The sociology of regulation: the case of psychotherapy and counselling and the experience of the arts therapies

ABSTRACT

This article draws on insights from the sociology of professions to explore the regulatory debate in the psychotherapy and counselling field contrasted with the regulation of arts therapists (art, drama and music therapists). A partial explanation is offered, illustrating the applicability of theory to these groups, but with adaptations to reflect the modern context in which professions and regulation now exist.     

Speaking of feelings affects,language, and psychoanalysis

For a surprising number of analysands, many with above‐average intelligence and facility with language, words do not adequately capture or convey emotion or symbolize experience. This often subtle difficulty can have a powerful impact on the ability to verbally communicate emotions, process affect, and utilize traditional psychoanalytic interventions. Analysands with these problems therefore often have difficulty using analysis to explore and understand their own experience, yet the reasons for such difficulties are often not recognized by either analyst or analysand. In this article, I suggest that the concept of alexithymia can provide a valuable tool for understanding this gap between affects and language and, in its broadest interpretation, can aid therapists in their pursuit of meaningful approaches to the analytic process. Using the concept as a starting point, I describe and illustrate an approach in which paying attention to apparently insignificant aspects of an analysand's experience gradually helps analysands identify and explore personal symbols and meanings in their lives.     

Early Temperament and Attachment Security with Mothers and Fathers as Predictors of Toddler Compliance and Noncompliance

This longitudinal study (n = 106) examined associations between temperament, attachment, and styles of compliance and noncompliance. Infant negative temperamental reactivity was reported by mothers at 3, 5 and 7 months. Infant attachment was assessed (Strange Situation) at 12 (mothers) and 14 months (fathers). Toddlers' styles of compliance/noncompliance were measured using two laboratory contexts (clean‐up/delay) at 20 months. Results indicated that temperament and attachment predicted toddler behaviour. Toddlers who were secure with mothers and low in temperamental negative reactivity showed more committed compliance than those who were insecure and low in negative reactivity or secure and high in negative reactivity. In addition, interactions revealed that relations between infant–mother attachment and defiance depended on infant–father attachment security, temperament and context. Findings highlight the differential and complex roles of temperament and attachment as potential precursors of later social competence. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Word Mapping and Executive Functioning in Young Monolingual and Bilingual Children

The effect of bilingualism on the cognitive skills of young children was investigated by comparing performance of 162 children who belonged to one of two age groups (approximately 3- and 4.5-year-olds) and one of three language groups on a series of tasks examining executive control and word mapping. The children were monolingual English speakers, monolingual French speakers, or bilinguals who spoke English and one of a large number of other languages. Monolinguals obtained higher scores than bilinguals on a receptive vocabulary test and were more likely to demonstrate the mutual exclusivity constraint, especially at the younger ages. However, bilinguals obtained higher scores than both groups of monolinguals on three tests of executive functioning: Luria's tapping task measuring response inhibition, the opposite worlds task requiring children to assign incongruent labels to a sequence of animal pictures, and reverse categorization in which children needed to reclassify a set of objects into incongruent categories after an initial classification. There were no differences between the groups in the attentional networks flanker task requiring executive control to ignore a misleading cue. This evidence for a bilingual advantage in aspects of executive functioning at an earlier age than previously reported is discussed in terms of the possibility that bilingual language production may not be the only source of these developmental effects.     

Concurrent Relations Between Perspective-Taking Skills,Desire Understanding,and Internal-State Vocabulary

Recent studies suggest that there appears to be a similar developmental sequence in the understanding of mental states in both internal-state language and in standard theory-of-mind tasks. These findings suggest possible developmental relations between children's ability to talk and think about the mind. Two experiments investigated the concurrent relations between internal-state vocabulary and theory-of-mind abilities in 30-month-old toddlers. In Experiment 1, children's internal-state language vocabulary was significantly and specifically related to their concurrent understanding of others' visual and emotional perspectives and was less strongly related to desire understanding. Experiment 2 replicated and extended these findings by examining the link between internal-state vocabulary and visual perspective-taking and comprehension of own versus other's desire, controlling for general verbal skills. Children with a more developed internal-state vocabulary performed better on perspective-taking tasks. These findings suggest that labeling and reasoning about mental states are related abilities at the early stages of theory-of-mind development.     

