Parental Perceptions of Services Provided for Children with Autism in Jordan

Providing formal support for children with autism and their parents is important and mandatory to improve children’s abilities and enhance the capabilities of parents. The present study attempted to investigate the perceptions of parents of children with autism regarding the services provided in Jordan. A questionnaire consisting of five sections was designed and distributed to a sample of 60 parents of children with autism (5–18 years old) among four special education institutions in Jordan. The questionnaire addressed five domains: demographics, type and number of received services, methods and difficulties of obtaining services, parents’ satisfaction, and parents’ perceived needed services. The results revealed that the service delivery system with which parents interacted was composed of multiple places and providers, but had several difficulties. Parents participating in this study expressed an average satisfaction with the received services. Issues pertaining to the cost of services, parents-professional partnerships, and overall quality of services were seen by parents as sources of low satisfaction. On the other hand, parents expressed the need for early intervention, family counseling, and community awareness services. Further suggestions and implications are presented in the study.     

Self‐Monitoring and Counseling Skills: Skills‐Based Versus Interpersonal Process Recall Training

The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of personality traits of counselors‐in‐training with regard to counseling performance. There were no differences in pretest or posttest scores on the Skilled Counseling Scale (SCS) of high and low self‐monitoring counselors‐in‐training. Skill attainment may have more effect on personality traits than traits have on skill attainment. Both Interpersonal Process Recall (IPR) and Skilled Counselor Training Model (SCTM) groups improved their scores on the SCS, but the SCTM group improved significantly more than the IPR group.     

Four‐model approach to adolescent–parent attachment relationships and adolescents' loneliness,school belonging,and teacher appraisal

This study tested monotropy, hierarchy, independence, and integration conceptual models of adolescent–mother and adolescent–father attachment to explain adolescents' perceived social interrelationships with extrafamilial attachment figures (peers, teachers). Participants included 356 Israeli adolescents (12–15 years). More adolescents were significantly classified as securely attached to mothers than to fathers, but high concordances emerged. Results supported two of the attachment models, hierarchy and integration, as explaining variation in adolescents' perceived extrafamilial interrelationships. As per the hierarchy attachment model, adolescent–mother attachment outweighed adolescent–father attachment to some extent in predicting adolescents' perceived social interrelationship measures. As per the integration attachment model, significant differences emerged on most social interrelationship measures between the 4 distinct subgroups: secure attachment to both parents, neither, only father, only mother. The Discussion section focuses on the unique importance of attachment to each parent for typically developing junior high students.     

Facial averageness and attractiveness in an isolated population of hunter-gatherers

Average faces possess traits that are common to a population. Preferences for averageness have been found in several types of study of both real and computer-manipulated faces. Such preferences have been proposed to be biologically based and thus should be found across human populations, though cross-cultural evidence to date has been limited. In this study we examined preferences for averageness in both the West and in an isolated hunter-gatherer society, the Hadza of Northern Tanzania in Africa. We show that averageness is generally preferred across faces and cultures, but there were no significant preferences for averageness in European faces by Hadza judges. The different visual experience of the two cultures may explain the differences in preferences. While Westerners have visual experience of both European and African faces, the Hadza are limited in their experience of European faces, potentially leading to a lack of preference for averageness in this group because of the lack of a representation of the 'norm' of European faces.     

Main and interaction effects of metallic toxins on aggressive classroom behavior

The present study investigated possible relationships of metal levels and metal combinations to children's aggressive classroom behavior. Hair-metal concentrations of lead, arsenic, mercury, cadmium, and aluminum were determined in 80 randomly selected elementary-age children. Each child was also rated by his classroom teacher on the acting-out subscale of the Walker Problem Behavior Identification Checklist. Parents of subjects were interviewed to control for confounding variables that may affect behavioral development. Regression data indicated that the set of metals was significantly related to increased scores on the acting-out subscale (P < 0.07) with lead being the major contributor (P < 0.05), and the metal combinations were also significantly related to increased acting-out scores (P < 0.01) with the interaction of lead-cadmium being the major contributor (P < 0.001). A continuing reexamination of metal-poisoning concentrations is needed, because metal levels and metal combinations previously thought harmless may be associated with aggressive classroom behavior.     

WHEN THINKING HESITATES: PHILOSOPHY AS PROSTHESIS AND TRANSFORMATIVE VISION

In this essay, I draw on Henri Bergson and Maurice Merleau‐Ponty to interrogate what philosophy is and how it can continue to think. Though my answer is not reducible to the views of either philosopher, what joins them is an attempt to elaborate philosophy as a different way of seeing. In this light, I propose a view of philosophy as prosthesis—as a means and a way for seeing differently. Rather than a simple tool, philosophy as prosthesis is a transformative supplement, one that our bodily perception calls for and wherein that perception is recast. Rather than a fixed or assured view, this prosthesis holds open the interval in which thinking can take place. Philosophy, I argue, must wait. It sees and thinks hesitatingly, for the temporality it inscribes is not a foreseeable development but the unfolding of life as tendency, as that which creates its own possibility as it comes into existence.     

Medical Family Therapy in a Primary Care Setting: A Framework for Integration

As the profession of marriage and family therapy (MFT), as well as the emerging sub-specialty of medical family therapy (MedFT), continue to grow and evolve within the current healthcare system, the arena of integrated primary care (IPC) presents an ideal environment for professionals who are relationally and systemically inclined. Although there has been a inundation of literature detailing collaborative systems of healthcare, several gaps still exist: (a) a lack of horizontally integrated models (i.e., models that do not target specific diseases or demographic populations), (b) a lack of model utilization regardless of disease trajectory (i.e., decline, stabilization, improvement), and (c) a lack of IPC models explicitly utilizing MedFT/MFTs as the mental health providers within the system. In lieu of these gaps, the authors present a framework for IPC, utilizing MedFTs/MFTs, that is neither population nor disease specific, as well as a model geared towards implementation regardless of disease trajectory. The framework, which was obtained using ethnography of communication, details MedFTs?? interactions with front line medical providers and patients from initial contact through coordination of a shared treatment plan. Recommendations for future research studies incorporating the use of MedFTs in integrated primary care settings are extended in the context of a three world view framework (Peek in Collaborative medicine case studies: Evidence in practice. Springer, New York, pp 25?C38, 2008; Peek and Heinrich in Family Syst Med 13:327?C342, 1995, Integrated primary care: the future of medical and mental health collaboration. Norton, New York, pp 167?C202, 1998).     

Neuropsychological Functioning and Recall of Research Consent Information Among Drug Court Clients

Evidence suggests that research participants often fail to recall much of the information provided during the informed consent process. This study was conducted to determine the proportion of consent information recalled by drug court participants following a structured informed consent procedure and the neuropsychological factors that were related to recall. Eighty-five participants completed a standard informed consent procedure to participate in an ongoing research study, followed by a 17-item consent quiz and a brief neuropsychological battery 2 weeks later. Participants performed within the normal range on most of the neuropsychological measures, although roughly one third showed deficits on measures of executive functioning. Participants failed to recall over 65% of the consent information within 2 weeks of entering the study, and their recall was significantly correlated with verbal IQ, drug problem severity, reading ability, memory, and attention. These factors may be useful in determining whether research participants require enhanced consent procedures.