Speech treatment and support group experiences of people who participate in the National Stuttering Association

Support groups are rapidly becoming an important part of the recovery process for many people who stutter, and a growing number of speech-language pathologists (SLPs) are encouraging their clients to participate in support groups. At present, however, little is known about the individuals who join stuttering support groups and the benefits they derive from their participation. This study surveyed members of the National Stuttering Association (NSA) to learn about their experiences in support groups, as well as their experiences in speech therapy. Respondents were 71 people who attended the 1999 NSA conference in Tacoma, WA. The majority of respondents had participated in treatment several times during their lives, using a variety of techniques. Respondents who had participated in fluency-shaping treatments were more likely to report that they had experienced a relapse than those who had participated in stuttering modification or combined treatments. Also, there was a strong positive correlation between respondents' satisfaction with treatment and their judgments of clinicians' competence, suggesting that improved training for SLPs should lead to improved treatment for people who stutter. Results will be used to provide a foundation for further evaluations of the benefits of support group participation for people who stutter. EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES: The reader will learn (a) that many people who participate in the NSA have had numerous and varied experiences with speech treatment throughout their lives, (b) which aspects of treatment and support group participation are seen as most beneficial for people who participate in the NSA.     

Envy and Generosity Between Co-Therapists

This paper explores the dynamics of envy and generosity between co-therapists. Generally speaking, co-therapists can be drawn into the same social comparisons (overt and covert), competitiveness, and envy as their group members. The list of valued resources can include the group's affection, appreciation, and recognition, or, more generally, one's status, popularity, creativity, sensitivity, understanding, or parental functioning. The group in turn, will sometimes tend to divide the therapists into the good one and the bad one in order to serve its own developmental needs. This process can increase the tension between the therapists, and feed their envy. I present an argument for processing those feelings and assert that awareness of co-therapist envy can promote the expression of generosity and enhance the capacity of group members for similar experiences. Clinical material will be presented to demonstrate how this works.     

Motivation in later life: personal projects and well-being

"Personal projects," as defined by B. R. Little (1983), were elicited from 600 community residents aged 70+, representing a broad range of health and illness. Factor analysis revealed 6 types of personal projects: activities of daily living, active recreation, other-oriented activities, intellectual activities, home planning, and spiritual moral activities. Background factors and health were shown to affect the number and type of projects reported. Most indices of personal projects were associated with positive affect and valuation of life. Only 1 was associated with depression. This confirms the differential association of personal projects to positive but not negative affect. Personal projects are seen as part of an open motivational system in which social position, cognitive ability, health, and positive mental health are mutually interacting members.     

Dependency,impulsivity, and self-harm: traits hypothesized to underlie the association between cluster B personality and substance use disorders

Cluster B personality disorders (PDs) (i.e., antisocial, borderline, histrionic, and narcissistic) typically show a high degree of comorbidity with substance use disorders (SUDs). Previous research suggests that the broad-based personality domains of Disinhibition and Negative Temperament/Neuroticism may be common factors to both types of disorders. Using a two-phase process (i.e., screening and follow-up), this study examined three lower-order personality traits (i.e., dependency, impulsivity, and self-harm) that fall within the Disinhibition and Neuroticism domains. The study evaluated the hypotheses that these traits (a) are related both to cluster B PDs and to SUDs; and (b) underlie the association between the two types of disorders. Results indicate that impulsivity and self-harm play a significant role in cluster B PDs and SUDs, as well as in their association with each other. However, dependency was not associated with either type of disorder. These results indicate that sets of individual traits can be of significant utility in understanding the comorbidity between PDs and SUDs.     

Psychiatric patient- and informant-reported personality: predicting concurrent and future behavior

The authors investigated the criterion and incremental validity of personality reports from psychiatric patients and knowledgeable informants in predicting patient substance use, social and risky behaviors, and psychological distress. Patient and informant reports of patient personality and behavior were collected from an adult psychiatric sample (N = 94). Hierarchical regressions indicated that patient reports of personality accounted for significant variance in both concurrent (17%-42%) and future behavior assessed 1 year later (17%-40%). Informant reports contributed significantly to the prediction of several behaviors and most strongly to social behaviors. Behaviors were predicted equally well by self-reports and informant reports in prospective as in concurrent regressions. Thus, both patient and informant reports of personality contribute importantly to prediction of behavior, and predictive ability is stable across time.     

Courtesy stigma in mothers of children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: a preliminary investigation

Mothers of children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder face an increased risk for depression, anxiety, and social isolation. In addition to stress due to children's behavior, mothers of children with ADHD may also feel stigmatized by their children's diagnosis. Fifty-one mothers participated in a study to assess attitudes toward ADHD. Although mothers of children with ADHD expected that parents of children without ADHD would hold harsh views of the disorder, this was not generally the case. This difference between perception and the actual self-reported views of mothers of children without ADHD supports the idea that mothers feel stigmatized but suggests that increased awareness might help mothers of children with ADHD feel less isolated.     

Comparison of the Trail Making and Color Trails Tests in a Chinese context: a preliminary report

The Color Trails Test developed as a culturally fair analogue of the Trail Making Test, was used to examine the relationship between the two tests with 35 undergraduate Chinese in Hong Kong recruited as the subjects. The scores on these two tests of the 12 men and 23 women were significantly correlated .71. The equivalence of the Trail Making and Color Trails Tests when applied to Chinese in Hong Kong was discussed.     

The importance of the convex hull for human performance on the traveling salesman problem: a comment on MacGregor and Ormerod (1996)

MacGregor and Ormerod (1996) have presented results purporting to show that human performance on visually presented traveling salesman problems, as indexed by a measure of response uncertainty, is strongly determined by the number of points in the stimulus array falling inside the convex hull, as distinct from the total number of points. It is argued that this conclusion is artifactually determined by their constrained procedure for stimulus construction, and, even if true, would be limited to arrays with fewer than around 50 points.     

Levels-of-processing effects on Chinese character completion: The importance of lexical processing and test cue

The levels of processing (LoP) effect was studied in Chinese character completion tasks. The same stem cue, either graphemically or semantically related to the target character, was used to generate either a perceptual or a conceptual test. Participants received either direct or indirect instructions, so that the same stem cue also produced either an explicit or an implicit test of memory. This allowed us to examine simultaneously the roles of perceptual versus conceptual test and retrieval intentionality in the LoP effect. No LoP effects were found when the memory test was implicit. LoP effects were also not found for stems and characters related graphemically (perceptually), but were found for stems and characters related semantically (conceptually) when the memory test was explicit. The results are discussed in terms of the importance of lexical processing for character completion tests and the importance of reinstatement of the study process during retrieval for explicit memory tests.     

The Factor Structure of the Beavers Interactional Scales

Confirmatory factor analysis and regression analyses of the Beavers Interactional Scales did not appear to support the model offered by its developers, namely, several specified family attributes contributing respectively to two global factors of Family Competence and Family Style. Moreover, regression analysis indicated that only three of 12 items predicted raters' assessments of Global Family Health, and one of seven items predicted Global Family Style. Individuals interested in the family dynamic centripetal/centrifugal might best think of that as a unitary entity and rate it accordingly.