Motivational Counseling: Implications for Counseling Male Juvenile Sex Offenders

Juvenile sex offenders (JSOs) often appear unmotivated to change, which thus necessitates a therapeutic approach that matches “resistant” client characteristics. In this article, the authors review common traits of JSOs, introduce motivational counseling as an effective treatment modality, and offer a case illustration.     

Differential involvement of M1-type and M4-type muscarinic cholinergic receptors in the dorsomedial striatum in task switching

Previous experiments have demonstrated that the rat dorsomedial striatum is one brain area that plays a crucial role in learning when conditions require a shift in strategies. Further evidence indicates that muscarinic cholinergic receptors in this brain area support adaptations in behavioral responses. Unknown is whether specific muscarinic receptor subtypes in the dorsomedial striatum contribute to a flexible shift in response patterns. The present experiments investigated whether blockade of M1-type and/or M4-type cholinergic receptors in the dorsomedial striatum underlie place reversal learning. Experiment 1 investigated the effects of the M1-type muscarinic cholinergic antagonist, muscarinic-toxin 7 (MT-7) infused into the dorsomedial striatum in place acquisition and reversal learning. Experiment 2 investigated the effects of the M4-type muscarinic cholinergic antagonist, muscarinic-toxin 3 (MT-3) injected into the dorsomedial striatum in place acquisition and reversal learning. All testing occurred in a modified cross-maze across two consecutive sessions. Bilateral injections of MT-7 into the dorsomedial striatum at 1 or 2 microg, but not 0.05 microg impaired place reversal learning. Analysis of the errors revealed that MT-7 at 1 and 2 microg significantly increased regressive errors, but not perseverative errors. An injection of MT-7 2 microg into the dorsomedial striatum prior to place acquisition did not affect learning. Experiment 2 revealed that dorsomedial striatal injections of MT-3 (0.05, 1 or 2 microg) did not affect place acquisition or reversal learning. The findings suggest that activation of M1-type muscarinic cholinergic receptors in the dorsomedial striatum, but not M4-type muscarinic cholinergic receptors facilitate the flexible shifting of response patterns by maintaining or learning a new choice pattern once selected.     

Modernity and childrearing in families of Gujarati Indian adolescents

Over the last two decades, researchers have devoted increasing attention to the role of cognitive factors in parenting. These cognitive mediational models focus on the role of attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge in influencing parenting behaviours. A cognitive factor that contributes to cultural variation in parenting is attitudinal modernity—a broad concept that refers to the “Westernization” of attitudes in such diverse areas as gender role conceptions, political attitudes, attitudes toward authority, the family, and religious beliefs. Modernity has been most useful in describing the attitudes of individuals from countries undergoing the rapid social and economic changes that accompany industrialism and urbanization. The present study focused on India—a country currently undergoing such changes. Despite the wide range of modern and traditional beliefs among contemporary Indian parents, our understanding of the determinants of these individual differences is limited. The purpose of the present study was to examine the relation between modernity and parental childrearing practices, as well as to examine the relation between adolescent modernity and parental childrearing. Mothers, fathers, and adolescents in 50 Hindu, Gujarati families completed questionnaires about the modernity of their attitudes and were interviewed about parental childrearing practices. Parental and adolescent modernity were highly correlated. Moreover, parental modernity predicted the nature of parental childrearing values and practices, and parental childrearing values predicted adolescent modernity. Although the findings varied somewhat for mothers versus fathers, parental modernity was associated with individualistic childrearing values and practices, and parents who valued individualistic characteristics in their adolescents had sons and daughters who reported the highest levels of modernity. Implications for understanding the role of mothers and fathers in the socialization of modernity are considered.     

Psychological disturbance,social support and stressors: A community survey of immigrant Asian women and the indigenous population

The purpose of this community survey was to examine the differences in psychological symptom levels, social support, stressors and the awareness and use of local social services between the Asian and the indigenous groups. The theoretical starting point lies in the idea that the Asian group would have experienced considerable stress, partly as a resuldt of their being immigrants, and that the traditional extended family common to them may be an important source of social support. The relationship between psychological symptom levels and social support was examined to test the hypothesis that they might be related. Forty immigrant Asian women and 40 indigenous women were randomly selected from the Electroral Register, 1988, using quota-sampling techniques. All subjects were interviewed in their own homes and in their native languages by volunteer interviewers. In comparison with the Indigenes, the Asians had higher symptom levels; smaller, denser, less dispersed social support networks composed of mainly kin members; they reported more stressors related to their migrant status, and they had a lower awareness and usage of local social services. A relationship between psychological disturbance and social support was found, yielding inconsistent results regariding the direction of the relationship. Limitations of the study were outlined with implications of the results and indications for future research discussed.     

