Therapeutic Action in the Work of a Playful Clinician: A Reflection on Dr. Silber’s Reimagining of Humpty Dumpty

ABSTRACT

In my discussion of Dr. Silber’s paper, Reimagining Humpty Dumpty: The Therapeutic Action of Play, I mirror Dr. Silber’s playful posture in her use of the Humpty Dumpty fable to talk about children and their care by society. My reflections on Dr. Silber’s therapeutic work with her two young patients focus on her co-creating meaning with each child’s parents as well as with the child. I discuss that by holding in her mind both the subjectivities of the child and his parents, Dr. Silber is able to practice a fundamentally relational therapy. I would have liked to have heard more about her emotional reactions in her work with both cases as another important dimension of her work. Finally, I emphasize through my play with Humpty Dumpty several ways that society can support children and families that are essential for their development: parental leave, developmentally approptiate expectations for children in school, and the facilitation and protection children’s open ended time and ability to play.     

Representation of memory for order of mental operations in cognitive tasks

Recent research shows that people learning a cognitive task acquire a memory for the order of operations applied, independent of the data to which those operations were applied. We designed two experiments to show how this sequence memory is represented. Experiment 1 compared predictions based on 3 possible sequence representation methods: composition, dyad transition, and associative chain. Latency and error results from a simple sequential task supported the associative chain representation. The associative links between operations presumably enhance performance by priming subsequent operations but do not operate in an all-or-none fashion. Experiment 2 explored whether transfer items that matched the first 2 rules and first 3 elements of a training item could bias participants toward executing a composed production learned during training. Latency and undetected error results were consistent with an associative chain representation but not with additional predictions made by the composition representation. These two experiments support the representation of operation sequences in memory as an associative chain.     

From egocentric to exocentric spatial orientation: development of posture control in bimanual and trunk inclination tasks

The authors investigated the emergence of independent control of body segments in bimanual tasks involving either voluntary or involuntary trunk motion by tracking the transition from an ego- to an exocentric mode of postural control during childhood (i.e., from body-referenced orientation to externally referenced action). A paradigm combining a seated manual task and various trunk manipulations described the coordination strategies used by 24 children at different ages (2 to 9 years) and by adults. The following questions were asked: (a) When do children begin to dissociate upper limb movements from those of the trunk? (b) What segmental strategies are exhibited by each age group (2-3, 4-6, and 7-9 years, and adults)? Kinematic analyses revealed that younger children (2-6 years) used either the trunk or the support surface as reference to orient the limbs. Older children (7-9 years) began to use a gravitational reference frame similar to that of adults; they uncoupled upper limb motion from the trunk in either voluntary or imposed conditions. Young children patterned the forearm trajectory after the initiating segment (support surface or the trunk), thus reducing the degrees of freedom during the dual task. Echoing previous reports, 7-9 years of age appears to be a critical period in which children master postural control and develop an internal representation of body scheme.     

Sensory discrimination and intelligence: testing Spearman's other hypothesis

At the centenary of Spearman's seminal 1904 article, his general intelligence hypothesis remains one of the most influential in psychology. Less well known is the article's other hypothesis that there is "a correspondence between what may provisionally be called 'General Discrimination' and 'General Intelligence' which works out with great approximation to one or absoluteness" (Spearman, 1904, p. 284). Studies that do not find high correlations between psychometric intelligence and single sensory discrimination tests do not falsify this hypothesis. This study is the first directly to address Spearman's general intelligence-general sensory discrimination hypothesis. It attempts to replicate his findings with a similar sample of schoolchildren. In a well-fitting structural equation model of the data, general intelligence and general discrimination correlated .92. In a reanalysis of data published byActon and Schroeder (2001), general intelligence and general sensory ability correlated .68 in men and women. One hundred years after its conception, Spearman's other hypothesis achieves some confirmation. The association between general intelligence and general sensory ability remains to be replicated and explained.     

Concurrent validity of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Third Edition as an intelligence and achievement screener for low SES African American children

Authors tested the validity of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Third Edition (PPVT-III) as a screening measure for intelligence and achievement. The PPVT-III and Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (KABC) were administered to 416 African American children of low socioeconomic status in a counterbalanced design. Results indicated that the PPVT-III correlated .58 with the KABC Mental Processing Composite (MPC) score; however, participants scored significantly lower (M = 8.3 points) on the PPVT-III than on the MPC. Although receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analyses supported the use of the PPVT-III as a valid intellectual and achievement screener, the selection of a single cutoff score for the PPVT-III was problematic. The purpose of the screening program should guide selection of a cutoff score for the PPVT-III.     

Equivalent irrelevant-sound effects for old and young adults

Three experiments are reported in which a total of 182 old and 193 young adults recalled sequences of digits presented visually in silence or accompanied by office noise. In each experiment, an effect of irrelevant sound was found-that is, a reduction of serial recall due to auditory distraction. Old adults exhibited poorer serial recall than did young adults, but the irrelevant-sound effect was equivalent in both age groups. This was true even though the sound level of the irrelevant sound was adjusted to each individual's hearing capability, and the effect remained whether or not the difficulty of the serial recall task was equated across age groups. These results are problematic for the inhibitory deficit theory of cognitive aging, which predicts that old adults should be more susceptible to auditory distraction than are young adults.     

Race and Ethnicity: An 11‐Year Content Analysis of Counseling and Values

Using the Dimensions of Personal Identity Model proposed by Arredondo and Glauner (as cited in Arredondo et al., 1996 ), the authors reviewed the last 11 years of the Association for Spiritual, Ethical, and Religious Values in Counseling's journal, Counseling and Values, specifically regarding the “A” dimensions of race and ethnicity. Twenty‐five of the 235 articles reviewed (11%) contained a multicultural perspective defined in these terms. Other aspects of cultural inclusion, such as authorship and type of study, were also considered.     

The Attentional Focus of Expert Golfers in Training and Competition: A Naturalistic Investigation

This study explored the attentional focus of expert golfers using a naturalistic approach. Eight male professional golfers were filmed in two contexts (training and competition). Self-confrontation interviews based on the video were conducted immediately afterwards. Qualitative data analyses showed that golfers used various attentional foci. Foci were classified according to their content and their characteristics. Golfers adapted their attentional foci to the context. They used sequences of attentional foci and moved from one attentional focus to another when they prepared, executed, or evaluated their shot. Future research on attentional focus of expert athletes should study the phenomenon over time.