Relationships,not boundaries

The authors find it more useful to payattention to relationships than to boundaries.By focusing attention on bounded, individualpsychological issues, the metaphor ofboundaries can distract helping professionalsfrom thinking about inequities of power. Itoversimplifies a complex issue, inviting us toignore discourses around gender, race, class,culture, and the like that support injustice,abuse, and exploitation. Making boundaries acentral metaphor for ethical practice can keepus from critically examining the effects ofdistance, withdrawal, and non-participation.The authors describe how it is possible toexamine the practical, moral, and ethicaleffects of our participation in relationshipsby focusing on just relationships rather thanon boundaries. They give illustrations andclinical examples of relationally-focusedethical practices that derive from a narrativeapproach to therapy.     

Short-term retention of lexical-semantic representations: implications for speech production

Patients with semantic STM deficits have difficulty comprehending sentences that require the retention of several lexical-semantic representations prior to their integration into higher-level propositions (Martin, 1995: Martin & Romani. 1994). In Experiment 1, patients with a semantic retention deficit had difficulty with the same type of constructions in speech production, namely noun phrases with one or two prenominal adjectives. Their performance improved when they could produce the nouns and adjectives in sentence form, which placed smaller demands on lexical-semantic retention. In Experiment 2 these patients were better able to produce syntactically complex sentences than the prenominal adjective phrases having an equal number of content words, indicating that the findings in Experiment 1 could not be attributed to syntactic complexity. These patients produced more pauses in the sentence constructions in Experiments 1 and 2, suggesting that the timing of such productions is abnormal. In contrast, patient EA, with a phonological retention deficit, performed better than the patients with a semantic retention deficit on the AN phrases despite having a smaller STM span. She showed no significant benefit of producing sentence compared to phrase constructions, and also made fewer and shorter pauses than the other patients. These findings support the multiple capacities view of verbal working memory and suggest that the same semantic retention capacity used in language comprehension is used in speech production.     

The Epidemiology of Homicide followed by Suicide: A Systematic and Quantitative Review

This systematic review of population based studies of homicide followed by suicide was conducted to examine the associations between rates of homicide‐suicide, rates of other homicides and rates of suicide. The review analysed 64 samples, including the case of an outlier (Greenland) that were reported in 49 studies. There was a significant association between the rates of homicide‐suicide and those of other homicides in studies from the U.S.A. Outside the U.S.A. there was no clear association between homicide‐suicide and other homicide but there was modest but significant association between rates of suicide and homicide‐suicide. Homicide‐suicide appears to be closer in epidemiological terms to homicide than suicide in regions with high rates of homicide and measures to reduce homicide in these regions may also reduce homicide‐suicide.     

Does Time Fly When You are Having Fun? A Day Reconstruction Method Analysis

Duration-based measures of happiness from retrospectively constructed daily diaries are gaining in popularity in population-based studies of the hedonic experience. Yet experimental evidence suggests that perceptions of duration—how long an event lasts—are influenced by individuals’ emotional experiences during the event. An important remaining question is whether observational measures of duration outside the laboratory setting, where the events under study are engaged in voluntarily, may be similarly affected, and if so, for which emotions are duration biases a potential concern. This study assesses how duration and emotions co-vary using retrospective, 24-h diaries from a national sample of older couples. Data are from the Disability and Use of Time supplement to the nationally representative U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We find that experienced wellbeing (positive, negative emotion) and activity duration are inversely associated. Specific positive emotions (happy, calm) are not associated with duration, but all measures of negative wellbeing considered here (frustrated, worried, sad, tired, and pain) have positive correlations (ranging from 0.04 to 0.08; p < .05). However, only frustration remains correlated with duration after controlling for respondent, activity and day-related characteristics (0.06, p < .01). The correlation translates into a potentially upward biased estimate of duration of up to 10 min (20 %) for very frustrating activities. We conclude that estimates of time spent feeling happy yesterday generated from diary data are unlikely to be biased but more research is needed on the link between duration estimation and feelings of frustration.     

“What Happened Needs to Be Told”: Fostering Critical Historical Reasoning in the Classroom

Scholars often define historical reasoning as constructing defensible interpretations of past events. Drawing on critical theory, this article suggests that it also entails consciously framing one's topic of inquiry. The article examines an instructional unit that aimed to foster this expanded view of historiography. Forty students, ages 14–15, wrote histories of the Vietnam War from 12 primary accounts and compared their depictions to that of their textbook. After participating in the unit, students found the textbook factually accurate yet biased in its pattern of emphasis and omission, a conclusion that aligned with the unit's goal of helping them distinguish empirical integrity from interpretive frame. However, whereas critical theorists view all scholarship as partially subjective, the students sought to achieve objectivity by including “both sides” in their histories. The study suggests that educators should highlight the numerous dilemmas historians face, from framing their topic to selecting and analyzing evidence.     

Improving Public Perception of Behavior Analysis

The potential impact of behavior analysis is limited by the public’s dim awareness of the field. The mass media rarely cover behavior analysis, other than to echo inaccurate negative stereotypes about control and punishment. The media instead play up appealing but less-evidence-based approaches to problems, a key example being the touting of dubious diets over behavioral approaches to losing excess weight. These sorts of claims distort or skirt scientific evidence, undercutting the fidelity of behavior analysis to scientific rigor. Strategies for better connecting behavior analysis with the public might include reframing the field’s techniques and principles in friendlier, more resonant form; pushing direct outcome comparisons between behavior analysis and its rivals in simple terms; and playing up the “warm and fuzzy” side of behavior analysis.     

The nonverbal manifestations of cognitive processes in clinical listening

Nonverbal behaviors were observed during communicative sequences in videotaped clinical interviews. The interviews were conducted by two groups of physicians-in-training with contrasting cognitive profiles as determined by well-known laboratory tasks prior to the interviews. In each phase of the communicative sequences, significant differences emerged between the two groups for various types of nonverbal behaviors. Differences also emerged between the two groups of interviewers in their questioning patterns and in the nature of the narrative elicited from their interlocutors. A correlational analysis revealed consistent patterns of behaviors across phases of the communicative sequences. The findings provide additional evidence for the intimate connection between nonverbal behavior and cognitive activity and point to nonverbal behaviors as objective measures of the processes underlying clinical listening.