Issues of knowledge in the policy of self-determination for aboriginal Australian communities

Since 1972, the direction of policy concerning development of Aboriginal Australian communities has been towards adoption of the notion of self-determination. This paper presents a case study of how one particular Aboriginal community has combined local knowledge with non-Aboriginal knowledge to develop an alternative mathematics curriculum that will promote community development and authentic self-determination.     

The child as informant: Eliciting linguistic intuitions from young children

In this paper we report an interview technique we have developed to elicit judgments from young children about the well-formedness and referential properties of sentences. Judgments are compared with act-out responses of a group of 20 children ranging in age from 3 years 9 months to 5 years 4 months. We argue that judgment data are more revealing of children's grammars than are traditional performance tasks.     

Female workers' acceptance in traditionally male-dominated blue-collar jobs

This study examined possible differential treatment by and negative attitudes of civilian male co-workers and male supervisors toward civilian female workers in traditionally male-dominated blue-collar jobs. Surveys were completed by 53 male supervisors and 327 male co-workers of four departments of a large government agency. Male supervisors indicated they would not treat female employees differently than they have treated male employees. Male co-workers, however, reported they have treated other male co-workers more favorably than they would treat female co-workers. In addition, supervisors, compared with male co-workers, reported more favorable attitudes toward female workers.     

Constructing the Citizen

Discussions of citizenship and citizenship education have been conducted largely within the worldview of stable, Western societies and have been based on psychological models that emphasize individual cognition. The concepts of citizenship that evolved in this context have become taken for granted. But during the past decade, different concepts of citizenship have arisen from emergent democracies, from societies in transition, from the dissolution of the left-right spectrum in Western society, and from a changing perspective in psychological theory that attends to language and to social and cultural context. These developments have implications for defining the goals of citizenship education and for formulating educational programs, particularly in relation to identity, positioning, narratives, and efficacy.     

Effects of consumer perceptions of brand experience on the web: brand familiarity,satisfaction and brand trust

Creating a customer experience that is synonymous with a particular (website) brand is becoming increasingly recognised as a vital driver of e‐performance. E‐tailors are just as likely to try to influence consumers' shopping behaviour, through atmospherics and service, as brick‐and‐mortar stores. This study investigates several questions that have been left unanswered in recent studies of consumer behaviour in the context of internet‐based marketing. Its focus lies in addressing the issue of whether there is a direct relationship between brand experience and brand trust or whether there is an indirect relationship via satisfaction or brand familiarity. The results of an empirical study of e‐consumer behaviour show that brand trust is achieved through the following dimensions operating and interrelating as antecedent constructs: first, various brand experiences and the search for information, secondly, a high level of brand familiarity, and thirdly, customer satisfaction based on cognitive and emotional factors. These findings should assist marketers and academics in their understanding of the development of brand trust in an internet‐based environment. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The impact of organisational change on professionals working within a Community Mental Health Team (CMHT): a psychodynamic perspective

The aim of this study was to explore the effects of organisational change upon staff working in a Community Mental Health Team (CMHT). A grounded theory methodology was employed to analyse data from eight interviews with a range of staff. Analysis identified one core category and five key categories. ‘Corrosion of good work: an ethos in decline’ represents the core category and refers to the staff members’ sense of demoralisation of their professional values and integrity. The first key category, ‘Cultural change’, refers to staff members’ perception of change within the CMHT, with an increased emphasis on regulation, performance management and proceduralisation. Three further key categories were identified: ‘Caring clinicians and uncaring managers’, ‘Confusion regarding professional roles’ and ‘Disconnecting and isolating’. The fifth key ‘Staff departing and increasing risk for clients’, describes the impact of the working culture. These categories and emerging theory were interpreted through a psychodynamic lens, and identified the need for better management practice, support, training and supervision of staff as the foundations of safe practice.     

