Counselling in organisations: What is the experience of the lone counsellor?

Aims: To explore and understand lone counsellors' experiences of working in organisations, and to indicate means of enhancing this. Method: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine participants and subjected to a qualitative, grounded theory analysis (Glaser, 1992; Glaser, 1998). Findings: Lone counsellors felt lonely, isolated and stressed in the workplace. The ‘lone battling’ behaviour adopted in an attempt to seek acceptance within the organisation and meaningful relationships with likeminded others in the counselling community was only partially successful. The lone counselling experience is understood to be a product of the tension inherent in organisational dynamics. Discussion: The findings help to confirm the belongingness hypothesis proposed by Baumeister and Leary (1995) that states that the need to belong is a fundamental motivation. Implications: The relevance of these findings to the training and employment of counsellors and other lone workers is discussed as well as areas for further research.     

Improving specific autobiographical memory in older adults: impacts on mood,social problem solving,and functional limitations

Older adults have difficulty recalling specific autobiographical events. This over-general memory style is a vulnerability factor for depression. Two groups receiving interventions that have previously been successful at reducing over-general memory in depressed populations were compared to a control group. Participants were healthy older adults aged ≥70 years: memory specificity training (MEST; n = 22), life review (n = 22), and control group (n = 22). There were significant improvements in autobiographical memory specificity in the MEST and life review groups at post-training, relative to the control group, suggesting that over-general memory can be reduced in older adults. Change in social problem solving ability and functional limitations were related to change in autobiographical memory specificity, supporting the suggested role of specific retrieval in generating solutions to social problems and maintaining independence. Qualitative analysis of participants’ feedback revealed that life review may be more appropriate for older adults, possibly because it involves integrating specific memories into a positive narrative.     

Brief report—Phonological awareness and visual-spatial sketchpad functioning predict early arithmetic attainment: Evidence from a longitudinal study

This study examines the relationships between phonological awareness, visual-spatial sketchpad (VSSP) functioning and arithmetic attainment in young children. A sample of 42 children had their VSSP functioning and phonological awareness assessed when they were 5 years old. Approximately 12 months later their nonverbal reasoning, vocabulary, arithmetic, and reading attainment were assessed. Together, VSSP functioning, phonological awareness, vocabulary, and nonverbal reasoning predicted 41% of the variation in the children's arithmetic attainment. Only phonological awareness and VSSP functioning were significant independent predictors. In contrast, only phonological awareness was a significant independent predictor of reading attainment. These findings are consistent with phonological awareness influencing both the development of reading and arithmetic, whilst VSSP functioning only impacts on arithmetic development.     

Cognitive-behavioral treatment of high anger drivers

Relaxation and cognitive-relaxation interventions were compared to a no treatment control in the treatment of high anger drivers. The cognitive portion of the cognitive-relaxation condition adapted the style of Beck's cognitive therapy, particularly use of Socratic questions and behavioral experiments and tryouts, to driving anger reduction. Both interventions lowered indices of driving anger and hostile and aggressive forms of expressing driving anger and increased adaptive/constructive ways of expressing driving anger. The cognitive-relaxation intervention also lowered the frequency of risky behavior. Both interventions lowered trait anger as well. Limitations and implications for treatment and research were discussed.     

Driving after use of alcohol and marijuana in college students.

Driving after use of marijuana is almost as common as driving after use of alcohol in youth (P. M. O'Malley & L. D. Johnston, 2003). The authors compared college students' attitudes, normative beliefs and perceived negative consequences of driving after use of either alcohol or marijuana and tested these cognitive factors as risk factors for substance-related driving. Results indicated that youth perceived driving after marijuana use as more acceptable to peers and the negative consequences as less likely than driving after alcohol use, even after controlling for substance use. Results of zero-inflated Poisson regression analyses indicated that lower perceived dangerousness and greater perceived peer acceptance were associated with increased engagement in, and frequency of, driving after use of either substance. Lower perceived likelihood of negative consequences was associated with increased frequency for those who engage in substance-related driving. These results provide a basis for comparing how youth perceive driving after use of alcohol and marijuana, as well as similarities in the risk factors for driving after use of these substances.     

Colored-Speech Synaesthesia Is Triggered by Multisensory, Not Unisensory, Perception

ABSTRACT— Although it is estimated that as many as 4% of people experience some form of enhanced cross talk between (or within) the senses, known as synaesthesia, very little is understood about the level of information processing required to induce a synaesthetic experience. In work presented here, we used a well-known multisensory illusion called the McGurk effect to show that synaesthesia is driven by late, perceptual processing, rather than early, unisensory processing. Specifically, we tested 9 linguistic-color synaesthetes and found that the colors induced by spoken words are related to what is perceived (i.e., the illusory combination of audio and visual inputs) and not to the auditory component alone. Our findings indicate that color-speech synaesthesia is triggered only when a significant amount of information processing has occurred and that early sensory activation is not directly linked to the synaesthetic experience.     

Pavlovian conditioning of drug reactions: Some implications for problems of drug addiction

This paper reviews the classical conditioning of drug reactions, with special emphasis on the relationship of this phenomenon to drug addiction. Several aspects of drug addiction such as drug craving, high relapse tendencies, and the recurrence of withdrawal symptoms are reviewed and interpreted in light of classical conditioning theory and data. A theory is proposed that attempts to account for various aspects of the addictive process. The implications and empirical methods for testing this theory are outlined.