Analyzing the Impact of the Medicare Coverage Gap on Counseling Professionals: Results of a National Study

The authors surveyed 6,550 members of the American Counseling Association regarding the current impact of Medicare policy on counseling professionals. More than half of respondents (54.8%) had been directly affected by Medicare reimbursement barriers, including 70.0% of practicing counselors. Statistical analyses indicated significant associations between years in the profession, direct experience with the Medicare coverage gap, and participation in professional advocacy related to Medicare. Implications for counselors, counselor educators, and counseling scholarship are discussed.     

Establishing arbitrary comparative relations and referential transformations of stimulus function in individuals with autism

Relational Frame Theory posits that complex language develops through arbitrarily applicable relational networks, with potential implications for individuals with autism. Responding relationally based on comparison occurs when participants respond to any number of comparative properties, such as “bigger” or “faster.” Experiment 1 established two 3-member comparative networks, in which a stimulus A was conditioned as “bigger” or “faster” than a stimulus B, and the stimulus B was conditioned as “bigger” or “faster” than a stimulus C in 2 children with autism. Both participants met the mastery criterion for the trained relations and demonstrated the emergence of the untrained combinatorially entailed A–C and C–A relations. The participants could also match the arbitrary A stimuli with larger or faster objects and the C stimuli with smaller or slower objects. The results were replicated in Experiment 2 with the same participants, where a 5-member relational network was established for the bigger/smaller relation.     

Comparing view sensitivity in shape discrimination with shape sensitivity in view discrimination

In three picture-picture matching experiments, the effects of a view change on our ability to detect a shape change (Experiments 1 and 2) were contrasted with the effects of a shape change on our ability to detect a view change (Experiment 3). In each experiment, both view changes and shape changes influenced performance. However, shape changes had more influence than did view changes in the shape change detection task Conversely, view changes were more influential when the task was to detect view changes. Thus, the participants could often discriminate between the effects of shape changes and the effects of view changes. The disruptive effect of task-irrelevant changes (view changes in the first two experiments; shape changes in the final experiment) does not support Stankiewicz's (2002) claim that information about viewpoint and about shape can be estimated independently by human observers. However, the greater effect of variation in the task-relevant than in the task-irrelevant dimension indicates that the observers were moderately successful at disregarding irrelevant changes.     

Intergenerational Transmission: Individuation and Intimacy Across Three Generations

This study examined the transmission of intergenerational family processes across three generations, employing Williamson's construct of Personal Authority in the Family System (PAFS) as a theoretical back-drop. From a PAFS perspective, psychological health is viewed as directly related to the degree of individuation and intimacy (PAFS) experienced within the family of origin. Overall, the results provided a degree of support for the intergenerational transmission hypothesis. The strongest predictor of the transmission process was from the participant/parent relationship to the participant/spouse relationship (spousal fusion/individuation). Separate male and female analyses of the Spousal Fusion/Individuation model found a moderate effect for females and a large effect for males. A small effect was found in predicting nuclear family triangulation from parent and spouse variables, although there was no gender effect. The findings suggest that degree of individuation and its related constructs are more critical in the transmission process than is intimacy.     

Rumination, emotion, and forgiveness: three longitudinal studies

In 3 studies, the authors investigated whether within-persons increases in rumination about an interpersonal transgression were associated with within-persons reductions in forgiveness. Results supported this hypothesis. The association of transient increases in rumination with transient reductions in forgiveness appeared to be mediated by anger, but not fear, toward the transgressor. The association of rumination and forgiveness was not confounded by daily fluctuations in positive affect and negative affect, and it was not moderated by trait levels of positive affectivity, negative affectivity, or perceived hurtfulness of the transgression. Cross-lagged associations of rumination and forgiveness in Study 3 more consistently supported the proposition that increased rumination precedes reductions in forgiveness than the proposition that increased forgiveness precedes reductions in rumination.     

Gender, Internalization of Expressive Traits, and Expectations of Parenting

This study examined parental role salience, expectations and intentions, and the extent to which the internalization of gender associated traits may be related to these parenting variables within emerging adults. Childless undergraduates at a western Canadian university (N?=?236; 119 women) completed a self-report questionnaire. As predicted, role salience and expectations were positively correlated with intentions. Internalization of expressive/feminine traits, but not instrumental/masculine traits, was positively correlated with all three parenting variables, although gender moderated this relation. While femininity was unrelated to the expectations of women, men possessing more expressive traits held more positive views than their less expressive male counterparts. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of the parental roles anticipated by young women and men.