Anxiety, Sensory Over-Responsivity, and Gastrointestinal Problems in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) experience high rates of anxiety, sensory processing problems, and gastrointestinal (GI) problems; however, the associations among these symptoms in children with ASD have not been previously examined. The current study examined bivariate and multivariate relations among anxiety, sensory over-responsivity, and chronic GI problems in a sample of 2,973 children with ASD enrolled in the Autism Treatment Network (ages 2–17 years, 81.6 % male). Twenty-four percent of the sample experienced at least one type of chronic GI problem (constipation, abdominal pain, bloating, diarrhea, and/or nausea lasting three or more months). Children with each type of GI problem had significantly higher rates of both anxiety and sensory over-responsivity. Sensory over-responsivity and anxiety were highly associated, and each provided unique contributions to the prediction of chronic GI problems in logistic regression analyses. The results indicate that anxiety, sensory over-responsivity and GI problems are possibly interrelated phenomenon for children with ASD, and may have common underlying mechanisms.     

Community Counselling: Values and Practices

This article focuses on community counselling, specifically in African contexts. A community psychology approach is used as a framework for this discussion. This approach, linked to a critical perspective, highlights the importance of going beyond individualist assessments and interventions towards comprehensive approaches that locate the person in context, and that listen carefully to and engage openly with all voices in a way that highlights dynamics that oppress ourselves and others, for the purposes of building a supportive and health promoting environment for all. Perspectives and values relevant to this approach, and their implications for psychological practice, are discussed. In particular, the implications for psychological assessment and intervention are explored in some detail.     

Production and Identification Repetition Priming in AmnesticMild Cognitive Impairment

ABSTRACT

The experiment reported here examined implicit memory function, as measured through repetition priming, in amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI) to examine whether impairments exist in this aspect of memory function. Young adults, healthy older controls, Alzheimer's disease patients, and MCI participants were asked to perform two types of implicit memory tests (word stem completion and threshold identification repetition priming tasks), as well as a recognition test for studied items. As expected, young adults performed better than the other participants on the recognition test and the word stem completion task; there was equivalent priming across groups on the word identification task. While both the older control and MCI participants showed lower levels of priming on the word stem completion task relative to the young adults, the magnitude of priming was equivalent for these two groups, and reliably greater than that of the dementia participants. These results suggest that not all aspects of memory function are impaired in MCI relative to healthy aging.     

Weight discrepancy and body appreciation among women in Poland and Britain

Previous studies have suggested that the process of transmigration has detrimental effects on the body image of migrants relative to women in the country of origin. In the present work, we examined the body image of Polish migrants in Britain (n = 153), Polish women in Poland (n = 153), and a comparison group of British White women (n = 110). Participants completed a measure of actual-ideal weight discrepancy and the Body Appreciation Scale (BAS). Contrary to hypotheses, our results showed that Polish women in Poland had significantly higher weight discrepancy than their counterparts in Britain. Further analyses showed that the BAS reduced to two dimensions among Polish participants, with Polish participants in Poland having significantly lower body appreciation than Polish migrants. We suggest that the sociocultural changes that have taken place in Eastern Europe may place women in that region at relatively high risk for developing negative body image.     

Oppression within the counselling room

This paper suggests that the oppression experienced by disabled people in society is sometimes replayed in the counselling room by counsellors who are unaware of their own disablist attitudes and prejudices. Whilst the provision of Disability Equality Training (DET) within counselling courses would ameliorate the problem, I believe that disabled people would be most empowered by a counselling approach which recognises the potential for oppression within the counsellor‐client relationship. One solution may be the creation of a new counselling approach (disability counselling) which includes the social model of disability as one of the foundations. An alternative solution may be found within the emerging counselling approaches that treat counselling as a social and political process and place emphasis on developing comprehensive anti‐discriminatory practice.     

Rule Violations in Intercollegiate Athletics: A Qualitative Investigation Utilizing an Organizational Justice Framework

Cheating and rule violations in intercollegiate athletics continue to be relevant issues in many institutions of higher education because they reflect upon the integrity of the institutions in which they are housed, causing concern among many faculty members, administrators, and trustees. Although a great deal of research has documented the numerous rule violations in NCAA intercollegiate athletics, much of it has failed to combine sound theory with practical solutions. The purpose of this study was to examine the possible extensions of the organizational justice framework to the problem of rule violations in intercollegiate athletics. In doing so, the current study examined (a) perceived areas of injustice among coaches at NCAA Division I institutions, (b) avenues by which coaches resolve these injustices, and (c) potential solutions for resolving injustices in an attempt to reduce NCAA violations. Six NCAA Division I basketball coaches from various parts of the country (four from men's teams and two from women's teams) were interviewed using a semi-structured format. Despite the NCAA's efforts to create parity, results showed that coaches perceived several areas of inequities in recruiting, including financial resources and academic standards. The interviewed coaches described several means that are currently used to resolve these inequities and offered recommendations for changes to reduce injustice in the future.     

Adaptation is automatic

Two experiments were used to test whether selective adaptation for speech occurs automatically or instead requires attentional resources. A control condition demonstrated the usual large identification shifts caused by repeatedly presenting an adapting sound (/wa/, with listeners identifying members of a /ba/-/wa/ test series). Two types of distractor tasks were used: (1) Subjects did a rapid series of arithmetic problems during the adaptation periods (Experiments 1 and 2), or (2) they made a series of rhyming judgments, requiring phonetic coding (Experiment 2). A control experiment (Experiment 3) demonstrated that these tasks normally impose a heavy attentional cost on phonetic processing. Despite this, for both experimental conditions, the observed adaptation effect was just as large as in the control condition. This result indicates that adaptation is automatic, operating at an early, preattentive level. The implications of these results for current models of speech perception are discussed.