Mandated Clients in Career or Employment Counseling

The article describes some of the challenges facing employment counselors who are working with mandated clients. Suggestions are provided for use with mandated clients in individual and group employment counseling sessions.     

POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL CAPITAL: MEASUREMENT AND RELATIONSHIP WITH PERFORMANCE AND SATISFACTION

Two studies were conducted to analyze how hope, resilience, optimism, and efficacy individually and as a composite higher-order factor predicted work performance and satisfaction. Results from Study 1 provided psychometric support for a new survey measure designed to assess each of these 4 facets, as well as a composite factor. Study 2 results indicated a significant positive relationship regarding the composite of these 4 facets with performance and satisfaction. Results from Study 2 also indicated that the composite factor may be a better predictor of performance and satisfaction than the 4 individual facets. Limitations and practical implications conclude the article.     

Low intimacy as a mediator between depression and clinic couple relationship satisfaction

This study examined low intimacy as a mediator between partners' depression symptoms and low relationship satisfaction in a sample of 82 heterosexual couples who sought therapy at an outpatient clinic. Both the amount of intimate behavior that partners enact and the level of pleasure they experience from each other's intimate acts were assessed. Using an actor–partner interdependence model approach, path model analysis simultaneously included both partners' scores on measures of depression, intimate behavior, pleasure from partner's intimate behavior, and relationship satisfaction. Overall, female depression symptoms had a greater impact than male depression symptoms on the couple relationship. Male depression had little effect on intimacy, whereas the female partner's depression affected her pleasure from the male's intimate behavior and both partners' enactment of intimate behavior. The results indicate the importance of examining reciprocal influences between partners' functioning to understand and treat intimacy problems.     

Is there an optimal factor structure of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale in patients with first‐episode psychosis?

The Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) is the most widely used scale to assess a variety of symptoms in patients with schizophrenia and other psychoses. The factor structure of the PANSS has been examined with confirmatory factor analyses in several studies, but not in a well‐defined first‐episode psychosis sample. The aim of this paper is to examine the statistical fit of five different PANSS models in a first‐episode, non‐affective psychosis sample. Confirmatory factor analyses were performed on PANSS data (n = 588). A main criterion for best fit was defined as the Expected Cross Validation Index (ECVI). No tested model revealed an optimally satisfactory model fit index. The Wallwork/Fortgang five‐factor model demonstrated the most optimal psychometric properties. The corresponding subscales of all evaluated five‐factor models were strongly intercorrelated. The Wallwork/Fortgang five‐factor model was found to be statistically and clinically ideal among patients with first‐episode psychosis. Therefore, we recommend this model in forthcoming studies among patients with first‐episode psychosis. However, to prevent the loss of clinically valuable information on an item level, we do not recommend removing any items from the original form. Our study also implies that the specific choice of model will not have a substantial effect on outcome results in studies on the course and outcome in first‐episode psychosis.     

INTRINSIC AESTHETIC VALUE REVISTED

Abstract: Every sentient organism needs constantly to re‐assess its environment in order to adjust to any changes in it and to ascertain which aspects are, or become, salient for its current purposes. Such adaptation is of basic evolutionary importance, but for human beings it can be difficult to achieve in the face of radical novelty or when different frames of reference are in conflict. Art by virtue of its integrated structure presents examples of how a partial unification of experience may be envisaged. Art thus helps to meet our constant need for orientation and re‐orientation, though its operation in this respect is invariably outside consciousness. So art can be said to have intrinsic value only within a strictly subjective, phenomenological perspective; more broadly considered from a third‐person viewpoint, the value of art is instrumental. Questions then arise concerning our motivation for seeking or producing art, about the relation of art to other cultural activities, and about the role of pleasure in connection with aesthetic experience; these are briefly discussed.     

On intelligence I: Broad ability factors in 15-year-old children and Cattell's theory of fluid and crystallized intelligence

A simple-structure factor analysis of test data from a sample of 148 fifteen-year-old children in Norway was carried out. Broad factors were interpreted to represent visualization, speediness, and fluency, as well as fluid and crystallized intelligence. The results are consistent with the factor distinctions as hypothesized by Cattell, but analyses of the developmental differentiation of fluid and crystallized intelligence raise some doubts about Cattell's interpretation of these dimensions.