Genetic Counseling Supervisors’ Self-Efficacy for Select Clinical Supervision Competencies

Supervision is a primary instructional vehicle for genetic counseling student clinical training. Approximately two-thirds of genetic counselors report teaching and education roles, which include supervisory roles. Recently, Eubanks Higgins and colleagues published the first comprehensive list of empirically-derived genetic counseling supervisor competencies. Studies have yet to evaluate whether supervisors possess these competencies and whether their competencies differ as a function of experience. This study investigated three research questions: (1) What are genetic counselor supervisors’ perceptions of their capabilities (self-efficacy) for a select group of supervisor competencies?, (2) Are there differences in self-efficacy as a function of their supervision experience or their genetic counseling experience, and 3) What training methods do they use and prefer to develop supervision skills? One-hundred thirty-one genetic counselor supervisors completed an anonymous online survey assessing demographics, self-efficacy (self-perceived capability) for 12 goal setting and 16 feedback competencies (Scale: 0–100), competencies that are personally challenging, and supervision training experiences and preferences (open-ended). A MANOVA revealed significant positive effects of supervision experience but not genetic counseling experience on participants’ self-efficacy. Although mean self-efficacy ratings were high (>83.7), participant comments revealed several challenging competencies (e.g., incorporating student’s report of feedback from previous supervisors into goal setting, and providing feedback about student behavior rather than personal traits). Commonly preferred supervision training methods included consultation with colleagues, peer discussion, and workshops/seminars.     

THE BEST AND THE REST: REVISITING THE NORM OF NORMALITY OF INDIVIDUAL PERFORMANCE

We revisit a long‐held assumption in human resource management, organizational behavior, and industrial and organizational psychology that individual performance follows a Gaussian (normal) distribution. We conducted 5 studies involving 198 samples including 633,263 researchers, entertainers, politicians, and amateur and professional athletes. Results are remarkably consistent across industries, types of jobs, types of performance measures, and time frames and indicate that individual performance is not normally distributed—instead, it follows a Paretian (power law) distribution. Assuming normality of individual performance can lead to misspecified theories and misleading practices. Thus, our results have implications for all theories and applications that directly or indirectly address the performance of individual workers including performance measurement and management, utility analysis in preemployment testing and training and development, personnel selection, leadership, and the prediction of performance, among others.     

Unrecognized Posttraumatic Stress Disorder as a Treatment Barrier for a Gang-Involved Juvenile Offender

This study examines the case of GH, an 18-year-old Latino male participating in an employment-based delinquency intervention for gang-affiliated youth. Although postintervention measures revealed that GH showed gains on key outcomes (i.e., delinquency, employment), he experienced sporadic treatment setbacks (e.g., work absenteeism, fighting) that disrupted his progress. A comprehensive psychological assessment suggested that his aggressive, illegal behavior and difficulty maintaining employment could have been influenced by previously undiagnosed posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Excerpts from counseling sessions illustrated how reactive aggression, hypervigilance, sleep disruptions, and emotional numbing could have interfered with treatment gains and ultimately contributed to GH's re-arrest. Implications for early, accurate identification of PTSD in delinquency interventions for gang youth are discussed.     

Concealing negative evaluations of a romantic partner's physical attractiveness

Two studies provided evidence that people hide their negative evaluations of their romantic partner's physical attractiveness. This pattern was found using self‐reports of concealment (Study 1) and a behavioral observation measure (Study 2). Participants who engaged in this deception also exhibited elevated speech disfluencies, which is a deception cue. Moderators of concealment were examined. Concealment was especially pronounced for participants high in care for the partner's welfare (Studies 1 and 2), low in commitment (Studies 1 and 2), and high in attractiveness ideals (Study 2). Results suggest that people use deception to regulate their romantic partner's feelings, but that long‐term orientation or desire to maintain closeness may curtail use of this strategy.     

DETERMINATION AND EVALUATION OF RATE MEASUREMENTS IN THE ANALYSIS OF SPACE MEDICAL DATA

Measures of rate of change and of rate of rate of change are developed for application to physiological and psychological data. Examples are given of the use of these measures with heart-rate data for comparisons within and between subjects. It is shown that the measures provide information over and above that offered by means and variances, and that the measures appropriately reflect the impact of external variables.     

Metacognition of the testing effect: Guiding learners to predict the benefits of retrieval

If the mnemonic benefits of testing are to be widely realized in real-world learning circumstances, people must appreciate the value of testing and choose to utilize testing during self-guided learning. Yet metacognitive judgments do not appear to reflect the enhancement provided by testing Karpicke & Roediger (Science 319:966–968, 2008). In this article, we show that under judicious conditions, learners can indeed reveal an understanding of the beneficial effects of testing, as well as the interaction of that effect with delay (Experiment 1). In that experiment, subjects made judgments of learning (JOLs) for previously studied or previously tested items in either a cue-only or a cue–target context, and either immediately or after a 1-day delay. When subjects made judgments in a cue-only context, their JOLs accurately reflected the effects of testing, both immediately and at a delay. To evaluate the potential of exposure to such conditions for promoting generalized appreciation of testing effects, three further experiments elicited global predictions about restudied and tested items across two study/test cycles (Experiments 2, 3, and 4). The results indicated that learners’ global naïve metacognitive beliefs increasingly reflect the beneficial effects of testing when learners experience these benefits with increasing external support. If queried under facilitative circumstances, learners appreciate the mnemonic enhancement that testing provides on both an item-by-item and global basis but generalize that knowledge to future learning only with considerable guidance.     

Accuracy of perceptually based and acoustically based inspiratory loci in reading

Investigations of speech often involve the identification of inspiratory loci in continuous recordings of speech. The present study investigates the accuracy of perceptually determined and acoustically determined inspiratory loci. While wearing a circumferentially vented mask connected to a pneumotach, 16 participants read two passages. The perceptually determined and acoustically determined inspiratory loci were compared with the actual loci of inspiration, which were determined aerodynamically. The results showed that (1) agreement across all three judges was the most accurate of the approaches considered here for detecting inspiratory loci based on listening; (2) the most accurate pause duration threshold for detecting inspiratory loci was 250 msec; and (3) the perceptually based breath-group determination was more accurate than the acoustically based determination of pause duration. Inconsistencies among perceptually determined, acoustically determined, and aerodynamically determined inspiratory loci are not negligible and, therefore, need to be considered when researchers design experiments on breath groups in speech.