Do emotional stimuli enhance or impede recall relative to neutral stimuli? An investigation of two “false memory” tasks

Many eyewitness memory situations involve negative and distressing events; however, many studies investigating “false memory” phenomena use neutral stimuli only. The aim of the present study was to determine how both the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) procedure and the Misinformation Effect Paradigm tasks were related to each other using distressing and neutral stimuli. Participants completed the DRM (with negative and neutral word lists) and viewed a distressing or neutral film. Misinformation for the film was introduced and memory was assessed. Film accuracy and misinformation susceptibility were found to be greater for those who viewed the distressing film relative to the neutral film. Accuracy responses on both tasks were related, however, susceptibility to the DRM illusion and Misinformation Effect were not. The misinformation findings support the Paradoxical Negative Emotion (PNE) hypothesis that negative stimuli will lead to remembering more accurate details but also greater likelihood of memory distortion. However, the PNE hypothesis was not supported for the DRM results. The findings also suggest that the DRM and Misinformation tasks are not equivalent and may have differences in underlying mechanisms. Future research should focus on more ecologically valid methods of assessing false memory.     

Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills for Families of Individuals With Behavioral Disorders: Initial Feasibility and Outcomes

Family members of individuals with behavioral disorders are a valuable source of logistical and emotional support for patients. Family members may take on tremendous financial and/or psychological responsibility to care for their loved ones, which can result in poor psychological outcomes for the family and, in turn, impede the recovery of the patient. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) skills training is an effective treatment that has been utilized with numerous populations, including family members of individuals with behavioral problems, and has shown efficacy in improving various interpersonal outcomes; however, no study has examined feasibility and outcomes of delivering all four unabridged DBT skills modules to this population. Twenty participants attended weekly DBT skills classes for 6 months, where they acquired skills in mindfulness, emotion regulation, interpersonal effectiveness, and distress tolerance. There were significant pre-post improvements for emotion dysregulation, stress reactivity, and various interpersonal outcomes; there were no significant changes in depression or anxiety. These results suggest that DBT skills may be effective at improving broad clinical domains in a sample of family members of individuals with behavioral problems. This research is the first step in demonstrating that DBT skills might benefit family members of patients with heterogeneous mental health problems and, therefore, fits in to the field’s growing interest in cost-effective transdiagnostic interventions.     

ADHD and Grief: Diagnosis and Differentiation at One Federally Qualified Health Center

Family physicians provide medical care including diagnosis for children experiencing loss and grief. The cognitive impact of loss includes poor attention and concentration, suggestive of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Our study examined this phenomenon in a community health center (CHC) utilizing physicians’ surveys and a medical record audit of 378 children diagnosed with ADHD during a three-year period. Results identified ambiguous loss and trauma resulting from family instability, absent parent, domestic violence, abuse, and foster care, often unrecognized by physicians as producing grief accompanied by attention and concentration problems. Findings suggest exploration of repeated ambiguous losses in children with ADHD.     

Differences in the neural mechanisms of selective attention in children from different socioeconomic backgrounds: an event‐related brain potential study

Previous research indicates that children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds show deficits in aspects of attention, including a reduced ability to filter irrelevant information and to suppress prepotent responses. However, less is known about the neural mechanisms of group differences in attention, which could reveal the stages of processing at which attention deficits arise. The present study examined this question using an event‐related brain potential (ERP) measure of selective auditory attention. Thirty‐two children aged from 3 to 8 years participated in the study. Children were cued to attend selectively to one of two simultaneously presented narrative stories. The stories differed in location (left/right speaker), narration voice (male/female), and content. ERPs were recorded to linguistic and non‐linguistic probe stimuli embedded in the attended and unattended stories. Children whose mothers had lower levels of educational attainment (no college experience) showed reduced effects of selective attention on neural processing relative to children whose mothers had higher levels of educational attainment (at least some college). These differences occurred by 100 milliseconds after probe onset. Furthermore, the differences were related specifically to a reduced ability to filter irrelevant information (i.e. to suppress the response to sounds in the unattended channel) among children whose mothers had lower levels of education. These data provide direct evidence for differences in the earliest stages of processing within neural systems mediating selective attention in children from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Results are discussed in the context of intervention programs aimed at improving attention and self‐regulation abilities in children at‐risk for school failure.