Application of Attachment Theory to Equine-Facilitated Psychotherapy

Equine-facilitated psychotherapy (EFP) is a form of animal-assisted therapy used to treat human psychological problems that employs horses in and around the natural surroundings of the stables. Despite the increasing number of professionals and organizations that offer this innovative therapy, EFP lacks a firm theoretical and research base. This paper aims to reveal how attachment theory can inform and enrich theory and practice of EFP. It explores the fit between central features of EFP and several of the primary concepts of attachment-based psychotherapy, such as: secure base and haven of safety through the provision of a holding environment, affect mirroring, mentalizing and reflective functioning, and non-verbal communication and body experience. This work is composed of definitions of these concepts, their application to human–horse context and EFP, and interpretation in light of potential therapeutic (transformative) processes.     

“I’ll do it later”: Type of motivation,self-efficacy and homework procrastination

The aim of this study is to explore the role of motivation in the relations between self-efficacy and procrastination. One hundred seventy-one-fifth-grade students completed questionnaires that assessed the type of motivation the students have for homework, the level to which they procrastinate on doing homework, and their self-efficacy regarding homework. The results indicated that autonomous motivation both mediates and moderates the relations between self-efficacy and procrastination. These results highlight the importance of students’ type of motivation for homework, suggesting procrastination cannot be reduced simply by addressing students’ self-efficacy; but, they must be supported to adopt a more autonomous type of motivation.     

Risk and Protective Factors in Child-to-Parent Violence: A Study of the YLS/CMI in a Spanish Juvenile Court

Journal of Child and Family Studies - Child to Parent Violence (CPV) is one of the crimes with the highest rates of increase in Spain in recent years, and has had a significant media and social...     

Pre-liver transplant psychosocial evaluation predicts post-transplantation outcomes

Psychosocial factors greatly impact the course of patients throughout the liver transplantation process. A retrospective chart review was performed of patients who underwent liver transplantation at Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center between 2002 and 2012. A composite psychosocial score was computed based on the patient’s pre-transplant evaluation. Patients were divided into two groups based on compliance, support and insight: Optimal psychosocial score and Non-optimal psychosocial score. Post-liver transplantation survival and complication rates were evaluated. Out of 100 patients who underwent liver transplantation at the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center between 2002 and 2012, 93% had a complete pre-liver transplant psychosocial evaluation in the medical record performed by professional psychologists and social workers. Post-liver transplantation survival was significantly higher in the Optimal group (85%) as compared to the Non-optimal group (56%, p = .002). Post-liver transplantation rate of renal failure was significantly lower in the Optimal group. No significant differences were observed between the groups in other post-transplant complications. A patient’s psychosocial status may impact outcomes following transplantation as inferior psychosocial grades were associated with lower overall survival and increased rates of complications. Pre-liver transplant psychosocial evaluations are an important tool to help predict survival following transplantation.     

Attachment states of mind and the quality of young adults' sibling relationships

This report examines young adults' states of mind regarding their early attachment experiences in relation to the observed and perceived quality of their sibling relationships. Sixty sibling pairs (18-25 years of age) were (a) administered the Adult Attachment Interview (George, Kaplan, & Main, 1985), (b) videotaped during a conflict resolution task, and (c) asked to describe the quality of their relationship using the Adult Sibling Relationship Questionnaire (Stocker, Lanthier, & Furman, 1997). As hypothesized, dismissing states of mind were associated with lower levels of positive and negative affect while participants attempted to resolve an area of conflict with a sibling as well as with relatively low levels of reported warmth in the relationship. In contrast-but also in line with predictions-preoccupied states of mind were associated with heightened expression of negative affect toward a brother or sister, and the siblings of highly preoccupied individuals reported more conflict in their relationships. Findings provide further support for the importance of young adults' representations of childhood attachment experiences with respect to the quality of their adult relationships. In addition, this study extends previous findings regarding the significance of dismissing versus preoccupied states of mind by demonstrating that these dimensions are differentially associated with behavioral and self-reported aspects of sibling relationship quality in early adulthood.     