Effects of Stimulus Color,Pattern, and Practice on Sex Differences in Mental Rotations Task Performance

Redundant color information improved performance for both sexes on the Shepard Mental Rotations Task (MRT; Shepard & Metzler, 1971). Absolute score gains for women were larger than those for men; therefore, relative improvement was greater. Substantial practice effects, also favoring women, were apparent in both studies. Study 1 showed that redundant color improved performance by 0.25 SD. Study 2 demonstrated that redundant black-and-white pattern information did not have any effect; a second visuospatial channel, redundant color, was a critical factor in improving scores of men and women on difficult mental rotations tasks.     

Countering Perfectionism in Research on Clinical Practice. III: Implications for Randomized Designs of the Presence of Uncontrolled Interactions and Spontaneous Changes

In a crossover study, we took pre-test, post-first-treatment, and post-second-treatment measures of self-expressiveness (assertiveness) and of acute emotional distress while we successively trained different groups of students in assertiveness and group therapy exercises. Our (unfulfilled) expectations were straightforward: We thought that assertiveness training would produce specific improvement in self-expression measures with little impact on overall distress and that group therapy would produce specific improvement in general distress with little impact on assertiveness. Both treatments improved assertiveness and decreased distress. The fact that our treatments had impure effects enhanced the likelihood of Type II statistical errors and compromised the effectiveness of our design. In addition, quite surprisingly, assertiveness training selectively improved the mental health of women students, and group therapy selectively improved the assertiveness of men students more than the alternative treatment did. This interaction between gender and randomly administered experimental treatment procedures raises serious, generally important questions about the logic of statistically controlled experimentation that relies on randomization to eliminate the effects of uncontrolled, but relevant, variables.     

Eating Behavior Among Thais and Americans

A cross-cultural analysis of eating patterns was conducted to examine the possible relationship between eating style and obesity. Thai and American students were surveyed about such bad eating habits as eating between meals, eating too quickly, eating when not hungry, and eating in response to external food cues. Contrary to the learning model of obesity, which postulates a causal relationship between eating style and body size, American subjects reported significantly better eating habits than did their much thinner Thai counterparts. A within-culture comparison of the American subjects showed a less significant but similar trend, with obese subjects claiming to have better eating patterns than both thin and underweight subjects.     

Body-related pride in young adults: An exploration of the triggers,contexts, outcomes and attributions

This study explored body-related emotional experiences of pride in young adult males (n = 138) and females (n = 165). Data were collected using a relived emotion task and analyzed using inductive content analysis. Thirty-nine codes were identified and grouped into six categories (triggers, contexts, cognitive attributions, and affective, cognitive, and behavioral outcomes) for each of two themes (hubristic and authentic pride). Hubristic pride triggers included evaluating appearance/fitness as superior. Cognitions centered on feelings of superiority. Behaviors included strategies to show off. Triggers for authentic pride were personal improvements/maintenance in appearance and meeting or exceeding goals. Feeling accomplished was a cognitive outcome, and physical activity was a behavioral strategy. Contexts for the experience of both facets of pride primarily involved sports settings, swimming/beach, and clothes shopping. These findings provide theoretical support for models of pride as it applies to body image, and advances conceptual understanding of positive body image.     

Are age-related changes in cognitive function driven by age-related changes in sensory processing?

Although there has been keen interest in the association among measures of sensory function and cognitive function for many years, in general, measures of sensory function have been confined to one or two senses and measures of threshold sensitivity (acuity). In this study, rigorous psychophysical measures of threshold sensitivity, temporal gap detection, temporal order identification, and temporal masking have been obtained, in hearing, vision, and touch. In addition, all subjects completed 15 subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, 3rd edition (WAIS–III). Data were obtained from 245 adults (18–87 years old) for the WAIS–III and for 40 measures of threshold sensitivity and temporal processing. The focus in this report is on individual differences in performance for the entire data set. Principal-components (PC) factor analysis reduced the 40 psychophysical measures to eight correlated factors, which were reduced further to a single global sensory processing factor. Similarly, PC factor analysis of the 15 WAIS–III scores resulted in three correlated factors that were further reduced to a single global cognitive function factor. Age, global sensory processing, and global cognitive function were all moderately and significantly correlated with one another. However, paired partial correlations, controlling for the third of these three measures, revealed that the moderate correlation between age and global cognitive function went to zero when global sensory processing was controlled for; the other two partial correlations remained intact. Structural models confirmed this result. These analyses suggest that the long-standing observation of age-related changes in cognitive function may be mediated by age-related changes in global sensory processing.