A Metaperspective for Counseling Practice: A Response to the Challenge of Contextualism

This article discusses the challenge of contextualism to developmental theory as articulated by Lewis (1997), as well as the challenge of current changes in life contexts for developmentally oriented counseling practice. Counseling practice refers to activities of psychologists and counselors in relation to theory, research, and intervention, and in relation to both career and psychotherapy domains of practice. It is hoped that a consideration of both career and psychotherapy practice will contribute to dialogue and integration across these domains. In the second part of the paper, a metaperspective for counseling practice, conceived as a response to this challenge, is presented. It consists of a conception of life contexts inclusive of work and relationships across both public and private domains of life and posits a generic developmental process goal of effective functioning as relevant to both career and psychotherapy domains of counseling practice.     

Can low-cost motion-tracking systems substitute a Polhemus system when researching social motor coordination in children?

Functionally stable and robust interpersonal motor coordination has been found to play an integral role in the effectiveness of social interactions. However, the motion-tracking equipment required to record and objectively measure the dynamic limb and body movements during social interaction has been very costly, cumbersome, and impractical within a non-clinical or non-laboratory setting. Here we examined whether three low-cost motion-tracking options (Microsoft Kinect skeletal tracking of either one limb or whole body and a video-based pixel change method) can be employed to investigate social motor coordination. Of particular interest was the degree to which these low-cost methods of motion tracking could be used to capture and index the coordination dynamics that occurred between a child and an experimenter for three simple social motor coordination tasks in comparison to a more expensive, laboratory-grade motion-tracking system (i.e., a Polhemus Latus system). Overall, the results demonstrated that these low-cost systems cannot substitute the Polhemus system in some tasks. However, the lower-cost Microsoft Kinect skeletal tracking and video pixel change methods were successfully able to index differences in social motor coordination in tasks that involved larger-scale, naturalistic whole body movements, which can be cumbersome and expensive to record with a Polhemus. However, we found the Kinect to be particularly vulnerable to occlusion and the pixel change method to movements that cross the video frame midline. Therefore, particular care needs to be taken in choosing the motion-tracking system that is best suited for the particular research.     

Isolating observer-based reference directions in human spatial memory: head, body, and the self-to-array axis

Several lines of research have suggested the importance of egocentric reference systems for determining how the spatial properties of one's environment are mentally organized. Yet relatively little is known about the bases for egocentric reference systems in human spatial memory. In three experiments, we examine the relative importance of observer-based reference directions in human memory by controlling the orientation of head and body during acquisition. Experiment 1 suggests that spatial memory is organized by a head-aligned reference direction; however, Experiment 2 shows that a body-aligned reference direction can be more influential than a head-aligned direction when the axis defined by the relative positions of the observer and the learned environment (the "self-to-array" axis) is properly controlled. A third experiment shows that the self-to-array axis is distinct from - and can dominate - retina, head, and body-based egocentric reference systems.     

When facts go down the rabbit hole: contrasting features and objecthood as indexes to memory

People will often look to empty, uninformative locations in the world when trying to recall spoken information. This spatial indexing behaviour occurs when the information had previously been associated with those locations. It remains unclear, however, whether this behaviour is an example of a simple association across perceptual and cognitive systems, or whether location information plays a role in memory retrieval. In the current study, we investigate whether higher-level cognitive processes, such as object-based attention, are involved in spatial indexing. Participants saw creatures burrowing around the screen, appearing from underground to tell them facts. They saw the same creature in two locations, or two identical creatures in two locations, depending on spatiotemporal cues conveyed by a burrowing animation. While answering questions, we found that participants relied on these spatiotemporal cues, fixating the previous locations of the creature associated with the relevant fact, rather than the location of an identical creature. We interpret these findings in terms of an object-based attentional mechanism that is common to semantic memory and scene perception, and allows 'external memory' to be exploited in a dynamic environment.     

The Hostile Media Effect,Biased Assimilation,and Perceptions of a Presidential Debate1

This study examined the relation between 2 seemingly inconsistent phenomena: hostile media effect and biased assimilation. Participants (N = 156) reported their preference for George W. Bush or John Kerry and then viewed a live broadcast of the first Bush–Kerry Presidential debate. Consistent with biased assimilation, candidate preference influenced participants on both sides to perceive their candidate won the debate. Nevertheless, candidate preference modestly induced participants to perceive hostile bias from the debate moderator, Jim Lehrer. The influence of anticipated third‐person effects was also examined. Overall, the results suggest biased assimilation and the hostile media effect are not inconsistent. In some situations, they occur simultaneously. Moreover, the hostile media effect appears to extend beyond news reports to other forms of mediation.     

Treadmill gait analysis does not detect motor deficits in animal models of Parkinson's disease or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Computerized treadmill gait analysis in models of toxicant exposure and neurodegenerative disorders holds much potential for detection and therapeutic intervention in these models, and researchers must validate the technology that assists in that data collection and analysis. The present authors used a commercially available computerized gait analysis system that used (a) a motorized treadmill on retired breeder male C57BL/6J mice, (b) the toxicant-induced (1-methyl-1-, 2-, 3-, 6-tetrahydropyridine) MPTP mouse model of Parkinson's disease (PD), and (c) the superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1) G93A transgenic mouse model of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The authors compared the detection of deficits by computerized treadmill gait analysis in MPTP-treated mice with inked-paw stride length and correlated these measures to dopamine (DA) loss. The authors found that the computerized treadmill gait analysis system did not distinguish MPTP-treated mice from vehicle controls, despite a nearly 90% deficit of striatal DA. In contrast, decreases in inked-paw stride length correlated strongly with DA losses in these same animals. Computerized treadmill gait analysis could neither reliably distinguish SOD1 G93A mutant mice from controls from 6 to 12 weeks of age nor detect any consistent early motor deficits in these mice. On the basis of the authors' findings, they inferred that computerized gait analysis on a motorized treadmill is not suited to measuring motor deficits in either the MPTP mouse model of PD or the SOD1 G93A mouse model of ALS.     

Judicial gatekeeping and the social construction of the admissibility of expert testimony

Content analysis of 192 U.S. District Court cases was conducted to investigate judges' evaluations of expert characteristics and evidence characteristics for toxicology, psychological/psychiatric, and damages testimony. Judges evaluated more expert characteristics, but not more evidence characteristics, as the number of months post-Daubert increased (Hypotheses 1 and 2). More evidence characteristics were evaluated when evidence was quantitatively rather than qualitatively based (Hypothesis 3). The greatest number of evidence characteristics examined was for toxicology evidence (Hypothesis 4). Fewer expert characteristics were evaluated for admissible evidence, but more evidence characteristics were evaluated for inadmissible evidence (Hypothesis 5). All analyses were significant at .05. Implications for judges, attorneys, and experts are discussed.