A Review of: “Pamela J. Burry's Living with “The Gloria Films”: A daughter's memory.”

Abstract

This article examines alternatives for using language and discourse in clinical practice. The goal is to deconstruct deficit language and move toward a competency based psychological service. Deficit and pathology, the native tongue of psychotherapy, tend to initiate permanent stigmatizing patterns of social interaction which further marginalizes clients. This article deconstructs the taken‐for‐granted assumptions and discourses that underpin deficit‐based practice. Through the process of rediscoursing and re‐inventing therapeutic languages, therapists can reverse the self‐sustaining feedback loop initiated by deficit focus. These changes transport possibilities and personal agency into postmodern practice.     

Agreement between Parents and Children on Ratings of Post-Concussive Symptoms Following Mild Traumatic Brain Injury

The level of parent-child agreement on post-concussive symptoms (PCS) was examined in children following mild traumatic brain injuries (TBI). As part of a larger longitudinal study, 186 children with mild TBI and 99 with orthopedic injuries (OI), from 8 to 15 years of age, were recruited prospectively. Parents and children completed the PCS Interview (PCS-I) and the Health and Behavior Inventory (HBI) at 2 weeks, 1 month, 3 months, and 12 months postinjury. Item-level correlations between child and parent ratings on both measures of PCS were significant but modest in both groups. Parent-child correlations for composite scales on the HBI and the total score on the PCS-I were significant in both groups, but somewhat higher in the OI group than in the mild TBI group. Mean symptom ratings tended to be significantly higher for children as compared to parents, especially for somatic symptoms. Parents and children display modest agreement when reporting PCS; their ratings correlate significantly, but children report higher mean levels of symptoms than parents.     

Contemporary Issues in the Measurement of Partner Violence

The construction of this special issue, focusing on measurement of intimate partner violence (IPV), was designed to raise questions and to point out potential limitations by which social scientists have approached measuring IPV. Research on IPV, consisting mostly of United States’ samples, is critiqued with the goal of expanding our conceptions of this phenomenon and energizing future research focused on measurement of IPV. This special issue contains a historical perspective of the measurement of IPV, addresses technical concerns of reliability and validity as they apply to IPV, considers unique aspects of assessment based on gender or same-sex relationships, contains a novel approach proposing assessment of interactional observation units, and proposes methodologies for assessment with different cultures. All contributors provide recommendations for improving the assessment of IPV.     

Coping profiles characterize individual flourishing,languishing, and depression

Abstract

According to the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions, negative emotions narrow one's thought–action repertoire. In contrast, positive emotions have a broadening effect, expanding cognitive capacity, increasing potential coping strategies that come to mind, and enhancing decision-making, reaction, and adaptation to adversity. Fredrickson and Losada determined that a positivity ratio – the ratio of experienced positive to negative emotions – at or above 2.9 promotes human flourishing. A ratio below 2.9 is indicative of languishing individuals, whereas a ratio below 1.0 is a marker of depression. This study examined whether adaptive and maladaptive coping profiles differentiated those who flourish, languish, or are depressed in two convenience samples – military spouses (n =367) and public school teachers (n=267). Results were consistent with the theoretical predictions, as coping profiles of the groups differed significantly, with flourishing individuals favoring adaptive coping strategies more than those who were languishing or depressed. Conversely, depressed individuals reported greater use of maladaptive coping strategies than those who were languishing or flourishing. These results provide further empirical support for the mathematical model of Fredrickson and Losada, as the set of positivity criteria were predictive of coping profiles in two samples where successful coping and adaptation are important.     

Partial word knowledge in the absence of recall

Attributes of words can be known even when the words are not currently retrievable. Although repeatedly demonstrated for semantic and contextual dimensions, the evidence is ambiguous for structural characteristics. The present research demonstrates significant above-chance first-letter knowledge across four ordinal levels of retrieval confidence for nonretrieved words—tip of the tongue (TOT), high familiar, low familiar, unfamiliar. Contrary to prior research, there was minimal evidence for syllable number knowledge, even at highest confidence levels. Initial letter recognition in the absence of retrieval resembles the recognition without identification in episodic memory (Cleary, Current Directions in Psychological Science 17: 353–357, 2008), and such implicit familiarity may contribute more generally to confidence assessments of word knowledge in both semantic and episodic memory domains. Furthermore, this outcome suggests that word feature priming in the form of partial phonological activation may occur to some extent for all words during a retrieval attempt, and even for ones that are judged to be unknown.     

