Stress and coping in the practice of family therapy: a British survey

A sample of 171 members of the Association for Family Therapy (UK) was surveyed and data obtained on their general level of experienced stress, the sources and levels of experienced stresses they encountered in their practica, and the professional and private coping strategies they used to mitigate the effects of these stressors. The results indicate that stress can be experienced in all practice contexts, with important factors in its overall configuration being personal/professional worth and agency expectation. Family therapists appear to prefer coping strategies of a more social nature and there is an ambivalent attitude towards'therapy for therapists'.     

Remembering the levels of information in words

The qualitative nature of the incidental memory trace produced by perceptual and conceptual processing within a speeded inference task was examined. Performance on recall and auditory recognition tests replicated the general finding that semantic processing leads to better retention of words than does nonsemantic processing. This pattern of results was reversed on a visual recognition test designed to measure the amount of perceptual information remembered. These data suggest that different types of processing result in different aspects of the stimulus being encoded, with conceptual processing resulting primarily in the encoding of semantic information and perceptual processing resulting primarily in the encoding of physical information. Thus, the effectiveness of a particular kind of processing for good memory performance depends on the kind of information being tested.     

Training children's self-control: A field experiment in self-monitoring and goal-setting in the classroom

A field experiment investigated the effects of training in self-monitoring and goal-setting skills on classroom study behavior and academic achievement among elementary school students in an individualized mathematics program. In the Self-Monitoring Conditions, students were shown a simple system for observing and maintaining daily records of their own study behavior during their math classes; orthogonally, in the Goal-Setting Conditions, students were shown a simple method of setting and recording daily performance goals during their math classes. Exposure to self-monitoring procedures produced significant increases in both appropriate study behavior and in actual achievement in the mathematics program, while exposure to goal-setting procedures had no effect on either study behavior or academic achievement. Nor, contrary to expectation, did exposure to the goal-setting instructions enhance the effectiveness of the self-monitoring system. The implications of these results in terms of implicit and explicit models of self-reinforcement processes were discussed.     

Attitudinal qualities relating to the strength of the attitude-behavior relationship

A study was conducted to examine the relation between each of several attitudinal qualities and attitude-behavior consistency. Subjects' attitudes toward volunterring to participate in psychological research were assessed. The number of experiments in which each subject volunteered to participate was employed as the measure of behavior. Attitude-behavior consistency was significantly related to (1) the amount of direct experience upon which the subject's attitude was based (specifically, the number of experiments in which the subject had previously participated), (2) the degree of certainty with which the attitude was held, and (3) how well-defined the subject's attitude was, as measured by the width of his latitude of rejection. These three attitudinal qualities were significantly intercorrelated, suggesting that direct experience with an attitude object may produce an attitude that is both better defined and more confidently held than an attitude formed through more indirect means.     

Behavioral self-control in classroom settings: A review of the literature

Reviews the research on the use of behavioral self-control procedures with students in classroom settings. Thirteen published articles are reviewed. The three student classroom behaviors of on-task behavior, disruptive behavior, and academic behavior are considered. The use of behavioral self-control procedures appears promising with on-task and academic behaviors and inconclusive with disruptive behavior. The reviewed studies were weak regarding follow-up analyses and controlling for student prior experience with external contigency programs. Further research with behavioral self-control in different settings seems warranted.