsuccessful change events were selected from an archival data set based on SOFTA ratings of the therapeutic alliance. The results suggested that one parent element (support) and five therapist elements (structuring therapeutic conversations, fostering autonomy, building systemic awareness, rolling with resistance and understanding the adolescent's subjective experience) seemed critical for successfully facilitating adolescent engagement. The qualitative results were informed by the adolescent's self‐reported target complaints pretreatment, which suggested varying reasons for the teenagers’ active or passive disengagement. Implications for practice and recommendations for future research are offered to continue this line of inquiry.     

Are today's Millennials splintering into a new generational cohort? Maybe!

A new generational cohort is emerging from the Millennial market segment as a result of cataclysmic events that have occurred since 2008. Interviews with college upperclassmen in the United States identified significant events influencing their values, the values arising from these events, and new values not associated with older Millennials. The most important events identified included the Great Recession, 9/11, and the election of the first African-American president. Values of Millennials were assessed in online surveys of college juniors and seniors in the United States in the fall of 2009 and 2010 and among older Millennials, aged 27–31, during the summer of 2010. The values most strongly differentiating the younger and older Millennials were “piety” and “thrift.” Younger Millennials in the United States are less thrifty and more secular and sexually permissive than older Millennials. They are also less patriotic and less concerned about politics, sustainability, saving, and making mistakes in life. This suggests a splintering of the Millennials cohort as a result of the Great Recession and the potential emergence of a younger “entitlement” cohort. It also suggests further investigation of cross-national value shifts among younger Millennials, prompted by the Great Recession. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Are faces perceived as configurations more by adults than by children?

Abstract

Adult face recognition is severely hampered by stimulus inversion. Several investigators have attributed this vulnerability to the effect of orientation on encoding relational aspects of faces. Previous work has also demonstrated that children are less sensitive to orientation of faces than are adults. This has been interpreted as reflecting an increasing reliance on configural aspects of faces with increasing age and expertise.

Young, Hellawell, and Hay (1987) demonstrated that for adults the encoding of relations among facial parts is, indeed, sensitive to orientation. When chimeric faces are upright, the top half of one face fuses with the bottom half of the other, making the person depicted in the top half difficult to recognize. This effect (the composite effect) is not seen when the faces are inverted. The present study obtained the composite effect for 6-year-old and 10-year-old children, just as for adults. The composite effect was found to an equal degree at all ages tested and was seen both in tasks involving highly familiar faces and in those involving newly learned, previously unfamiliar faces. Thus, these data provided no support for the hypothesis of increasing reliance on configural aspects of faces with increasing age, at least in the sense tapped by this procedure.

However, the data did confirm an Age X Orientation interaction. In recognizing both familiar and previously unfamiliar faces, 6-year-olds were less affected by inversion than were 10-year-olds, who, in turn, were less affected than were adults. Increasing vulnerability to inversion of faces with age was independent of the composite effect. Apparently, there are two distinct sources to the large effect of inversion that characterizes adult face encoding: one seen throughout development and one acquired only with expertise.