Traumatic Attachments and Self-Harm Behaviors

Abstract

Work and the structure it affords is one of the most important vehicles for the expression of worth in our society. With so much invested in the external world of position and achievement, threats to job security pose fundamental challenges to individual identity. Recent upheavals in the workplacedownsizings, early retirements, and corporate reorganizationshave shaken the psychological equilibrium of many of our clients, giving rise to feelings of despair and hopelessness. When disruptive and unwanted changes occur later in life, they become additionally tinged with latent concerns about aging and finding meaning as a mature adult.     

The Social and Personal Identities Scale: A Measure of the Differential Importance Ascribed to Social and Personal Self-Categorizations

A new measure sensitive to differences in the importance that people ascribe to their social (group) and personal identities is described. The Social and Personal Identities (SIPI) scale distinguishes between the interpersonal level of self which differentiates the individual as unique from others, and the social identity level of self whereby the individual is identified by his or her group memberships. In contrast to perspectives that emphasize the context-dependence of self-conception, our measure was designed to capture individual differences in participants' readiness to categorize themselves using group and personal self-categories as measured by the degree of importance or centrality assigned to each. Factor and reliability analyses support the scale's stability as a two-factor structure with high internal consistency, and these factors are modestly correlated. Results from six studies substantiate the scale's criterion and construct validity.     

Gamelike features might not improve data

Many psychological experiments require participants to complete lots of trials in a monotonous task, which often induces boredom. An increasingly popular approach to alleviate such boredom is to incorporate gamelike features into standard experimental tasks. Games are assumed to be interesting and, hence, motivating, and better motivated participants might produce better data (with fewer lapses in attention and greater accuracy). Despite its apparent prevalence, the assumption that gamelike features improve data is almost completely untested. We test this assumption by presenting a choice task and a change detection task in both gamelike and standard forms. Response latency, accuracy, and overall task performance were unchanged by gamelike features in both experiments. We present a novel cognitive model for the choice task, based on particle filtering, to decorrelate the dependent variables and measure performance in a more psychologically meaningful manner. The model-based analyses are consistent with the hypothesis that gamelike features did not alter cognition. A postexperimental questionnaire indicated that the gamelike version provided a more positive and enjoyable experience for participants than the standard task, even though this subjective experience did not translate into data effects. Although our results hold only for the two experiments examined, the gamelike features we incorporated into both tasks were typical of—and at least as salient and interesting as those usually used by—experimental psychologists. Our results suggest that modifying an experiment to include gamelike features, while leaving the basic task unchanged, may not improve the quality of the data collected, but it may provide participants with a better experimental experience.     

Natural language processing in an intelligent writing strategy tutoring system

The Writing Pal is an intelligent tutoring system that provides writing strategy training. A large part of its artificial intelligence resides in the natural language processing algorithms to assess essay quality and guide feedback to students. Because writing is often highly nuanced and subjective, the development of these algorithms must consider a broad array of linguistic, rhetorical, and contextual features. This study assesses the potential for computational indices to predict human ratings of essay quality. Past studies have demonstrated that linguistic indices related to lexical diversity, word frequency, and syntactic complexity are significant predictors of human judgments of essay quality but that indices of cohesion are not. The present study extends prior work by including a larger data sample and an expanded set of indices to assess new lexical, syntactic, cohesion, rhetorical, and reading ease indices. Three models were assessed. The model reported by McNamara, Crossley, and McCarthy (Written Communication 27:57-86, 2010) including three indices of lexical diversity, word frequency, and syntactic complexity accounted for only 6 % of the variance in the larger data set. A regression model including the full set of indices examined in prior studies of writing predicted 38 % of the variance in human scores of essay quality with 91 % adjacent accuracy (i.e., within 1 point). A regression model that also included new indices related to rhetoric and cohesion predicted 44 % of the variance with 94 % adjacent accuracy. The new indices increased accuracy but, more importantly, afford the means to provide more meaningful feedback in the context of a writing tutoring system.     