Exploring the Role and Importance of Human Capital in Resilient High Performing Organisations: Evidence from Business Clusters

This paper investigates and explores the link between the resilience of organisations, its human capital and firm performance. We base our analysis on the resource-based view of the firm, cluster strategy, and conservation of resources theories. Our contribution is contextualised by comparing the performance of business clusters across two observational periods, namely pre-recession (2005–2007) and recession (2008–2009) period. We identify six relevant indicators from the extant literature that capture economic dynamism, human capital, and financial viability of firms in order to capture the performance across clusters and capture resilience to the global financial crisis. We contribute by identifying organisations in business clusters that perform better due to being more resilient, particularly during challenging times. Through triangulation we find overwhelming evidence of the overarching role and importance of human capital (people) in driving more successful organisations in business clusters as they possess greater resilience during challenging times such as the recent global financial crises. We show that strong clusters not only improve regional employment and turnover growth over time, but improve resilience of regional economies to downturns through resource gain and crossover processes. We further illustrate that understanding the impact of resource reservoirs, resource passageways and crossover provides a framework for further research and intervention to promote resilience in organisations.     

Do the magnocellular and parvocellular visual pathways contribute differentially to subitizing and counting?

We investigated the neurobiologies! basis of visual processes involved in object enumeration. Subitizing, the ability to rapidly and accurately enumerate four or fewer objects, is thought to depend on preattentive processing of visual stimuli, whereas counting of more numerous objects is thought to require serial shifts of attention. We attempted to distinguish between the hypothesis that the magnocellular (M) visual pathway is the preferential route for subitizing, and the alternative hypothesis that there is no selectivity for the M pathway or its counterpart, the parvocellular (P) visual pathway, in visual object enumeration. Green rectangles were presented on an equiluminant red background to impair M pathway processing. This slowed enumeration performance relative to a control condition in which object/background luminance differed, especially when the rectangles were relatively large and widely spaced and had constant retinal eccentricity. When low luminance contrast was used to impair processing along the P pathway, enumeration performance was slowed relative to a high-contrast control condition, especially when the rectangles were small and closely spaced. Overall, our manipulations affected enumeration performance without selectivity for subitizing or counting ranges and without altering the slope of the functions relating reaction time to numerosity. Thus, our results favor the hypothesis that visual enumeration does not depend preferentially on either the M or the P pathway.     

An evaluation of two differential reinforcement procedures with escape extinction to treat food refusal

Consumption of solids and liquids occurs as a chain of behaviors that may include accepting, swallowing, and retaining the food or drink. In the current investigation, we evaluated the relative effectiveness of differential reinforcement of the first behavior in the chain (acceptance) versus differential reinforcement for the terminal behavior in the chain (mouth clean). Three children who had been diagnosed with a feeding disorder participated. Acceptance remained at zero when differential reinforcement contingencies were implemented for acceptance or mouth clean. Acceptance and mouth clean increased for all 3 participants once escape extinction was added to the differential reinforcement procedures, independent of whether reinforcement was provided for acceptance or for mouth clean. Maintenance was observed in 2 children when escape extinction was removed from the treatment package. The mechanism by which consumption increased is discussed in relation to positive and negative reinforcement contingencies.     

A COMPARISON OF SENSORY INTEGRATIVE AND BEHAVIORAL THERAPIES AS TREATMENT FOR PEDIATRIC FEEDING DISORDERS

We compared the effects of escape extinction (EE) plus noncontingent reinforcement (NCR) with sensory integration therapy as treatment for the feeding problems of 2 children. Results indicated that EE plus NCR was more effective in increasing acceptance, decreasing inappropriate behavior, and increasing amount consumed relative to sensory integration for both children. The results are discussed in terms of the challenges of evaluating sensory‐integration‐based treatments, and the reasons why component analyses of multicomponent treatments like sensory integration are important.     

Cross-Cultural Attitude Assessment With the Miale-Holsopple Sentence Completion Test

Certain sentence stems in the 73 item Miale-Holsopple Sentence Completion Test can be interpreted as open-ended attitude questions, revealing world views in particular societies. Sentence stems #7, "The easiest way to get money;" #8, "Twenty years from now;" #18, "The white girl who married the black man;" #48, "A naked man;" and #54, "A woman's body" were selected for cross-cultural study. Thirty-nine American college students answered the standard form of the Miale-Holsopple, and 60 Brazilian students answered a Portuguese version of this test. American students gave more positive work ethic responses to stems #7 and #8 and more negative responses to interracial marriages than did Brazilians. The Brazilian females gave more positive responses to stem #54 than did American women.     

The development of perceptual grouping biases in infancy: A Japanese-English cross-linguistic study

Perceptual grouping has traditionally been thought to be governed by innate, universal principles. However, recent work has found differences in Japanese and English speakers’ non-linguistic perceptual grouping, implicating language in non-linguistic perceptual processes (Iversen, Patel, & Ohgushi, 2008). Two experiments test Japanese- and English-learning infants of 5–6 and 7–8 months of age to explore the development of grouping preferences. At 5–6 months, neither the Japanese nor the English infants revealed any systematic perceptual biases. However, by 7–8 months, the same age as when linguistic phrasal grouping develops, infants developed non-linguistic grouping preferences consistent with their language’s structure (and the grouping biases found in adulthood). These results reveal an early difference in non-linguistic perception between infants growing up in different language environments. The possibility that infants’ linguistic phrasal grouping is bootstrapped by abstract perceptual principles is discussed.