Active and Avoidant Coping and Coping Efficacy as Mediators of the Relation of Maternal Involvement to Depressive Symptoms among Urban Adolescents

Our study tested an extension of the social resource model in an urban sample of 129 African American and 114 European American adolescents. Maternal involvement was positively related to the use of active and avoidant coping strategies among youth of both ethnicities. Additionally, use of active coping strategies was related to greater coping efficacy, which, in turn, was associated with less depressive symptomatology. For African Americans, avoidant coping was related to greater coping efficacy, which, in turn, was associated with less depressive symptoms. For European Americans, avoidant coping was not significantly related to coping efficacy. Our findings underscore the importance of examining developmental models across ethnic/racial groups and suggest that adolescent mental health programs may benefit from culturally sensitive attention to coping beliefs and practices.     

Cultural models of education in American Indian,Asian American and European American contexts

Three studies examined models of education among American Indian (AI), Asian American (AA), and European American (EA) students. Cultural models of education are patterns of ideas and practices relevant to schools, teachers, and self that mediate and regulate behavior in the academic domain. In study 1, mainstream university students (N = 148) and AI University students (N = 187) viewed education as a tool for success. AI, however, generated more mentions of education as a tool for community success and more negative associations to education. Study 2 (N = 166) showed that AI, in contrast to EA and AA, placed family and community concerns ahead of academic concerns. In Study 3 (N = 118), AI and AA endorsed independent and interdependent representations of self, while EA endorsed only independent representations. For AI and AA, but not for EA, interdependent representations were positively related to trust for teacher.     

Choice as an act of meaning: the case of social class

Social class is one important source of models of agency--normative guidelines for how to be a "good" person. Using choice as a prototypically agentic action, 5 studies test the hypotheses that models of agency prevalent in working-class (WK) contexts reflect a normative preference for similarity to others, whereas models prevalent in middle-class (MD) contexts reflect a preference for difference from others. Focusing on participants' choices, Studies 1 and 2 showed that participants from WK relative to MD contexts more often chose pens that appeared similar to, rather than different from, other pens in the choice set, and more often chose the same images as another participant. Examining participants' responses to others' choices, Studies 3 and 4 demonstrated that participants from WK relative to MD contexts liked their chosen pens more when a confederate chose similarly and responded more positively when a friend chose the same car in a hypothetical scenario. Finally, Study 5 found that car advertisements targeting WK rather than MD consumers more often emphasized connection to, rather than differentiation from, others, suggesting that models of agency are reflected in pervasive cultural products.     

Implementation intentions and disengagement from a failing course of action

We explored the consequences of forming implementation intentions that call for action (adjustment of chosen course of action) versus reflection (assessment of the appropriateness of chosen course of action) in situations that activate people's tendency to remain committed to failing courses of action. In Study 1, when negative experiences preceded failure, action and reflection implementation intention participants showed higher rates of disengagement than mere goal intention and no intention participants. However, when positive experiences preceded failure, only action implementation intention participants maintained this high disengagement rate. In Study 2, we observed that time pressure moderated the facilitating effects of action and reflection implementation intentions on disengagement when negative experiences preceded failure. Whereas the effect of action implementation intentions benefited from time pressure, the effect of reflection implementation intentions did not. The present studies construe disengagement as a self-regulation process and highlight the benefits of implementation intentions as a self-regulation tool. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Relies to our critics

We respond to the central concerns raised by our commentators to our book, The Epistemological Spectrum. Casullo believes that our account of what we term “low-grade a priori” justification provides important clarification of a kind of philosophical reflection. However he objects to calling such reflection a priori. We explain what we think is at stake. Along the way, we comment on his idea of that there may be an epistemic payoff to making a distinction between assumptions and presumptions. In the book, we argued that an epistemically important form of nonaccidental reliability can be understood as a matter of processes being “transglobally reliable under modulational control.” Graham recommends another form of nonaccidental reliability, one rooted in evolutionary etiology. We explain why we think that the reliability of perceptual processes is best understood as turning of the kinds of modulational control that we highlight. We clarify how this approach represents a kind of reasonable epistemic patience—modulational control takes time, as it must turn on agents generating information about their own capacities and foibles. Lyons raises interesting questions regarding how (what we term) morphological content possessed by the agent can do the work that we set for it. We argue that it is necessary in order for agents to accommodate the background information that is relevant to many central problems of belief formation. We clarify how it can be expected to work.     

