Experiences of Altruism in the Therapeutic Relationship: Perspectives of Counselors‐in‐Training and Their Clients

The purpose of this phenomenological investigation was to explore experiences of altruism in the therapeutic relationship to better understand how counselors‐in‐training (CITs) and their clients mutually perceived the construct in sessions. Findings from interviews with clients (n = 14) included emotional–relational characteristics and cognitive–behavioral aspects of altruism by their counselors. Findings from interviews with CITs (n = 10) included explorations of the role of altruism in counseling, overall experiences of altruism in counseling sessions, and experiences of altruism with specific clients. Implications for practice and research are discussed.     

Evaluation of a preliminary method to examine antecedent and consequent contributions to noncompliance

We evaluated a preliminary method for examining the antecedent and consequent contributions to noncompliance exhibited by two children with disabilities. In Phase 1, we assessed whether noncompliance was a result of a skill deficit. For one participant, we then conducted a functional analysis to determine the variables maintaining noncompliance in Phase 2. In Phase 3, we conducted a treatment evaluation to increase compliance for each participant. We identified the antecedent and consequent variables responsible for noncompliance and developed an effective intervention for both participants.     

Examination of the Relationship Between Perfectionism and Religiosity as Mediated by Psychological Inflexibility

A relationship between perfectionism and religiosity has been suggested in the literature, and this relationship is clarified further when the adaptive and maladaptive dimensions of both constructs are compared. Literature in both areas implicates the idea of a rigid and inflexible personality style that may explain why well meaning high standards can be associated with negative outcomes such as perfectionism. This investigation examined the relationship of perfectionism and religiosity, using adaptive and maladaptive dimensions, as mediated by psychological inflexibility. Validated measures of perfectionism, religiosity, and psychological inflexibility were given to 376 undergraduate college students in an anonymous online survey. Adaptive perfectionism (high standards) was found to be significantly correlated (r = .26, p < .01, two-tailed) with adaptive religiosity (intrinsic orientation). Maladaptive perfectionism (discrepancy) was found to be significantly correlated (r = .13, p < .05, two-tailed) with maladaptive religiosity (extrinsic orientation). Psychological inflexibility was found to be significantly correlated with the maladaptive dimensions of both perfectionism and religiosity. It was also shown to mediate the relationship between maladaptive (extrinsic) religiosity and maladaptive (discrepancy) perfectionism. Implications and future directions are discussed.     

Cultural ruptures in short‐term therapy: Working alliance as a mediator between clients' perceptions of microaggressions and therapy outcomes

Aim: To determine whether or not clients' perceptions of microaggressions varied based on their own and the therapist's race/ethnicity and whether or not they would be negatively related to the effectiveness of therapy and if the working alliance would mediate this effect. Method: The study utilised a cross‐sectional, retrospective, methodology. Clients were recruited from a large university counselling centre in the United States (N=232 clients and 29 therapists). Results: Neither clients' race/ethnicity, therapists’ race/ethnicity, nor client‐therapist ethnic matching predicted perceptions of microaggressions. Clients' ratings of microaggressions were negatively associated with their psychological wellbeing; however, this effect was mediated by clients' ratings of the working alliance. Implications: Therapists should take into account the cultural messages they may be conveying to both white and racial/ethnic minority clients. Therapists should develop strategies that are consistent with a general therapeutic approach that promotes discussions about culture with their clients and, most importantly, should attend to the therapeutic relationship.     

Metaphors for retirement: Unshackled from schedules

This study uses metaphor analysis to examine the meanings of retirement for a group of 35 retired Canadian executives and managers. Our analysis identified eight metaphors relating to the meanings of retirement. The findings provide us with a range of insights into the experience of retirement, from loss of purpose and identity to liberation from the constraints of work to retirement being constructed as a new beginning or renaissance. Based on the accounts given by each manager, metaphors were collated and compared across retirees to reveal four distinct configurations that conceptualize retirement as exploring new horizons, searching for meaning, contributing on your own terms and putting your feet up. We discuss the implications of these metaphor configurations for understanding the consumer and producer-oriented meanings of retirement and challenge dominant career constructions of retirement as disengagement and decline. Our findings reveal that retirement appears to be better understood by incorporating future-focused and agentic forms that contribute to different types of identity work in retirement.     