A Comparison of Two Flashcard Interventions for Teaching Sight Words to Early Readers

Strategic Incremental Rehearsal (SIR) is a recently developed flashcard intervention that blends Traditional Drill with Incremental Rehearsal (IR) for teaching sight words. The initial study evaluating SIR found it was more effective than IR for teaching sight words to first-grade students. However, that study failed to assess efficiency, which is important to consider when evaluating and selecting interventions. Therefore, the current study evaluated both the efficiency and effectiveness of SIR compared with IR for teaching sight words to 4 general education students (3 in second grade and 1 in first grade) who were enrolled in 1 of 2 schools. An alternating treatments single-case design was used to compare the effects of SIR and IR interventions implemented 4 days per week across 4 or 5 weeks. Students’ accuracy with words that were introduced during the week was assessed on Fridays, and maintenance of these words was assessed the following Friday. Results indicated that both interventions were effective for teaching students sight words, but that SIR was slightly more effective and efficient than IR for 3 of the 4 students. Findings have implications for the selection of flashcard interventions for teaching sight word vocabulary to early elementary students.     

Psychometric Evaluation of the Spanish Versions of the Perceived Religious Influence on Health Behavior Scale and the Illness as Punishment for Sin Scale in a Sample of Churchgoing Latinas

The present study evaluated the psychometric properties of the Spanish versions of the Perceived Religious Influence on Health Behavior scale and the Illness as Punishment for Sin scale in a sample of churchgoing Latina women (N = 404). For the Perceived Religious Influence on Health Behavior scale, confirmatory factor analysis provided support for the expected one-factor model, internal consistency reliability was good, and there was evidence of convergent validity. For the Illness as Punishment for Sin scale, confirmatory factor analysis provided support for the expected one-factor model, but on a revised seven-item version of the measure. Internal consistency reliability and convergent validity for this revised version were good. It is recommended that future studies use the Perceived Religious Influence on Health Behavior scale and the revised Illness as Punishment for Sin scale when examining these constructs among Latina women.     

Notes for New Therapists

In this article, we draw on our experiences as therapists and supervisors to highlight the errors new clinicians tend to make and how they can be avoided. A critical issue is how to approach the client's narrative. We propose a stance of “respectful skepticism,” in which the factors that shape the client's truth can best be appreciated. This represents a middle way between gullible listener and prosecuting attorney. We also discuss common problems with client motivation, as well as the changing role of feelings in therapy, the importance of the therapeutic contract, the high cost of defensiveness, the concept of conversational domains, and the advantages of avoiding therapeutic platitudes, explanatory fictions, and jargon.     

Psychology out of the laboratory: the challenge of violent extremism

The idea that people inevitably act in accordance with their self-interest on the basis of a calculation of costs and benefits does not constitute an adequate framework for understanding political acts of violence and self-sacrifice. Recent research suggests that a better understanding is needed of how sacred values and notions of self and group identity lead people to act in terms of principles rather than prospects when the two come into conflict. Perhaps the greatest challenge is to better understand how sacred causes and moral imperatives diffuse through a population and motivate some (usually small) segment of it to commit violent actions. The challenge to psychology is to adopt an interdisciplinary focus drawing on a range of research methods and to become bolder in its choices of study populations if it is to be relevant to real-world problems.     

Ecological momentary assessment of bulimia nervosa: Does dietary restriction predict binge eating?

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between caloric restriction (CR) and binge eating (BE) using ecological momentary assessment (EMA). Participants included 133 women with bulimia nervosa (BN) who completed an EMA protocol for 2 weeks. Logistic regression analyses tested whether CR increased the probability of BE episodes. The results revealed that the odds of BE increased on the day that restriction occurred as well as on the following day. In addition, both restriction and BE on one day predicted the likelihood of BE the subsequent day, but restriction for two days prior to the episode failed to add additional information for predicting BE. These findings support the cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) model of BN, suggesting that self-reported dietary restriction is predictive of subsequent BE episodes, and that reducing dietary restriction in treatment may lead to improvements in bulimic symptoms.     

Group cognitive-behavioral therapy for hoarding disorder: an open trial

Although cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) appears to be a promising treatment approach for hoarding disorder, treatment to date has been quite labor intensive. The goal of this study, therefore, was to assess the potential effectiveness of group CBT for hoarding, without home visits by the clinician. Forty-five individuals with hoarding disorder enrolled in either a 16 or 20 session program of group CBT; 30 (67%) completed treatment. Using mixed-effects models to account for missing data, we report data from 35 (78%) participants who provided enough data for analysis. Participants demonstrated significant improvements in hoarding symptoms, as well as symptoms of depression and anxiety, and quality of life. Improvements in hoarding symptoms were comparable to two published clinical trials on individual CBT for hoarding disorder. Results of this study suggest that group CBT for hoarding, without home discarding sessions by the clinician, may be an effective treatment option with the potential advantage of increasing treatment access by reducing clinician burden and cost of treatment.