National Survey of Psychologists' Test Feedback Training,Supervision, and Practice: A Mixed Methods Study

In this empirical, mixed methods study, we explored test feedback training, supervision, and practice among psychologists, focusing specifically on how feedback is provided to clients and whether feedback skills are taught in graduate programs. Based on a 48.5% return rate, this national survey of clinical, counseling, and school psychologists' suggests psychologists provide test feedback to clients but inconsistently. Most respondents, 91.7%, indicated they give verbal feedback at least some of the time, whereas 35% do so every time. However, 2.8% indicated they never give feedback. A negative correlation exists for clinical psychologists between years since graduation and providing verbal feedback. Of particular interest, approximately one third of respondents indicated predoctoral coursework, practica, and internship were of little-to-no help in preparing them to provide feedback. Also, feedback training in predoctoral coursework, practica, and internship was not correlated to actually providing feedback. There was, however, a significant correlation between postdoctoral training and providing feedback. Consistent with existing ethical exceptions, the most frequent reason for not providing feedback was using assessments in forensic settings. Individuals who indicated their training was not helpful cited “trial and error” and self-instruction as ways in which they learned feedback skills. We discuss implications and suggestions for feedback training, research, and practice.     

In God and CAM We Trust. Religious Faith and Use of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) in a Nationwide Cohort of Women Treated for Early Breast Cancer

Turning to faith in God or a higher spiritual power is a common way of coping with life-threatening disease such as cancer. Little, however, is known about religious faith among cancer patients in secular societies. The present study aimed at exploring the prevalence of religious faith among Danish breast cancer patients and at identifying whether socio-demographic, pre-cancer health status, clinical, and health behavior characteristics, including their use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), were associated with their degree of faith. Information on faith in God or a higher spiritual power and use of CAM was provided by a nationwide sample of 3,128 recurrence-free Danish women who had received surgery for early-stage breast cancer 15–16 months earlier. Socio-demographic, clinical, and health status variables were obtained from national longitudinal registries, and health behaviors had been assessed at 3–4 months post-surgery. Of the women, 47.3% reported a high degree of faith (unambiguous believers), 35.9% some degree of faith (ambiguous believers), while the remaining 16.8% were non-believers. Unambiguous believers were more likely than ambiguous believers to experience their faith as having a positive impact on their disease and their disease-related quality-of-life. When compared to non-believers, unambiguous believers were also older, had poorer physical function, and were more frequent users of CAM, and more inclined to believe that their use of CAM would have a beneficial influence on their cancer. Disease- and treatment-related variables were unrelated to faith. While overall religious faith appears equally prevalent among Danish and US breast cancer patients, the majority of Danish breast cancer patients experienced ambiguous faith, whereas the majority of US patients have been found to express unambiguous faith. Our results suggest that future studies may benefit from exploring the role of faith for health behaviors, adherence to conventional treatment, and impact upon quality of life.     

A preliminary investigation of sex differences in associations between emotion regulation difficulties and higher-order cognitive abilities

The present study sought to clarify the cognitive correlates of emotion regulation difficulties (ERD). Further, because prior evidence suggests sex differences in emotion regulation, sex was examined as a moderator of associations between cognitive abilities and ERD. Participants (N = 154) completed self-report measures of ERD, and were administered neuropsychological tests assessing crystallized and fluid intelligence, as well as various components of executive functioning. Bivariate correlations and results from regression analyses suggested sex-dependent associations among cognitive processes and ERD. For men, inhibition of dominant response tendencies was associated with lower ERD, whereas for women, a host of executive abilities (e.g., greater inhibition, cognitive flexibility, semantic processing, abstract reasoning) were associated with greater ERD. Implications for the neurocognitive conceptualization of emotion dysregulation will be discussed.     

Structural couple therapy in the treatment of inhibited sexual drive

Abstract

This paper presents a study of a structural couple therapy approach to the treatment of inhibited sexual desire (ISD). ISD is first conceptualized as a relational phenomenon that may be most effectively treated in a couple context. Structural couple therapy is advanced and applied to the treatment of a clinical sample of couples presenting with ISD. Results of the study suggest that a structural couple therapy approach to ISD is effective in reducing symptoms of the sexual disorder and in increasing couple satisfaction.     