Quantifying variability in phase portraits: application to gait ontogeny

We describe new Fourier- and shape-based methods for quantifying variation in phase-portraits, and re-analyze previously-published ontogenetic and adult data [Clark, J. E., & Phillips, S. J. (1993). A longitudinal study of intralimb coordination in the first year of independent walking: A dynamical systems approach. Child Development, 64, 1143–1157]. Results show considerable variation between individuals and through development, but after 6 months of walking some gait patterns stabilize.     

Spatial memory during progressive disorientation

Human spatial representations of object locations in a room-sized environment were probed for evidence that the object locations were encoded relative not just to the observer (egocentrically) but also to each other (allocentrically). Participants learned the locations of 4 objects and then were blindfolded and either (a) underwent a succession of 70 degrees and 200 degrees whole-body rotations or (b) were fully disoriented and then underwent a similar sequence of 70 degrees and 200 degrees rotations. After each rotation, participants pointed to the objects without vision. Analyses of the pointing errors suggest that as participants lost orientation, represented object directions generally "drifted" off of their true directions as an ensemble, not in random, unrelated directions. This is interpreted as evidence that object-to-object (allocentric) relationships play a large part in the human spatial updating system. However, there was also some evidence that represented object directions occasionally drifted off of their true directions independently of one another, suggesting a lack of allocentric influence. Implications regarding the interplay of egocentric and allocentric information are considered.     

Don’t Ever Do That! Long-term Duties in <Emphasis Type="Italic">PD</Emphasis><Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">e</Emphasis></Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">L</Emphasis>

This paper studies long-term norms concerning actions. In Meyer’s Propositional Deontic Logic (PD _e L), only immediate duties can be expressed, however, often one has duties of longer durations such as: “Never do that”, or “Do this someday”. In this paper, we will investigate how to amend PD _e L so that such long-term duties can be expressed. This leads to the interesting and suprising consequence that the long-term prohibition and obligation are not interdefinable in our semantics, while there is a duality between these two notions. As a consequence, we have provided a new analysis of the long-term obligation by introducing a new atomic proposition I (indebtedness) to represent the condition that an agent has some unfulfilled obligation. Presented by Jacek Malinowski     

Auditory event perception: The source—perception loop for posture in human gait

There is a small but growing literature on the perception of natural acoustic events, but few attempts have been made to investigate complex sounds not systematically controlled within a laboratory setting. The present study investigates listeners’ ability to make judgments about the posture (upright—stooped) of the walker who generated acoustic stimuli contrasted on each trial. We use a comprehensive three-stage approach to event perception, in which we develop a solid understanding of the source event and its sound properties, as well as the relationships between these two event stages. Developing this understanding helps both to identify the limitations of common statistical procedures and to develop effective new procedures for investigating not only the two information stages above, but also the decision strategies employed by listeners in making source judgments from sound. The result is a comprehensive, ultimately logical, but not necessarily expected picture of both the source—sound—perception loop and the utility of alternative research tools.     

Misperception of exocentric directions in auditory space

Previous studies have demonstrated large errors (over 30 degrees ) in visually perceived exocentric directions (the direction between two objects that are both displaced from the observer's location; e.g., Philbeck et al. [Philbeck, J. W., Sargent, J., Arthur, J. C., & Dopkins, S. (2008). Large manual pointing errors, but accurate verbal reports, for indications of target azimuth. Perception, 37, 511-534]). Here, we investigated whether a similar pattern occurs in auditory space. Blindfolded participants either attempted to aim a pointer at auditory targets (an exocentric task) or gave a verbal estimate of the egocentric target azimuth. Targets were located at 20-160 degrees azimuth in the right hemispace. For comparison, we also collected pointing and verbal judgments for visual targets. We found that exocentric pointing responses exhibited sizeable undershooting errors, for both auditory and visual targets, that tended to become more strongly negative as azimuth increased (up to -19 degrees for visual targets at 160 degrees ). Verbal estimates of the auditory and visual target azimuths, however, showed a dramatically different pattern, with relatively small overestimations of azimuths in the rear hemispace. At least some of the differences between verbal and pointing responses appear to be due to the frames of reference underlying the responses; when participants used the pointer to reproduce the egocentric target azimuth rather than the exocentric target direction relative to the pointer, the pattern of pointing errors more closely resembled that seen in verbal reports. These results show that there are similar distortions in perceiving exocentric directions in visual and auditory space.