Childhood asthma: family therapy as an adjunct to routine management

A controlled trial of the effectiveness of family therapy for asthmatic children has been completed, and the results indicate that family therapy may have a part to play in the management of asthma. Our observations have shown that an interaction of psychosocial factors can have a significant effect on the course of the asthma by setting up a circular system which may ultimately lead to clinically intractable asthma, as well as intense emotional distress. Treatment is based on an understanding of the interactional model with the aim of interrupting the progressive sequence of events. A family approach is indicated when (1) emotional factors seem to be playing a significant part; (2) the asthmatic child is manifesting behaviour problems; (3) there is evidence of family psychopathology or (4) the asthma is not being reasonably well controlled with conventional methods of management.     

Theory-based screening for prevention: Focusing on mediating processes in children of divorce

Prevention programs in mental health theoretically can benefit from selecting participants who have a greater likelihood of developing psychological problems because of their exposure to the putative mediators targeted for change in an intervention. Screening on mediators may increase statistical power to detect program effects, enhance the cost-effectiveness of intervention trials, and decrease the possibility of iatrogenic effects. The circumstances that optimize the strategy of screening on the basis of mediating variables are discussed, and data are presented to illustrate the development of a mediational selection strategy to identify families who might best benefit from a preventive intervention for children of divorce. In addition, we present evidence that adjustment problems for children experiencing a divorce, as with most mental health problems, are not the result of one specific factor, but are jointly determined by several mediating processes that occur subsequent to the divorce. The mediational selection strategy developed illustrates the utility of measuring a set of mediational processes central to conferring risk for mental health problems to children of divorce.     

The test-taking expectations scale: Psychometric properties and relations with test anxiety

The present research examined the psychometric properties of the Test-Taking Expectations Scale (TTES), an individual difference measure of unrealistic test-taking expectations. The present research also examined the relations among a revised measure and (a) Sarason's (1984) multi-component test-anxiety measure, (b) academic performance as indexed by actual course grades, and (c) verbal ability as indexed by scores on a vocabulary measure. Reliability and factor analyses employing initial and cross-validation samples revealed that four TTES items have low item-total correlations. The revised TTES, compared to the original measure, was found to be internally consistent, more factorially ‘pure’, and strongly correlated with test anxiety, particularly with tension and worry components. Although the revised TTES did not correlate significantly with measures of academic performance and vocabulary ability, regression analyses showed that the test anxiety and vocabulary measures did predict actual academic performance.     

The New Narcissist and Pastoral Counseling

Pastoral Psychology - For some time now, psychiatrists and psychotherapists have recognized that they are working with a new individual, one who no longer seems capable of experiencing a sense of...     

Perfectionism, intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation, and motivated strategies for learning: a multidimensional analysis of university students

We investigated the interrelations between dimensions of perfectionism and measures of academic motivation and learning strategies in university students. When partial correlation analysis was employed to examine the unique relation between specific perfectionism subscales and motivation/learning scales, self-oriented perfectionism was significantly related to students’ motivation and learning strategies in positive, adaptive ways whereas socially prescribed perfectionism was related in negative, maladaptive ways. Self-oriented perfectionists were motivated primarily by extrinsic compensation for their academic work whereas socially prescribed perfectionists were more motivated by recognition from others. Self-oriented perfectionism was significantly positively associated with self-efficacy for learning and performance, adaptive metacognitive and cognitive learning strategies, and effective resource management. Socially prescribed perfectionism was associated negatively with these measures. In addition, self-oriented perfectionism was associated positively with intrinsic goal orientation for a specific course, task value, and critical thinking whereas socially prescribed perfectionism was associated with test anxiety and a decreased likelihood of help-seeking. The theoretical importance of these findings and the implications for devising strategic counseling interventions are discussed.     

The relationships among working memory, math anxiety, and performance.

Individuals with high math anxiety demonstrated smaller working memory spans, especially when assessed with a computation-based span task. This reduced working memory capacity led to a pronounced increase in reaction time and errors when mental addition was performed concurrently with a memory load task. The effects of the reduction also generalized to a working memory-intensive transformation task. Overall, the results demonstrated that an individual difference variable, math anxiety, affects on-line performance in math-related tasks and that this effect is a transitory disruption of working memory. The authors consider a possible mechanism underlying this effect--disruption of central executive processes--and suggest that individual difference variables like math anxiety deserve greater empirical attention, especially on assessments of working memory capacity and functioning.     

Volition and the idle cortex: beta oscillatory activity preceding planned and spontaneous movement

Prior to the initiation of spontaneous movement, evoked potentials can be seen to precede awareness of the impending movement by several hundreds of milliseconds, meaning that this recorded neural activity is the result of unconscious processing. This study investigates the neural representations of impending movement with and without awareness. Specifically, the relationship between awareness and 'idling' cortical oscillations in the beta range (18-24Hz) was assessed. It was found that, in situations where there was awareness of the impending movement, pre-movement evoked potentials were associated with a decrease in beta range oscillations. In contrast, when awareness of the impending movement was not present, the onset of the pre-movement potential was associated with tonic levels of beta range oscillations. A model is considered where by distributed neural activity remains outside of conscious awareness through the persistence of tonic slow wave cortical oscillations.     

The effects of prohibiting gestures on children's lexical retrieval ability

Two alternative accounts have been proposed to explain the role of gestures in thinking and speaking. The Information Packaging Hypothesis (Kita, 2000) claims that gestures are important for the conceptual packaging of information before it is coded into a linguistic form for speech. The Lexical Retrieval Hypothesis (Rauscher, Krauss & Chen, 1996) sees gestures as functioning more at the level of speech production in helping the speaker to find the right words. The latter hypothesis has not been fully explored with children. In this study children were given a naming task under conditions that allowed and restricted gestures. Children named more words correctly and resolved more 'tip-of-the-tongue' states when allowed to gesture than when not, suggesting that gestures facilitate access to the lexicon in children and are important for speech production as well as conceptualization.     

The Experiential Liberation Strategy of the Existential-Integrative Model of Therapy

This article summarizes the experiential liberation strategy of the existential-integrative (EI) model of therapy. The existential-integrative model of therapy provides one way to understand and coordinate a variety of intervention modes within an overarching ontological or experiential context. I will (1) define the experiential liberation strategy—such as its emphasis on the capacities to constrict, expand, and center psychophysiological capacities; (2) describe its salient features—such as the four stances that promote experiential liberation: presence, invoking the actual, vivifying and confronting resistance, and the cultivation of meaning and awe; and (3) illustrate the relevance of the strategy to case vignettes drawn from actual practice.