A Both-And Approach: An Application of Narrative Interventions from a Modern Perspective

A contentious debate between the modern and postmodern epistemologies continue to wage on since the rise of constructivism and social constructionism in the 1990s. This debate has led to both modern and postmodernists falling into an either/or mindset. Others have proposed a solution, the both-and approach, that emphasizes integration of different therapeutic camps. Intentionality is a core component of this approach, as therapists must understand how employed interventions flow from the epistemology and theoretical orientation under which they operate. Another core component of this approach is tailoring the integration to the specific context of the client case. With this understanding and tailoring, therapists can utilize methods across the modern/postmodern divide, as they will coherently flow from their original epistemology and theoretical orientation. Applying methods from both modernism and postmodernism, then, enhances therapists’ therapeutic repertoire, allowing for more opportunities to adapt treatment to each client case. Altogether, the quality of services improve and the amount of clients therapists can help increases as well. This paper will provide an application of the both-and approach to a case study to provide an example of how the said method can be employed in therapy.

     

Using Self-Determination Theory to Understand when and how Money Buys Happiness: a Cross-Sectional and Intervention Study

Applied Research in Quality of Life - The objectives of this article were twofold: (1) understand what motivates people to make money and how this impacts well-being and (2) explore whether it is...     

Examining the Relationship Between Personality and Work Values Across Career Stages

The study examines the strength of association between personality and work values, and their variations across career stages of exploration, establishment, and maintenance. The results showed that the executives in exploration stage were lower on needs of altruism and economic returns as compared to executives from establishment and maintenance stages, but higher on neuroticism and conscientiousness dimensions of personality. Neuroticism negatively predicted creativity and aesthetics; and conscientiousness negatively predicted management. Security was positively predicted by extraversion, but negatively predicted by openness. However, the variance explained was very weak, indicating that these constructs could be independent or unrelated. The implications have been discussed in the study.     

Can third-party observers detect the emotional rewards of generous spending?

Can others detect the emotional consequences of our personal choices? Here, we investigate whether third-party observers can detect the emotional benefits of two factors shown to influence self-reported happiness: the speed with which people make decisions and the generosity of spending choices. Participants were randomly assigned to purchase a goody bag either for themselves or for a sick child, and to choose the contents of this goody bag either as quickly as possible, or by taking as much time as needed. Then, participants reported their current emotional state and were rated for happiness by a research assistant blind to their spending condition. Analyses revealed that purchasing a gift for someone else not only improved participants’ self-reported mood, but that observers could detect these affective differences as well. Observers also rated participants who made their spending decision more quickly as happier, although participants did not report these emotional differences.     

Losing face: impaired discrimination of featural and configural information in the mouth region of an inverted face

Given that all faces share the same set of features—two eyes, a nose, and a mouth—that are arranged in similar configuration, recognition of a specific face must depend on our ability to discern subtle differences in its featural and configural properties. An enduring question in the face-processing literature is whether featural or configural information plays a larger role in the recognition process. To address this question, the face dimensions task was designed, in which the featural and configural properties in the upper (eye) and lower (mouth) regions of a face were parametrically and independently manipulated. In a same–different task, two faces were sequentially presented and tested in their upright or in their inverted orientation. Inversion disrupted the perception of featural size (Exp. 1), featural shape (Exp. 2), and configural changes in the mouth region, but it had relatively little effect on the discrimination of featural size and shape and configural differences in the eye region. Inversion had little effect on the perception of information in the top and bottom halves of houses (Exp. 3), suggesting that the lower-half impairment was specific to faces. Spatial cueing to the mouth region eliminated the inversion effect (Exp. 4), suggesting that participants have a bias to attend to the eye region of an inverted face. The collective findings from these experiments suggest that inversion does not differentially impair featural or configural face perceptions, but rather impairs the perception of information in the mouth region of the face.     

BOOK REVIEWS

This paper deals with the traumatic departures of Jews from Morocco during the 1950s and 1960s. The issue is analyzed through a set of diverse oral narrations. The study is based on several interviews conducted both among Jews who left Morocco and Muslims still living in the city of Meknes. The repression of the memory by Muslims of two young Jews murdered in 1967 in Meknes is questioned. In fact, although the perceptions concerning the Jews' departure differs according to the interviewee's social class, a common feeling appears to be shared by different societal sectors regarding this specific issue, which still comes across as a sensitive one today. The representation of Jews traditionally depicted as “fearful” and “weak” turns into “courageous” and “strong” during the Six‐Day War. This new representation perturbed the Muslim population, which seemed to be unable to deal with the new status Jews were acquiring. In fact, emigration was commonly considered to betray a lack of virility. The paper argues that the unexpected departure of an historic component of Moroccan society has left an open wound in Morocco. Even the memory of the “events” by the Jewish population appears to be fragmented into ambiguous constructions, leading, on the one hand, to perceptions of fear and uncertainty and, on the other, to images of affectionate relationships and intense nostalgia.     

Formation of Al3Ni2-type nanocrystalline τ 3 phases in the Al–Cu–Ni system by mechanical alloying

An elemental powder mixture of Al (70 at.%), Ni (15 at.%) and Cu (15 at.%) was milled in a high-energy ball mill for various times ranging from 10 to 100?h to form ternary intermetallic alloys. X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy techniques were employed for characterization of the samples. The dissolution of the individual elements into an alloy led to the formation of a τ₃ vacancy-ordered phase after 100?h of milling. This phase was found to be quite stable against milling, and no other crystalline and amorphous phases could be detected. The powder after 100?h of milling was found to contain mostly τ₃ nanophases with partial ordering, and with crystallite sizes in the range 10–20?nm along with a lattice strain of ～0.675%. The milled powder, after annealing at 700°C for 20, 40 and 60?h, revealed the formation of a strain-free and ordered τ₃ phase with a crystallite size of 80?nm, indicating grain coarsening. It is interesting to note that the mechanical energy imparted during milling could not completely destroy the vacancy ordering in the τ₃ phase, unlike other stoichiometric Al–Cu–transition metal (TM) systems, where the disordered B2 (bcc) phase is commonly observed instead of any vacancy-ordered phases.     

Engaging Environments Enhance Motor Skill Learning in a Computer Gaming Task

Engagement during practice can motivate a learner to practice more, hence having indirect effects on learning through increased practice. However, it is not known whether engagement can also have a direct effect on learning when the amount of practice is held constant. To address this question, 40 participants played a video game that contained an embedded repeated sequence component, under either highly engaging conditions (the game group) or mechanically identical but less engaging conditions (the sterile group). The game environment facilitated retention over a 1-week interval. Specifically, the game group improved in both speed and accuracy for random and repeated trials, suggesting a general motor-related improvement, rather than a specific influence of engagement on implicit sequence learning. These data provide initial evidence that increased engagement during practice has a direct effect on generalized learning, improving retention and transfer of a complex motor skill.     

Core self-evaluations as causes of satisfaction: The mediating role of seeking task complexity

This study examined the mediating role of task complexity in the relationship between core self-evaluations (CSE) and satisfaction. In Study 1, eighty three undergraduate business students worked on a strategic decision-making simulation. The simulated environment enabled us to verify the temporal sequence of variables, use an objective measure of task complexity, and control confounding factors. In Study 2, we surveyed 108 full-time employees. In addition to verifying the temporal sequencing of variables in Study 1, both studies demonstrate that people with higher CSE actually choose/seek higher levels of complexity on their tasks, which directly or indirectly increases their task/work satisfaction.