Teenagers' attitudes about seeking help from telephone crisis services (hotlines)

The purpose of this study was to examine the attitudes toward the use of telephone crisis services (hotlines) among 519 adolescents in 9th through 12th grade mandatory health courses in six high schools in New York State. Few adolescents (2.1%) used hotlines and negative attitudes were stronger toward hotlines than they were toward other formal sources of help. The most common reasons for hotline nonuse related to feelings of self-reliance and shame. Objections to hotlines were strongest among students most in need of help by virtue of impaired functioning or feelings of hopelessness. The results underscore needed outreach efforts to youth.     

Grief Therapy and the Reconstruction of Meaning: From Principles to Practice

Viewed from a constructivist perspective, grieving is a process of reconstructing a world of meaning that has been challenged by loss. Although most people successfully navigate bereavement and retain or return to pre-loss levels of functioning, a significant proportion struggle with protracted grief, and are unable to find meaning in the wake of an unsought transition. For these individuals, constructivist therapists have a number of strategies at their disposal that foster meaning making and help clients reestablish a coherent self-narrative that integrates the loss, while also permitting their life story to move forward along new lines. After reviewing theory and evidence that scaffolds this constructivist conceptualization, this article draws on excerpts of therapy with two bereaved clients to illustrate how narrative retelling, therapeutic writing, a focus on metaphorical language, and the use of visualization can all be viable strategies in helping individuals reconstruct meaning in the wake of bereavement.     

The Role of Sketching States in the Stimulation of Idea Generation: An Eye Movement Study

Sketching is widely used in design to generate creative ideas. Design studies present stimuli during sketching to enhance creativity. This study examines the effect of stimuli presented during different sketching states, especially of those presented during the stuck period. It conducted a sketching experiment that enrolled 41 students with an average of 5.7 years’ practice in industrial design. The sketching with stimuli presented at regular intervals, those with stimuli presented during the stuck period, and those without stimulus were compared. Eye movements during the sketching processes were recorded. The attention to stimuli, and the direct applications of stimuli to design ideas, and the idea connection and idea differentiation were analyzed. Participants sketching with stimuli presented during the stuck period had a higher sketching quality, compared with those in other experimental conditions. They fixated longer on stimuli, built more links among related ideas, and had a more differentiated and balanced exploration. This study then proposed the mechanisms of stimuli processing. The stimuli presented at regular intervals were stored and acted as additional memory. The stimuli presented during the stuck period were dissected and acted as supporter, inducing a more creative sketching.     

A Program Intervention for Pediatric Bipolar Disorder: Preliminary Results

The effectiveness of a behaviorally based day treatment program for young children diagnosed with Pediatric Bipolar Disorder (PBD) was evaluated using pretreatment and posttreatment mean scores from the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). Data were evaluated in aggregate and using the clinically significant change method for children diagnosed with PBD, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), Adjustment Disorder, and no diagnosis/clinical and subclinical groups. Significant effects were found for all groups except the no diagnosis/subclinical group on the Internalizing scale and for all groups on the Externalizing scale. Clinically significant change was supported for the PBD, ADHD, ODD, and Adjustment Disorder groups. Implications and limitations of the study are discussed.     

Memory Outcome After Pediatric Epilepsy Surgery: Objective and Subjective Perspectives

Memory was investigated in 27 children and adolescents in a longitudinal study before and at one and two years after epilepsy surgery. A comparison group with intractable epilepsy (n = 15), matched in age, sex, age of seizure onset, and IQ, was studied at comparable points in time. Methods included administration of standardized measures of story recall and face recognition, and qualitative interviews to probe the participants’ perceptions of their memory function over time. There was no significant change over time in either group on the standardized measures. Site and laterality of excision, age at surgery, and seizure outcome were not predictive of change within the surgical group. The narratives revealed facets of memory that were problematic in daily life. The objective and subjective results showed low concordance regarding change, possibly due to limitations in the objective measures for capturing semantic and autobiographical memory.     

Gender differences in type a behavior and hostility within an organizational setting

Abstract

Recent investigations suggest that the hostility component of the Type A behavior patter (TABP) is a greater detriment to health than the overall pattern. Some researchers suggest that certain Type A characteristics (e.g., job-involvement) are actually adaptive. This study compared the relative relationship of the TABP and hostility to career-related achievement and psychosocial adjustment among 223 service-delivery employees. Male and female participants completed the Jenkins Activity Survey and the MMPI Hostility Scale as part of a cardiovascular disease risk factor screening. The TABP was positively associated with managerial status for both men and women. However, the TABP was positively related to psychosocial adjustment variables among men only. Hostility was significantly related to undesirable outcomes including lower job status, life dissatisfaction, and unfavorable perceptions of the workplace for both men and women. Discussion addresses organizational factors which might perpetuate hostility and the TABP, as well as gender differences in the experience of these constructs.     

Learning and Recall of Story Content and Spatial Location After Unilateral Temporal-Lobe Excision in Children and Adolescents

The present study examined verbal and spatial learning and memory in children and adolescents who had undergone unilateral temporal lobectomy versus controls. All participants were trained to criterion before a delay to assess learning efficiency. There were no significant differences between the groups in rate of learning the verbal task. The right temporal-lobe group, but not the left, had difficulty learning spatial information. These findings indicate a specific effect of early right temporal-lobe lesions on spatial learning. As material-specificity is more often found in adults for verbal information, the present results highlight the unique role of the temporal-lobe in development.     

Demonstration and interpretation of ‘scutoid’ cells formed in a quasi-2D soap froth

ABSTRACT

Recently a novel type of epithelial cell has been discovered and dubbed the ‘scutoid’. It is induced by curvature of the bounding surfaces. We show by simulations and experiments that such cells are to be found in a dry foam subjected to this boundary condition.