Teaching Sizeism: Integrating Size into Multicultural Education and Clinical Training

Abstract

Multicultural education, training, and practice have traditionally focused primarily on race/ethnicity with gradual inclusion of gender, sexual orientation, social class, and age. Issues of size, which intersects with racism, sexism, and classism, have been notably absent from diversity discussions. Psychologists have typically framed size issues around obesity and adopted a medicalized, individualized perspective that belies data that show traditional approaches to weight management, such as dieting and exercise, are largely ineffective and non-maintainable. Here, we offer a rationale for including body size as an issue relevant to a multicultural curriculum. Strategies for training psychologists and therapists are delineated.     

Fascinating Womanhood as a Regression in the Emotional Maturation of Women

"Fascinating womanhood" (Andelin, 1974) is explored as a response to anxiety generated by awareness of the potential for experiencing the self as a separate, responsible person. Such a response represents regression and offers only temporary reprieval from personal and/or marital distress. Clinical experiences are related to this concept; observations suggest that the solution formalized by Andelin is unsatisfactory.
A therapeutic approach that can be utilized in encouraging optimal individuation is discussed, with group, marital, and individual therapy examples. A sequence of predictable responses to therapeutic confrontation has been identified, along with indicators for evaluating progress or retreat from the process. Precautions in the use of this approach are also discussed.     

From terrible twos to sassy sixes: The development of vocabulary and executive functioning across early childhood

Across the early childhood period of development, young children exhibit considerable growth in their executive functioning (EF) and vocabulary abilities. Understanding the developmental trajectory of these seemingly interrelated processes is important as both early vocabulary and EF have been shown to predict critical academic and socio-emotional outcomes later in childhood. Although previous research suggests that EF and vocabulary are correlated in early childhood, much of the existing longitudinal research has focused on unidirectional relations among preschool child samples. The current large-scale study, therefore, sought to examine whether children's vocabulary and EF abilities are bidirectionally related over time across four measurement waves in early childhood (i.e., at ages 2, 3, 4, and 6). At each timepoint, children's vocabulary skills were positively correlated with their concurrent EF abilities. After controlling for child sex and maternal education status, the best-fitting, cross-lagged panel model was a unidirectional model whereby children's early vocabulary scores predicted their later EF performance at each timepoint. Although age 2 EF significantly predicted age 3 vocabulary size, this association was no longer significant after accounting for maternal education status. Our results illustrate that vocabulary size plays an important role in predicting children's later EF performance across various timepoints in early childhood, even after controlling for children's initial EF scores. These findings have important implications for intervention research as fostering early vocabulary acquisition may serve as a possible avenue for improving EF outcomes in young children.

Research Highlights

• Children's vocabulary size is positively correlated with their concurrent executive functioning skill at ages 2, 3, 4, and 6
• Young children's early vocabulary scores predict their later EF performance across measurement waves, even after controlling for initial EF skill
• There is stability in children's relative vocabulary size and executive functioning performance over time in early childhood