Interweaving the Symbolic and Nonsymbolic in Therapeutic Action: Discussion of Gianni Nebbiosi’s “The Smell of Paper”

Gianni Nebbiosi’s paper speaks to therapeutic action in a new key in the challenges of finding communion with a hard-to-reach patient. He achieves this through the creative interweaving of the nonsymbolic, his mime and music, and the symbolic, which attains greater purchase through painful personal reckoning in concert with his increasing awareness of previously unformulated states within and between each member of this particular analytic dyad. Central to this paper is the move from an empathic stance to greater complexity for each of the dyad. Distinguishing between empathy and recognition is germane. Particularly as we witness the transformation through therapeutic action of empathic presence to recognizing presence that permits the emergence of a more complex empathy—an achieved empathy that incorporates feeling and knowing the multiple, more deeply held, and often paradoxical aspects of our patients and indeed of ourselves as these play out in intersubjective space.     

How does self stigma differ across people with psychiatric diagnoses and rheumatoid arthritis,and how does it impact on self-esteem and empowerment?

Self stigmatising attitudes have been found in people who have psychiatric diagnoses, however, research assessing self stigma in physical illnesses is rare. It is known that receiving a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) can affect a person’s identity and self esteem. This study aimed to compare levels of self stigma, self esteem and empowerment between people diagnosed with psychiatric illnesses and people diagnosed with RA to establish whether self stigma, and specifically endorsement of negative stereotypes, is associated with self esteem and empowerment across these two groups. A total of 202 participants (psychiatric group n = 102; RA group n = 100) were interviewed using the Internalised Stigma of Mental Illness scale (ISMI), or the Internalized Stigma of Mental Illness scale- Rheumatoid Arthritis (ISMI-RA), the Index of Self Esteem (ISE) and the Mental Health Confidence Scale (MHCS). Overall, the psychiatric group had higher self stigma scores (2.5 vs. 2.2, p < .01), lower self esteem (48.7 vs. 36.8, p < .001) and lower empowerment scores (3.8 vs. 4.3, p < .001) than the RA group. However, sizable proportions of both groups had high self stigma scores. ISMI/ISMI-RA was associated with the ISE and the MHCS. The stereotype endorsement subscale of the ISMI/ISMI-RA was not related to self esteem or empowerment in either group. Interventions that aim to decrease self stigma and increase self esteem could focus on alienation.     

Prompting reflection and learning in career construction counseling

Adopting the overall framework provided for an international inquiry into career counseling interventions, this article reports on a qualitative study into the efficacy of a relatively new approach to practice in England. Using career construction interviews as the counseling intervention, research involving two adult participants was undertaken. Interpersonal process recall (IPR) was used to explicate the perceptions and understandings of both the participants and the counselor in the process. Outcome analysis framed the approach used to making sense of the data collected. Two contrasting responses were immediately evident from participants in the counseling intervention: one positive and one negative. The use of the IPR process enabled an understanding of the value of a structured process of reflection.     

Human gaze control during real-world scene perception

In human vision, acuity and color sensitivity are best at the point of fixation, and the visual-cognitive system exploits this fact by actively controlling gaze to direct fixation towards important and informative scene regions in real time as needed. How gaze control operates over complex real-world scenes has recently become of central concern in several core cognitive science disciplines including cognitive psychology, visual neuroscience, and machine vision. This article reviews current approaches and empirical findings in human gaze control during real-world scene perception.