A Community's Response to Adverse Childhood Experiences: Building a Resilient,Trauma‐Informed Community

Adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, may be mitigated by trauma‐informed social environments—programs, services, systems, communities—that offer responses to trauma that promote healing, recovery, and resilience. However, there is currently little empirical evidence to support the use of specific approaches to do so. Guided by a population health perspective, this paper describes a participatory community change process in response to ACEs that seeks to build a resilient, trauma‐informed community in Pottstown, PA. We examine the initial implementation phase of this change process, centered originally on the education sector and the social and behavioral health services sector, and then eventually expanding to 14 community sectors across two years. A variety of data sources and methods are used to track individual and organizational processes, as well as service system network processes. A central feature of this research is the use of data to generate hypotheses rather than test them. Data were also used to guide understanding and decision‐making during implementation. The results show that moving forward the community is well‐positioned to establish stronger inter‐agency and system supports for trauma‐informed practice in the service system and in the broader community. We discuss results for their implications for building resilient, trauma‐informed communities.     

Teaching foundational perspective‐taking skills to children with autism using the PEAK‐T curriculum: single‐reversal “I–You” deictic frames

We taught basic perspective‐taking tasks to 3 children with autism and evaluated their ability to derive mutually entailed single‐reversal deictic relations of those newly established perspective‐taking skills. Furthermore, we examined the possibility of transfers of perspective‐taking function to novel untrained stimuli. The methods were taken from the PEAK‐T training curriculum, and results yielded positive gains for all 3 children to learn basic perspective taking as well as for 2 of the 3 to derive untrained single‐reversal I relations following direct training of single‐reversal You relations. All participants demonstrated a transfer of stimulus function to untrained stimuli after the single‐reversal deictic relations had been mastered.     

Openness to Experience and Intellect Differentially Predict Creative Achievement in the Arts and Sciences

The Big Five personality dimension Openness/Intellect is the trait most closely associated with creativity and creative achievement. Little is known, however, regarding the discriminant validity of its two aspects—Openness to Experience (reflecting cognitive engagement with perception, fantasy, aesthetics, and emotions) and Intellect (reflecting cognitive engagement with abstract and semantic information, primarily through reasoning)—in relation to creativity. In four demographically diverse samples totaling 1,035 participants, we investigated the independent predictive validity of Openness and Intellect by assessing the relations among cognitive ability, divergent thinking, personality, and creative achievement across the arts and sciences. We confirmed the hypothesis that whereas Openness predicts creative achievement in the arts, Intellect predicts creative achievement in the sciences. Inclusion of performance measures of general cognitive ability and divergent thinking indicated that the relation of Intellect to scientific creativity may be due at least in part to these abilities. Lastly, we found that Extraversion additionally predicted creative achievement in the arts, independently of Openness. Results are discussed in the context of dual‐process theory.     

Spatial navigation: Cognitive variables involved in route retracing among an elderly population

The cognitive processes involved in route retracing are not well known. This study aims to highlight them in an elderly population in which contradictory results have been obtained, certain studies showing specific difficulties for route retracing, others not. Thirty-nine elderly subjects performed a route-learning task (forward-backward) in a garden, then completed spatial knowledge tasks and standardised cognitive tests. Results show four factors that were predictive of route retracing performance: route repetition, the pointing task, and two standardised cognitive tests, one assessing spatial working memory, and another global cognitive efficiency. According to these results, route retracing involves route and survey knowledge (i.e., egocentric and allocentric strategy), and the integration of forward-backward perspectives is underpinned by the spatial working memory. Moreover, the subjects did not make more errors in route retracing than in the route repetition task, suggesting that a real environment could compensate for a failing allocentric strategy.     

Social networking services: A digital extension of the surveillance state?

This paper investigates whether or not corporate social networking services (SNS) possess the potential to act as surveillance tools within contemporary society and, as a corollary, operate as coercive and exploitative technologies for the individuals who employ such devices in their daily lives. By relying on an interdisciplinary framework, this investigation argues that exploitative surveillance practices are indeed evident within the digital world of SNS platforms, along with how a performativity pressure (in the form of continuous self-surveillance) has been engendered within the user of such platforms. This has resulted in the creation of coercive digital structures that are then exploited for commercial gain. As such, these SNS technologies can be said to facilitate the expansion of what Foucault terms a disciplinary society, which has then also led to the proliferation of certain “free-floating” forms of control which play a significant part in Deleuze’s societies of control. Furthermore, this paper argues for the continuing relevance of both Foucault’s insights regarding the panoptic schema, and Deleuze’s commentary regarding mechanisms of control, in order to attain a critical understanding of how the practice of online surveillance occurs and from where it is that such an invasive practice derives its impetus.     

Relationship Closeness and Self‐reported Willingness to Falsely Take the Blame

One reason people falsely confess is to protect the true perpetrator. The current study examined whether relationship closeness influences people's self‐reported willingness to falsely take the blame. Utilizing theoretical work from the prosocial area, three potential mediators were investigated. Participants (N = 131) were randomly assigned to think of either a close or a casual friend and then read one of two scenarios that described a minor offense committed by the friend. Participants' willingness to take the blame was assessed, as well as their perceptions of reciprocity, feelings of empathy, and distress concerns related to their relationship with the offending friend. Results showed that, in both scenarios, participants more often took the blame in the close friend condition than in the casual friend condition. Reciprocity and empathy each uniquely and independently mediated relationship closeness, whereas distress concerns did not. Differences in the two scenarios, which describe different offenses, are discussed. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Slowing Down the Conversation: The Use of Letter Writing with Adolescents and Young Adults in Residential Settings

For some time therapeutic letter writing has been used to promote change within the client and family system. The use of specific letter writing assignments with an adolescent in residential care allows the therapist to work systemically on specific patterns of interaction within the family. This article describes letters writing techniques that provide opportunities for adolescents to be confronted with their behaviors, while also giving them space to accept responsibility and embrace the need to change. Methods are also outlined for holding parents accountable for their behaviors and helping them to change their approach to working with their child. Some possible outcomes from using such assignments include moving individuals and families through the stages of change, promoting a systemic view, slowing down the conversation, teaching communication skills, increasing nurturance, and repairing attachment injuries.