A Longitudinal Assessment of the Associations Among Response Access, Attention Problems, and Aggression during Childhood

Children with ADHD symptoms often display social competence deficits, yet mechanisms for their social difficulties remain unclear. Using data from the normative sample of non-intervention respondents (N?=?387; 50 % male; 49 % non-European-American; age at initial assessment: M?=?6.5 years, SD?=?0.48) in the Fast Track project (Lochman and CPPRG Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 63:549–59, 1995), the social-information processing ability of accessing responses for social situations was modeled across four time points from kindergarten to third grade. Teacher-rated aggression and ADHD symptoms were included as predictors of the intercept and slope. Low ADHD symptoms were associated with a decline in aggressive responses across childhood, whereas high ADHD symptoms were linked to an increase in aggressive responses that decelerated between second and third grade. Regarding competent responses, low ADHD symptoms predicted increases in competent responses, but this increase decelerated between second and third grade. High ADHD symptoms were also associated with a slight increase in competent responses into first grade, but competent responses decreased from first to third grade. Neither aggression nor the interaction of ADHD symptoms and aggression accounted for a significant amount of variance in aggressive or competent responses. Future research should identify if differences in response access associated with high and low ADHD symptoms link to difficulties making and keeping friendships.     

CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS AS SOURCES OF STRENGTH OR OBSTACLES FOR MOTHERS COPING WITH HIV

The current study explores the impact of HIV disease on the interpersonal relationships and social support experiences of mothers living with HIV. Analysis of interviews with 25 mothers with HIV focused on their perceptions of the impact of HIV on close relationships with significant others, including family of origin, children, friends, intimate partners, and parents. The results revealed the following major relationship challenges that mothers had to cope with after the discovery of their HIV-positive status: weighing reasons for and against disclosure of their HIV status, whether HIV disclosure brings relationship partners closer together, finding future caregivers for young children if one's health declines, and coordinating safer-sex practices with sexual partners, especially with the many males who are reluctant to use condoms. The study suggests the importance of understanding both the positive and negative aspects of social interactions in coping with HIV and the struggles that mothers have with the consequences of the HIV diagnosis for both themselves and their significant others.     

Fluency Profiling System: An automated system for analyzing the temporal properties of speech

The temporal characteristics of speech can be captured by examining the distributions of the durations of measurable speech components, namely speech segment durations and pause durations. However, several barriers prevent the easy analysis of pause durations: The first problem is that natural speech is noisy, and although recording contrived speech minimizes this problem, it also discards diagnostic information about cognitive processes inherent in the longer pauses associated with natural speech. The second issue concerns setting the distribution threshold, and consists of the problem of appropriately classifying pause segments as either short pauses reflecting articulation or long pauses reflecting cognitive processing, while minimizing the overall classification error rate. This article describes a fully automated system for determining the locations of speech–pause transitions and estimating the temporal parameters of both speech and pause distributions in natural speech. We use the properties of Gaussian mixture models at several stages of the analysis, in order to identify theoretical components of the data distributions, to classify speech components, to compute durations, and to calculate the relevant statistics.     

They are afraid of the animal, so therefore I am too: Influence of peer modeling on fear beliefs and approach-avoidance behaviors towards animals in typically developing children

This study investigated the effect of filmed peer modeling on fear beliefs and approach–avoidance behaviors towards animals in 8- to 10-year-old typically developing children. Ninety-seven children randomly received either a positive or negative modeling film in which they saw peers interact with a novel animal. Before and after this film, children’s fear beliefs and avoidance tendencies towards the modeled and non-modeled control animal were measured. A behavioral approach task was also administered post-modeling. Following positive peer modeling, children’s fear beliefs and avoidance tendencies towards the modeled but also towards the non-modeled animal decreased significantly. After negative modeling, children’s fear beliefs towards the modeled animal increased significantly, but did not change for the non-modeled animal. Negative modeling did not change avoidance tendencies for the modeled animal, while it decreased children’s avoidance of the non-modeled animal. No significant effects were observed on the behavioral approach task. These results support Rachman’s indirect pathway of modeling/vicarious learning as a plausible mechanism by which children can acquire fears of novel stimuli and stresses the important fear-reducing effects of positive peer modeling. Clinical implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Elevated trajectories of externalizing problems are associated with lower awakening cortisol levels in midadolescence

A growing body of research suggesting a negative association between basal levels of cortisol and persistent antisocial behavior has emerged. The present study examined relations between awakening cortisol levels and antisocial trajectories from ages 5 to 15 years among individuals in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Antisocial behavior was defined by semiparametric group modeling techniques, which revealed antisocial patterns parallel to Moffitt's (1993) taxonomy of antisocial trajectories. In contrast to the claim that biological diatheses are uniquely characteristic of individuals who demonstrate an early-onset pattern of antisocial behavior, our results suggest that individuals with elevated patterns of antisocial behavior between 5 and 15 years of age-irrespective of the timing of onset or desistance-are more likely to evidence lower awakening cortisol levels compared with individuals with persistently low levels of antisocial behavior.