Family Therapy in Norway: Past and Present

This article will describe the development of family therapy in Norway. First, this article will review the main theoretical influences on Norwegian family therapy, followed by a discussion about its international influence in the field. The second section of this article will address psychiatric health care, family counselling, and how systemic thinking and systemic practice have spread to other areas in the fields of health, social work, and pedagogy. Particularly, a special emphasis will be placed on child protection work in Norway. Then, the family therapy union and Norwegian and Scandinavian congresses will be presented. This article will then describe family therapy education and research in Norway. Finally, future developments in the field will be discussed.     

Associations between cortical thickness and general intelligence in children,adolescents and young adults

Neuroimaging research indicates that human intellectual ability is related to brain structure including the thickness of the cerebral cortex. Most studies indicate that general intelligence is positively associated with cortical thickness in areas of association cortex distributed throughout both brain hemispheres. In this study, we performed a cortical thickness mapping analysis on data from 182 healthy typically developing males and females ages 9 to 24 years to identify correlates of general intelligence (g) scores. To determine if these correlates also mediate associations of specific cognitive abilities with cortical thickness, we regressed specific cognitive test scores on g scores and analyzed the residuals with respect to cortical thickness. The effect of age on the association between cortical thickness and intelligence was examined. We found a widely distributed pattern of positive associations between cortical thickness and g scores, as derived from the first unrotated principal factor of a factor analysis of Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI) subtest scores. After WASI specific cognitive subtest scores were regressed on g factor scores, the residual score variances did not correlate significantly with cortical thickness in the full sample with age covaried. When participants were grouped at the age median, significant positive associations of cortical thickness were obtained in the older group for g-residualized scores on Block Design (a measure of visual-motor integrative processing) while significant negative associations of cortical thickness were observed in the younger group for g-residualized Vocabulary scores. These results regarding correlates of general intelligence are concordant with the existing literature, while the findings from younger versus older subgroups have implications for future research on brain structural correlates of specific cognitive abilities, as well as the cognitive domain specificity of behavioral performance correlates of normative gray matter thinning during adolescence.     

A Dyadic View of Support in Marriage: The Critical Role of Men’s Support Provision

This study examined how sensitive support provision and receipt were related to marital outcomes in a sample of 57 happily married, middle-class couples from the Midwestern U.S. To assess how observed supportive behaviors may be differentially associated with self-reported support satisfaction, marital love, and marital conflict for men and women, we utilized a series of Actor Partner Interdependence Models (APIM). This dyadic approach revealed significant gender differences regarding how the supportive role enacted (i.e., provider versus recipient) contributed considerably to marital outcomes. Specifically, husbands’ sensitive support provision significantly predicted both spouses’ support satisfaction. Additionally, husbands’ sensitive support provision was significantly associated with wives’ marital love. Wives’ reported conflict was predicted by the combination of both providing and receiving sensitive support. For husbands’ outcomes, husbands’ own sensitive support provision was most critically associated with their reporting greater love and less conflict. These findings reveal notable gender differences as men’s ability to provide sensitive support was critical not only to their wives’ marital outcomes, but to their own as well. Our results build upon and extend the literature implicating the importance of examining gender differences in supportive interactions in marriage. Moreover, our findings suggest that simultaneous consideration of spousal support receipt and provision is critical when seeking to understand how support is related to marital outcomes for men and women.     

The Test of Variables of Attention (TOVA): Internal Consistency (Q1 vs. Q2 and Q3 vs. Q4) in Children with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

The internal consistency of the Test of Variables of Attention (TOVA) was examined in a cohort of 6- to 12-year-old children (N = 63) strictly diagnosed with ADHD. The internal consistency of errors of omission (OMM), errors of commission (COM), response time (RT), and response time variability (RTV) of different test conditions (stimulus infrequent condition [Q₁ vs. Q₂] and stimulus frequent condition [Q₃ vs. Q₄]) was assessed via correlation analyses. All TOVA index scores under investigation assessing its internal consistency exhibited statistically significant correlations. All correlations fell in the moderate-high range.     

Self‐regulatory strength amplification through selective information processing

We propose and demonstrate that although depletion of self-regulatory strength is common, it is not inevitable. Four experiments show that under certain conditions, consumers can amplify their self-regulatory strength and, as a result, increase their ability to control their behavior. Experiments 1–3 examine the depleting effects of information processing by exposing dieters and nondieters to either cost or pleasure information about chocolate. The results of experiments 1–3 show that when dieters have the ability to monitor the costs of consumption, they are motivated to mobilize additional strength and increase their ability to self-regulate. In experiment 4 we show the practical implications of our work and show that dieters are better able to control their eating because they choose to focus more on the cost (versus pleasure) of consumption.