Personally-significant information affects performance only within the focus of attention: a direct manipulation of attention

It has been suggested that personally significant (PS) information interferes with performance only when presented within the focus of attention. However, this claim was never tested by a systematic manipulation of attention, but only by using correlative measures of its locus. We addressed this issue in two experiments, utilizing a cued visual search paradigm that allowed us to directly manipulate attention and to measure behavioral and physiological responses. One of the stimuli in the search display had a higher luminance value (i.e., was cued), and, orthogonally, one of the stimuli could be a PS or neutral name. When the cue did not predict target location, PS distractors mildly interfered with task performance, regardless of the cue's location. However, when the cue predicted target location, responses were facilitated for cued targets, indicating that attention was shifted to the cue. Importantly, PS distractors interfered with task performance and elicited enhanced orienting responses only when they were cued. This implies that PS information affects performance only when presented within but not outside the focus of attention.     

Effects of stress on sleep: the moderating role of coping style.

The aim of this prospective quasi-experimental study was to assess the role of coping style as a factor moderating the relationship between stress and sleep. Sleep of 36 students was assessed by means of actigraphy and daily logs during low-stress and high-stress periods. The high-stress period was the week that the students were evaluated for acceptance to graduate programs in clinical psychology. The low-stress period was a regular academic week. The students' ways of coping were assessed during the baseline low-stress period using the COPE inventory. Data analysis revealed that a high emotion-focused coping score was significantly predictive of reduction in sleep time from the low- to the high-stress period. These results suggest that coping style is a key factor in assessing the relationship between stress and sleep.     

The role of negative features in joint and separate evaluation

Separate and joint evaluations differ in the manner in which attribute information is processed. We propose that negative attributes weigh more in separate compared to joint ratings. To assess the relative weights of positive and negative attributes, stimuli were employed containing mixed attribute valence, with good and poor attributes. In three experiments it was demonstrated empirically that, using such mixed valence options, the negative attributes indeed weighed more than the positive ones in separate compared to joint ratings. Direct evidence for the increased weight of negative attributes in separate ratings was provided by showing preference shifts between joint and separate ratings for options with mixed attribute valence. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sustained withdrawal behavior in clinic‐referred and nonreferred infants

To examine the relations between infants' sustained withdrawal behavior and children's mental health status and maternal and child relational behavior, 36 clinic‐referred and 43 control infants were evaluated. Families were visited at home, mother‐child free play and feeding interactions were videotaped, and mothers completed self‐report measures. Interactions were coded for sustained withdrawal using the Alarm Distress Baby Scale (ADBB; Guedeney and Fermanian, 2001) and for global relational patterns with the Coding of Interactive Behavior (CIB; Feldman, 1998). Higher ADBB scores were found for the referred group, with many infants (38.9% ) scoring above the clinical cutoff (vs. 11.6% in the control group). More negative relational patterns were found for the withdrawn group in terms of higher maternal intrusiveness, lower reciprocity, and lower child involvement. Associations were found between maternal and child behavior during play and feeding and child sustained withdrawal behavior at play. Sustained withdrawal also was associated with unpredictable child temperament and lower sense of parental self‐efficacy. Maternal depressive symptoms were higher in the referred group and correlated with maternal and child relational patterns. The findings contribute to the construct and discriminant validity of the CIB and the ADBB coding systems, and suggest that sustained withdrawal may serve as a risk indicator for early socioemotional disorders.     

Prosodic knowledge affects the recognition of newly acquired words

An eye-tracking study examined the involvement of prosodic knowledge--specifically, the knowledge that monosyllabic words tend to have longer durations than the first syllables of polysyllabic words--in the recognition of newly learned words. Participants learned new spoken words (by associating them to novel shapes): bisyllables and onset-embedded monosyllabic competitors (e.g., baptoe and bap). In the learning phase, the duration of the ambiguous sequence (e.g., bap) was held constant. In the test phase, its duration was longer than, shorter than, or equal to its learning-phase duration. Listeners' fixations indicated that short syllables tended to be interpreted as the first syllables of the bisyllables, whereas long syllables generated more monosyllabic-word interpretations. Recognition of newly acquired words is influenced by prior prosodic knowledge and is therefore not determined solely on the basis of stored episodes of those words.