“Hello,can you hear me?”: Narratives of online mental health counselling among Filipino adults during the pandemic

Filipinos are often reluctant to seek professional mental health (MH) help. However, literature reveals that online counselling is preferable to face-to-face (F2F) MH services, with the pandemic possibly magnifying technology's anonymity and disinhibiting benefits. To further explore facilitators of online MH help-seeking, this study tapped into the lived stories of Filipino adults who experienced at least one counselling session from March 2020 to March 2022. Among 83 screened respondents, 11 semistructured interviews were transcribed and analysed following Crossley's (2000) method. Findings reveal an overarching online MH counselling narrative composed of three phases and their respective events: (a) Precounselling (Resiliency Narrative versus MH Awareness, Turning Point, and Linking versus Searching); (b) Counselling (Two-way Introduction, Unloading and Untangling, and Decision to Maintain or Terminate); and (c) Postcounselling (Relapse and Journey towards Growth and Advocacy). Three all-encompassing facilitators were embedded throughout the process: Autonomy, Financial Capability, and MH Institutions. Notably, participants attributed their MH help-seeking to autonomy, despite culture and stigma, because of enabling environments that entail heightened MH literacy, positive past experiences with professional MH help, social support and encouragement, and a sense of shared reality. Benefits unique to online counselling were also apparent among participants' narratives, including alleviating geographical boundaries and added financial and personal pressures. Overall, findings posit that Filipino adults consider online counselling as a preferable alternative to F2F counselling, thus necessitating further development and institutional support.     

Musicians' working memory for tones, words, and pseudowords

Studies investigating factors that influence tone recognition generally use recognition tests, whereas the majority of the studies on verbal material use self-generated responses in the form of serial recall tests. In the present study we intended to investigate whether tonal and verbal materials share the same cognitive mechanisms, by presenting an experimental instrument that evaluates short-term and working memories for tones, using self-generated sung responses that may be compared to verbal tests. This paradigm was designed according to the same structure of the forward and backward digit span tests, but using digits, pseudowords, and tones as stimuli. The profile of amateur singers and professional singers in these tests was compared in forward and backward digit, pseudoword, tone, and contour spans. In addition, an absolute pitch experimental group was included, in order to observe the possible use of verbal labels in tone memorization tasks. In general, we observed that musical schooling has a slight positive influence on the recall of tones, as opposed to verbal material, which is not influenced by musical schooling. Furthermore, the ability to reproduce melodic contours (up and down patterns) is generally higher than the ability to reproduce exact tone sequences. However, backward spans were lower than forward spans for all stimuli (digits, pseudowords, tones, contour). Curiously, backward spans were disproportionately lower for tones than for verbal material-that is, the requirement to recall sequences in backward rather than forward order seems to differentially affect tonal stimuli. This difference does not vary according to musical expertise.     

The relationship of clinical, cognitive and social measures in schizophrenia: a preliminary finding combining measures in probands and relatives

This study examines performance of schizophrenia patients, unaffected relatives and controls in social cognition, cognitive and psychiatric scales looking for possible markers of vulnerability in schizophrenia. Performance of schizophrenia patients from multiplex families, first-degree relatives, and matched controls was compared and, subsequently, discriminant analysis method was used for identifying the best predictors for group membership. By using Multigroup Discriminant Analyses on the three groups, the best predictors were PANSS, Premorbid Adjustment Scale, Faux Pas test, and a face/emotion categorizing task. This model obtained 82% correct global classification, suggesting that the combination of psychiatric scales and neuropsychological/social cognition tasks are the best approach for characterizing this disease. Although preliminary, our results suggest that social cognition tasks are robust markers of schizophrenia family impairments, and that combining clinical, social and neuropsychological measures is the best approach to asses patients and relatives vulnerability.     

Prospective relations among preschoolers' play,coping, and adjustment as moderated by stressful events

This study evaluated the prospective contribution of preschoolers' pretend play to observer reports of internalizing and externalizing behavior problems one year later, as mediated by observed coping flexibility during a delay of gratification task and as moderated by children's exposure to stressful life events. Preschoolers' (N = 250; M_age = 49.05 months, SD = 2.95; 50% female) fantasy and affect expression in pretend play were assessed during a laboratory visit. Moderated mediation models tested for conditional indirect effects of play fantasy and affect expression on behavior problems through coping flexibility as a function of the child's exposure to stress. Preschoolers' fantasy and negative affect expression in pretend play predicted lower rates of internalizing, but not externalizing, problems. Coping flexibility partially mediated this relation, particularly among children with relatively more life stress. These findings clarify processes by which, and contexts within which, preschoolers' pretend play influences later behavioral adjustment.     

An Integrated Model for the Study of Teacher Motivation

Des recherches récentes ont montré que les enseignants souffraient plus que d’autres groupes professionnels d’un manque de motivation au travail. Une compréhension globale de la motivation des enseignants exige un modèle adéquat. L’objectif principal de cette recherche était de proposer et de mettre à l’épreuve un modèle de la motivation des enseignants qui intégre des concepts de plusieurs théories cognitivo‐motivationelles. Le modèle intégré s’appuie sur la schéma expectation‐valence et celui de l’incapacité acquise, mais surmonte quelques‐unes de leurs imperfections. L’échantillon était composé de 272 enseignants des écoles élémentaires et secondaires du Portugal. Ils ont répondu à une série d’inventaires destinés à mesurer leurs expectations de contrôle, de succès et d’efficacité, leurs attributions, leur motivation intrinsèque, la valence de leurs buts perçus et comment tout ceci interagit pout agir sur l’engagement professionnel (la variable exogène du modèle). Les analyses des coefficients de pistes et de la variance des variables endogènes valident le modèle intégré proposé ici et suggèrent des stratégies de formation pour accroître la motivation des enseignants. Recent studies show that teachers suffer more than other professional groups from the occupational lack of motivation. A global understanding of teacher motivation requires an adequate framework for its study. The main goal of the current research was to propose and test a model of teacher motivation that integrates constructs from several cognitive‐motivational theories. This integrative model starts from the perspectives of Expectancy‐Value and Learned Helplessness but overcomes some of the limitations of each. The participants were 272 elementary and secondary teachers in Portugal. They responded to a series of inventories designed to measure their expectancies of control, success and efficacy, attributions, intrinsic motivation and perceived goal value levels, and how these interact to influence professional engagement (the model's exogenous variable). Analyses of path coefficients and the variance of endogenous variables support the proposed integrated model and suggest strategies for teacher education that may increase teacher motivation.     

Learning Behavioral Repertoires with Different Consequences Hinders the Interconnection of These Repertoires in Pigeons in the Box Displacement Test

The Psychological Record - The interconnection of repertoires is a behavioral process related to problem solving and creativity. Experiments on this topic have mostly used a single reinforcer type...     

Equivalence relations do exist before they are tested: Confirmatory evidence revealed by EEG measurements

We examined equivalence-based N400 effects by comparing EEG data from participants with different experiences with equivalence testing. Before a priming task used in EEG measurement, Group 1 was given only matching-to-sample training trials whereas Group 2 was exposed to matching-to-sample training and equivalence probe trials. We asked whether exposure to the reinforcement contingency was sufficient to bring about an N400 outcome that might indicate potentially emergent equivalence relations or if such a response depended on experience with equivalence tests. Results showed robust N400 in both groups. Experience with equivalence tests did not further increase the N400 effects. Our findings add confirmatory evidence that equivalence relations may originate via the reinforcement contingency alone. Furthermore, complementary EEG data collected from priming tasks involving words from natural language showed functional overlap between laboratory-defined equivalence and natural word-based N400 effects.