Integrating consultation and program evaluation in school psychology

Consultation approaches to providing psychological services are widely used by school psychologists. Recently, the need for school psychologists to be proficient in educational program evaluation has been recognized. The present paper discusses how school psychologists can use their existing consultation skills as an approach to program evaluation. The integration of consultation skills with evaluation results in an approach to program evaluation that is particularly useful where program goals and objectives are broad and nonspecific (as in many educational innovations). Also, the consultation approach to evaluation is easier for school psychologists to blend with their other roles in schools than the assessment-oriented evaluator role of some evaluation models. The consultation approach to evaluation is illustrated using a federally sponsored training program for school teachers and administrators.     

Vocational Choices in College

Our society presses unreasonably on students to “know” what they want to do vocationally. The pressure is unreasonable, especially when applied to high school seniors and college freshmen, because most of them have not yet learned enough about themselves or about occupations to be able to make a first, satisfying choice. And especially they have not learned enough about the nature of their limitations in college-level work. As a result, many students commit themselves to vocational choices prematurely and then perceive the experience as a “failure.” Students should be encouraged to consider any early decision as tentative, a choice to be tested, confirmed, or disconfirmed. They should be relieved of pressure to “know” what they want to do, and helped to see their task as one of confirming or discovering what they want to do by way of a process of exploration, experimentation, and personal development that may go on through their lifetime.     

Structure and Individuality in Psychoanalytic Training: The Israeli Controversial Discussions

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

Event-related brain potentials and subjective probability in a learning task

In a paired associate learning task, subjects responded to each presentation of a nonsense syllable by typing both a three-letter associate and a rating of their confidence that this response was correct or incorrect. Average event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by the subsequent presentation of the actual paired syllable varied with the interaction of confidence and trial outcome. A larger amplitude P300 was elicited by syllables that informed subjects that they were correct when they thought they were incorrect or that they were incorrect when they thought they were correct than by syllables that confirmed subjects expectations. That this average ERP result was indeed an effect on P300 amplitude, and not an artifact of single-trial variability in P30O latency, was confirmed with a trial-by-trial latency adjustment procedure. Consistent with findings from other tasks, P300 amplitude varied inversely with the subj ective probability of the ERP-eliciting events.     

A “hand-shaking” multiplexer for the IBM 1800

An instrument is described which is used to multiplex the “ready” and “external sync” lines of an IBM 1800’s data channel to 15 external devices. Used with the digital output registers of the computer, the device facilitates the interfacing of non-IBM peripheral devices to the 1800. The multiplexer can be used in any application in which a pair of lines needs to be shared among several devices.     

Phone follow up to families of COVID-19 patients who died at the hospital: families' grief reactions and clinical psychologists' roles

A proportion of persons affected by coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) die and do so in extraordinary circumstances. This can make grief management extremely challenging for families. The Clinical Psychology unit of an Italian hospital offered a bereavement follow-up call to such families. This study aimed to explore the families' experiences and needs collected during these calls, and the role that the psychologists played through the call. A total of 246 families were called over 3 months. Multiple qualitative methods included: (i) written reports of the calls with relatives of patients who died at the hospital for COVID-19; (ii) qualitative semi-structured interviews with psychologists involved in the calls; (iii) observation of psychologists' peer group discussions. A thematic analysis was conducted. Six themes emerged: without death rituals, solitary, unexpected, unfair, unsafe, coexisting with other stressors. Families' reactions were perceived by psychologists as close to a traumatic grief. Families' needs ranged from finding alternative rituals to giving meaning and expressing different emotions. The psychologists played both a social-institutional and a psychological-human role through the calls (e.g., they cured disrupted communication or validated feelings and choices). This study highlighted the potential of traumatic grief of families of COVID-19 victims, and provided indications for supporting them within the space of a short phone call.     

To lie or to mislead?

Philosophical Studies - The aim of this paper is to argue that lying differs from mere misleading in a way that can be morally relevant: liars commit themselves to something they believe to be...