Creative Interventions for Teaching Empathy in the Counseling Classroom

Empathy is a foundational, necessary component of successful counseling. Relaying an understanding of empathy, including the components and science behind the phenomenon, is critical to the development of counselors-in-training. In addition, creative practice is a pillar of professional counseling, and is linked to experiential learning and meaningful integration of new knowledge in counselor education. The purpose of this article is to provide a review of the definitions of empathy, provide current literature on the science of empathy, and discuss specific creative interventions to use within counseling courses to increase empathic knowledge and skills.     

Parameters of Time-out: Research Update and Comparison to Parenting Programs,Books, and Online Recommendations

In reviews published more than 30 years ago, eight parameters important to the use of time-out were identified and available research was summarized. The purpose of the current paper is to provide an updated summary of existing research for each parameter of time-out. Within each parameter, we conducted a thorough review of the published literature and identified all peer-reviewed articles addressing each parameter. We identified and summarized a total of 46 articles across the eight parameters, including 32 not cited in previous reviews. Sufficient findings were available to draw conclusions regarding time-out warning, schedule of time-out, contingent versus noncontingent release, and duration. Tentative conclusions based on only a few studies could be drawn in regard to instructional versus physical administration and verbalized reason for time-out. No conclusions could be drawn regarding time-out signal and specific time-out location. While we know much more today regarding effective implementation of time-out, there is a clear need for further exploration within these identified parameters. In addition to summarizing the literature, we reviewed recommendations made by behavioral parent training programs, parenting books, and parenting Web sites, and compared how well their recommendations matched current research based on the conclusions drawn from our review. We found that parenting sources made strong and specific recommendations on several of the parameters that were either not consistent with available research or simply lacked a sufficient research base.     

Nonlinear Predictive Models for Multiple Mediation Analysis: With an Application to Explore Ethnic Disparities in Anxiety and Depression Among Cancer Survivors

Mediation analysis allows the examination of effects of a third variable (mediator/confounder) in the causal pathway between an exposure and an outcome. The general multiple mediation analysis method (MMA), proposed by Yu et al., improves traditional methods (e.g., estimation of natural and controlled direct effects) to enable consideration of multiple mediators/confounders simultaneously and the use of linear and nonlinear predictive models for estimating mediation/confounding effects. Previous studies find that compared with non-Hispanic cancer survivors, Hispanic survivors are more likely to endure anxiety and depression after cancer diagnoses. In this paper, we applied MMA on MY-Health study to identify mediators/confounders and quantify the indirect effect of each identified mediator/confounder in explaining ethnic disparities in anxiety and depression among cancer survivors who enrolled in the study. We considered a number of socio-demographic variables, tumor characteristics, and treatment factors as potential mediators/confounders and found that most of the ethnic differences in anxiety or depression between Hispanic and non-Hispanic white cancer survivors were explained by younger diagnosis age, lower education level, lower proportions of employment, less likely of being born in the USA, less insurance, and less social support among Hispanic patients.     

Fear of missing out: prevalence,dynamics, and consequences of experiencing FOMO

Fear of missing out, known colloquially as FOMO, appears to be a common experience, and has recently become part of the vernacular, receiving frequent mentions in the popular media. The present paper provides a multi-method empirical examination of FOMO. In a first study, experience sampling was used to assess FOMO experiences among college freshmen. Nightly diaries and end-of-semester measures provided data on the short and long-term consequences of experiencing FOMO. Results showed that students experience FOMO frequently, particularly later in the day and later in the week, and while doing a required task like studying or working. More frequent experiences of FOMO were associated with negative outcomes both daily and over the course of the semester, including increasing negative affect, fatigue, stress, physical symptoms, and decreased sleep. A second experimental study investigated FOMO on a conceptual level, distinguishing FOMO from general self-regulation and exploring its links with social media.     

The Role of Religious Coping and Resilience in Individuals With Dissociative Identity Disorder

Survivors with dissociative identity disorder (DID) often report a history of traumatic events in their lives. Past studies indicated a link between trauma, resilience, and spiritual coping in both positive and negative aspects of a survivor's life. This article includes a review of existing literature salient to these constructs in relation to i ndividuals with DID, as well as results from a study examining the relationships between these constructs and individuals with DID (N = 52). Implications are discussed based on the findings for counselors treating individuals with DID.     

G. Stanley Hall's Adolescence: Brilliance and nonsense

G. Stanley Hall's two-volume work on adolescence is assessed from the perspective of modern psychology, 100 years after he published it. A surprising number of similarities exist between Hall's views of adolescence and our own, and several of those similarities are discussed here. Some of the most striking differences between Hall's views and the views of today's psychologists are also discussed, specifically, Hall's grounding of his beliefs about adolescent development in a Lamarckian evolutionary psychology that assumed the inheritance of acquired characteristics and memories; his views of sexuality, especially masturbation; and his claim that religious conversion is normative in adolescence. The cultural and historical context of Hall's views is then discussed, with an emphasis on how an awareness of the context of Hall's views can enhance our awareness of the context of our own views today.     

G. Stanley Hall's Adolescence: A centennial reappraisal introduction

This article is an overview of the special issue "G. Stanley Hall's Adolescence: A Centennial Reappraisal." First, a brief biography of Hall is presented. Then each of the six articles in the special issue is summarized. Three of the articles are by historians and three are by psychologists, but all six articles integrate history and psychology.