Tom Thumb in hospital: The fairy tale workshop in a paediatric oncology and haematology ward

Abstract

Definitions of and attitudes towards countertransference have changed throughout the twentieth century. From being seen as a contaminant in the analytical process, countertransference has come to be seen by many therapists as a potentially useful source of information about a client and his or her problems. There are dangers as well as benefits associated with analysis and utilization of countertransference. This article reviews these issues and proposes some guidelines that therapists may find useful when contemplating their countertransference reactions to clients, and when considering how best to utilize these.     

Perceived stress and everyday memory complaints among older adult women

Abstract

Memory complaints among older adults are often influenced by depression and anxiety, but the association of stress to memory complaints has received little attention. We examined the associations of perceived stress, life events, and activity level to everyday memory complaints among healthy older women, while controlling for the influence of depression and anxiety. Participants (N=54) completed self-report questionnaires on memory complaints, perceived stress, recent life events, activity level, depression, and anxiety. Partial correlation analyses indicated that higher levels of perceived stress were associated with higher levels of memory complaints when controlling for the influence of depression and anxiety, but that life events and activity level were not related to memory complaints. This study highlights that perceived stress, like depression and anxiety, is a psychological factor that influences the appraisal of cognitive ability; however, larger and more heterogeneous samples will be needed to better understand the multifactorial nature of memory complaints in older adulthood.     

The partial-reinforcement extinction effect and the contingent-sampling hypothesis

The partial-reinforcement extinction effect (PREE) implies that learning under partial reinforcements is more robust than learning under full reinforcements. While the advantages of partial reinforcements have been well-documented in laboratory studies, field research has failed to support this prediction. In the present study, we aimed to clarify this pattern. Experiment 1 showed that partial reinforcements increase the tendency to select the promoted option during extinction; however, this effect is much smaller than the negative effect of partial reinforcements on the tendency to select the promoted option during the training phase. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the overall effect of partial reinforcements varies inversely with the attractiveness of the alternative to the promoted behavior: The overall effect is negative when the alternative is relatively attractive, and positive when the alternative is relatively unattractive. These results can be captured with a contingent-sampling model assuming that people select options that provided the best payoff in similar past experiences. The best fit was obtained under the assumption that similarity is defined by the sequence of the last four outcomes.     

A job characteristics approach to explain workplace bullying

This article analyses job characteristics as antecedents of workplace bullying, in line with the early Scandinavian research tradition. Research thus far suggests a large variety of possible job related antecedents. Recent review findings and methodological criticism, however, suggests that these findings need to be treated with caution. Warr's Vitamin model is used to summarize relevant job-related antecedents of workplace bullying. All relationships are tested simultaneously in a hierarchical regression analysis, controlling for covariates. A large and heterogeneous sample of Belgian workers is used to test the hypotheses (n = 6175). The results show that task autonomy is not significantly related to bullying. In line with earlier research, role conflicts and role ambiguity are the most important antecedents. Also (lack of) participation in decision making, (lack of) skill utilization, workload, cognitive demands, changes in the job, job insecurity, and (lack of) task-related feedback are found to be directly related to workplace bullying. These findings are discussed in the light of the literature and some suggestions for practice are formulated.     

The effect of response style bias on the measurement of transformational,transactional, and laissez-faire leadership

Transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership are considered to be three distinct leadership styles. In this research we argue that response style behaviour in the form of acquiescence and extreme response style can distort the measurement of these dimensions of leadership. Using a sample of 864 employees selected from 135 work teams, this research demonstrates that (1) response styles affect measurement; (2) divergent validity of the three dimensions increases when response styles are taken into account; (3) gender is spuriously related to leadership upon response styles; and (4) team ratings substantially change when controlling for response styles bias. As a secondary topic of this research, we elaborate on a relatively new approach in diagnosing response styles, i.e., a confirmatory latent-class factor analysis. We explain the advantages of this approach and illustrate the steps a researcher has to take in conducting this type of analysis.     

The world turns at 33 and 45: Defining simple cutoff scores for the Negative Acts Questionnaire–Revised in a representative sample

Workplace bullying is a serious hazard in every day working life that needs to be assessed carefully. In order to achieve such a goal, both victims of severe bullying as well as targets of less intensive bullying need to be identified, the latter in order to prevent further escalation into severe bullying. Previous research has mainly offered simple and crude measures of who is and who is not a victim of bullying. In this article we show how cutoff scores for the scale Negative Acts Questionnaire–Revised (NAQ-R) can be calculated. Based on a representative sample of the Norwegian workforce, we formulated 2 cutoff points or thresholds for the NAQ-R with a Receiver Operation Characteristic curve. Employees with a score lower than 33 are not bullied, employees with a score between 33 and 45 may be considered as being bullied occasionally, and employees who score above 45 can be considered to be victims of workplace bullying. As the NAQ-R is used in more than 300 research projects worldwide, we hope to inspire other scholars to define similar cutoff points. In addition, we hope that clear cutoff scores may be of assistance to practitioners for designing interventions regarding workplace bullying in line with the identified problems.     

Rehabilitative Beit Midrash as a means for advancing the community integration of Ultra Orthodox Jewish persons with severe mental illness

ABSTRACT

Religious Jews with severe mental illness often encounter barriers to involvement in religious activities in their community affecting their ability to become integrated into their community. Therefore, a study was conducted in Israel examining the contribution to community integration through a programme providing religious persons with mental illness an opportunity to participate in religious studies. An A-B research design was implemented among 42 Ultra-Orthodox Jewish persons with severe mental illness utilising a culturally-oriented structured instrument. The study showed that the opportunity for involvement in religious studies could advance the participants’ sense of social interaction in their community as well as their sense of psychological integration with other religious people. It also strengthened their confidence in their ability to further get involved in religious studies in the community. Rehabilitation services providing persons with severe mental illness an opportunity for involvement in religious studies can act as a springboard for advancing their community integration.     

Disengagement of the location negative priming effect: The influence of an intervening response

Reaction time is significantly longer when a target stimulus arises at a location that has just contained a distractor event, relative to when it appears at a new location [i.e., called, the location negative priming (NP) effect]. The NP effect is eliminated when the second of two paired trials (i.e., prime-to-probe trials) predictably lacks a distractor when the preceding trial contains both a target and a distractor event (T+D), but not when a prime distractor appears alone (D-only). We tested the possibility that the failed NP process disengagement seen with D-only prime trials resulted because they do not require the production of an overt intervening response. This possibility was supported. Results also showed that the intervening response had to meet prerequisites; namely, the response had to be prime-generated, i.e., come from the subset of experimental responses and have engaged in a conflict with the prime distractor-activated response.     

Context effects in recognition memory: the role of familiarity and recollection

A variant of the process dissociation procedure was coupled with a manipulation of response signal lag to assess whether manipulations of context affect one or both of the familiarity and search processes described by the dual process model of recognition. Participants studied a list of word pairs (context+target) followed by a recognition test with target words presented in the same or different context, and in the same or different form as study (singular/plural). Participants were asked to recognize any target word regardless of changes to form (inclusion), or to only recognise words that were presented in the same form (exclusion). The standard context reinstatement effect was evident even at the short response lags. Analyses of the estimates of the contributions of familiarity and search processes suggest that the context effect demonstrated here can be attributed in part to the influence of familiarity on recognition, whereas the effect on recollection was less clear.