Training in Mindful Caregiving Transfers to Parent–Child Interactions

In an earlier study, we provided mindfulness training to three caregivers of individuals with profound multiple disabilities. We measured levels of happiness displayed by the individuals during the 8 weeks of mindfulness training of the caregivers, as well as during the 16 weeks following the termination of training. We found that happiness increased markedly when an individual interacted with a caregiver who had received training in mindfulness as opposed to a control caregiver who did not receive such training. In this study, we investigated whether the increased mindfulness of the three caregivers would transfer to interactions with their own children. The children’s non-compliance with their mother’s requests was used as an indirect index of the effects of training their mothers received in mindfulness. Although the ages of the children and their baseline levels of non-compliance were variable, the data showed a decrease in non-compliance during mindfulness training of the caregivers and further decreases following the completion of training. Our data provide preliminary evidence of transfer of mindfulness training from caregiving to parent–child interactions. We speculate as to why this may occur in mindfulness training.     

Development and Preliminary Evaluation of Family Minds: A Mentalization-based Psychoeducation Program for Foster Parents

Mentalization-based interventions show promise in improving mental health outcomes for children and parents through increasing a family's reflective functioning, or ability to mentalize. Mentalizing involves the ability to understand behavior in relation to mental states, such as thoughts and feelings, and typically develops within the context of secure attachment relationships. One area not given much consideration when training foster parents is their capacity to mentalize. This study evaluated Family Minds, a newly developed psychoeducational intervention for foster parents, designed to increase their ability to mentalize. The current paper reports on the development and preliminary empirical evaluation of Family Minds in a quasi-experimental study where 102 foster parents received either Family Minds or a typical foster parenting class, which served as a control group. Results indicate that parents who received Family Minds significantly increased their levels of reflective functioning as assessed with the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire and a new Five-Minute Speech Sample procedure coded using the Reflective Functioning Scale, and revealed a tendency to show decreased levels of parenting stress on the Parenting Stress Index, while the control group showed no such improvements. These findings support the hypothesis that a short-term psychoeducational intervention may improve foster parents' ability to mentalize themselves and their children. These skills are very beneficial for foster parents, as they frequently deal with children who come into their home with challenging behaviors, attachment issues, and negative internal working models of relationships. This type of intervention has the potential to lower placement breakdowns and improve the mental health of foster children.     

The effect of articulatory suppression and manual tapping on serial recall

Concurrent tasks, such as articulatory suppression and manual tapping, are used to understand the mechanisms underlying short-term memory by overloading domain-specific resources. The present study addresses the debate regarding the theoretical frameworks accounting for interference in serial recall by comparing the effects of both the modality of concurrent tasks (verbal vs. spatial) as well as the state of the tasks (steady vs. changing) in both verbal and spatial recall. The findings indicate that the verbal changing-state concurrent task significantly impaired digit recall, whereas the spatial changing-state concurrent task significantly impaired block recall. The theoretical implications are discussed in the context of a multimodal working memory model with domain-specific resources and a unitary approach to short-term memory.     

Understanding adherence to physiotherapy: Findings from an experimental simulation and an observational clinical study

This article reports two studies assessing the influence of self-efficacy, outcome expectancies and aversive feedback on different aspects of adherence. Study 1 employed a computer simulation of physiotherapy to test experimentally the effects of aversive feedback (i.e., loud noise) experienced during simulated therapy on adherence behaviour in a student population. Study 2 examined whether similar effects of aversive feedback (i.e., pain) experienced during physiotherapy in a clinical setting would be observed in a longitudinal questionnaire study of predictors of adherence. In both studies, self-efficacy and outcome expectancies were assessed at baseline and after experience of the task (performing simulated or actual physiotherapy). Study 1 found that self-efficacy and outcome expectancies predicted persistence with simulated physiotherapy (i.e., completing the experimental session), whereas aversive feedback influenced adherence during sessions (i.e., correct response rate). Study 2 found that self-efficacy and outcome expectancies predicted persistence with actual physiotherapy (i.e., completing the prescribed number of sessions). Aversive feedback and outcome expectancies influenced adherence during sessions. We conclude that different factors predict different aspects of adherence behaviour. It is therefore important to measure both persistence over time and adherence during sessions, and to investigate the predictors of each dimension of adherence.     

Newcomer socialization: The role of supervisors, coworkers, friends and family members

The present study examined referents for sensemaking and the relationships between choice of referent and socialization outcomes. Newly hired employees of a state department of mental health were surveyed at two time periods approximately six months apart. Results indicated that newcomer use of friends and family as referents for sensemaking predicted socialization outcomes at Time 1, whereas use of supervisors and coworkers as referents for sensemaking predicted socialization outcomes at Time 2. The implications of these results for practice are discussed.The authors would like to thank Meryl Reis Louis for her assistance in developing the measures used in this study. We also acknowledge the helpful comments of Kevin Mossholder, Craig Russell and Adrienne Collela on previous drafts of this paper.     

Enrolling the Citizen in Sustainability: Membership Categorization,Morality and Civic Participation

This article examines the common-sense and methodical ways in which “the citizen” is produced and enrolled as an active participant in “sustainable” regional planning. Using Membership Categorization Analysis, we explicate how the categorization procedures in the Foreword of a draft regional planning policy interactionally produce the identity of “the citizen” and “civic values and obligations” in relation to geographic place and institutional categories. Furthermore, we show how positioning practices establish a relationship between authors (government) and readers (citizens) where both are ascribed with the same moral values and obligations toward the region. Hence, “the citizen” as an active participant in “sustainable” regional planning is viewed as a practical accomplishment that is underpinned by a normative morality associated with the task of producing orderliness in “text-in-interaction.”