Does knowing translate to doing? Practitioners’ experiences of Circle of Security-Parenting (COS-P) training and implementation

This study sought to understand how practitioners perceive and experience the Circle of Security-Parenting (COS-P) training, and further, how they integrate and implement it into practice, and how these experiences influence their use and understanding of the program and its underlying model. A thematic analysis of semistructured interviews at two time points (shortly after training and 3–6 months after training) was used to explore 12 practitioners’ experiences of COS-P training and subsequent implementation. Three main themes were identified; clinical salience, personal salience, and partial use of the program. The findings reflected participants’ common perception that the model is relevant and generalizable to a wide variety of contexts. It also highlighted potential barriers to implementation, particularly practitioners’ experiences using only components of the COS-P program in isolation. The results suggest practitioners’ assumptions about client complexities, vulnerabilities, and/or incapacities, can prompt practitioners to withhold the use of COS-P (in part or whole), thereby potentially neglecting key components required for client change. The only participants who implemented the COS-P training in full had additional training in Circle of Security.     

The psychometric properties of the Hebrew version of Cloninger's Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire

The Hebrew Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire was administered to over a thousand individuals in the community, 16–78 years of age. Factor analysis was run first on individual items, and then on the 12 sub-scales described by [Cloninger, C.R., Pryzbeck, T.R., & Svrakic, D.M. (1991). The TPQ: US normative data. Psychological Reports, 69, 1047–1051)]. The factor analyses were restricted to four orthogonal factors in order to attempt confirmation of the corrected four-factor solution [Stallings, M.C., Hewitt, J.K., Cloninger, R.C., Heath, A.C., & Eaves, L.J. (1996). Genetic and environmental structure of the TPQ: three or four temperament dimensions? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70 (1), 127–140)]. In the individual item analysis four orthogonal factors recognizable as Novelty Seeking, Reward Dependence, Harm Avoidance and Persistence emerged. However only up to half of the items originally ascribed to each factor loaded sufficiently and exclusively on the appropriate factor. When the 12 sub-scales were entered into factor analysis the four orthogonal factors were produced, and the structure satisfactorily confirmed. A few exceptions to orthogonality were observed. The data were analyzed for sex differences and age effects. Women scored higher than men did on most sub-scales of Harm Avoidance and Reward Dependence. The younger group (up to 21 years of age) scored higher on Novelty Seeking and Reward Dependence and lower on Harm Avoidance than the older group, but no sex by age interaction was detected. Preliminary normative Israeli data are supplied, and implications of the group differences discussed.     

Is the Medium the Message? A Study of the Effects of Media,Communicator, and Message Characteristics on Attitude Change1

The present study examined the interactive effects of type of media, communicator, and position of message on persuasiveness of the communication. Subjects received a communication over television, radio (audio tape), or written medium, which either agreed with a position they held or strongly disagreed with it. The communicator was either a newscaster or a candidate for political office. The results indicated that subjects felt the newscaster to be more trustworthy than the candidate. In line with previous research, there was no main effect of media on persuasiveness. However, media interacted with the other variables so that when the communication disagreed with the audience, television was the most persuasive medium with the newscaster but the least persuasive with the untrusted candidate. There was no effect for media when the message agreed with the audience. Further, the candidate taking a position congruent with the audience's was rated as more attractive but less trustworthy than a candidate taking the opposite position. It was suggested that television may be the most involving medium and that either a counterargument theory or reactance theory could explain why it was not effective with the candidate.     

A test of the Zucherman heterosexual scales

Summary: Female and male undergraduate students enrolled in the introductory psychology course were administered the Zuckerman heterosexual scale as part of a larger battery of tests. The ordering of items for males was very similar to Zuckerman's with two minor exceptions. Female subjects, on the other hand, reported more sexual experiences of all kinds than did Zuckerman's sample, and two major differences in ordering Were noted. The coefficients of reproducibility for males and females were .928 and .954 respectively which were almost identical to those of Zuckerman. The rank-order correlation between the ranking of the items in the male and female scales was .958.     

Some developments in multivariate generalizability

This article is concerned with estimation of components of maximum generalizability in multifacet experimental designs involving multiple dependent measures. Within a Type II multivariate analysis of variance framework, components of maximum generalizability are defined as those composites of the dependent measures that maximize universe score variance for persons relative to observed score variance. The coefficient of maximum generalizability, expressed as a function of variance component matrices, is shown to equal the squared canonical correlation between true and observed scores. Emphasis is placed on estimation of variance component matrices, on the distinction between generalizability- and decision-studies, and on extension to multifacet designs involving crossed and nested facets. An example of a two-facet partially nested design is provided.Appreciation is expressed to the Office of Research in Medical Education, University of Texas Medical Branch, for permitting use of their data.     

Freud's Leonardo: psychobiography and autobiography of genius.

In his creation of a psychobiography of one genius and the hidden autobiographic analysis of another, Freud exemplifies what he described in the study: "Kindly nature has given the artist the ability to express his most secret mental impulses, which are hidden even from himself, by means of the works that he creates" (p. 107).     

Conflicting codes: Professional, ethical, and legal obligations in archaeology

Archaeologists employed in governmental positions often deal with issues that produce conflicts between their professional duties to their employer, their ethical responsibilities to the resource, and their obligations as established by legislation. The paper examines some of the conflicts imposed on governmental archaeologists by each of these systems but focuses on the conflicts imposed by federal legislation and regulations on governmental archaeologists, using “Kennewick Man” as an example. This is a revised edition of a paper written for the symposium: “Ethics in Science: Special Problems in Anthropology and Archaeology,” organized by Merrilee Salmon; 1998 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (Philadelphia, February 15, 1998). The original paper was in a more conversational style as befitting a discussion atmosphere. Revisions, comments, and opinions are entirely the author’s. Joe Watkins is the Anadarko Agency Archaeologist at the Bureau of Indian Affairs and is a Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology, Indiana University.     

THE IMPACT OF AUDITION ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF VISUAL ATTENTION

Interactions between audition and vision were investigated in two experiments In the first experiment, school-age hearing children, deaf children with cochlear implants, and deaf children without implants participated in a task in which they were to respond to some visual signals and not others This task did not involve sound at all Deaf children without implants performed much more poorly than hearing children Deaf children with cochlear implants performed considerably better than deaf children without implants The second experiment employed a longitudinal design and showed that the rate of development in visual selective attention was faster for deaf children with cochlear implants than deaf children without implants Moreover, the gams were rapid–occurring within 2 years post-implant surgery The results suggest that a history of experience with sounds matters in the development of visual attention The results are discussed in terms of multimodal developmental processes