Career guidance in Wales: retrospect and prospect

Deregulation of the LEA Careers Service followed by the establishment of the National Assembly for Wales in 1999 led, through consultation, to the establishment of a bi-lingual all-age career guidance service under the banner of Careers Wales. The article traces the history of career guidance in Wales from 1974, showing how it has taken a very different path to England, gaining a positive outcome from an independent review of Careers Wales in 2004 and an accolade from the OECD. Current strengths, especially the innovative use of technology, are explored, and challenges for the future are investigated, including the contributions of other guidance providers. Priority is currently being given to the development of common pan-Wales standards. The need for a stronger research culture is recognised. Most crucial of all, in the authors' opinion, is the maintenance of client entitlement in the face of financial restrictions.     

Hippocampus function predicts severity of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is often accompanied by memory problems and abnormal brain structure, particularly within the hippocampus. We implemented a cross-species, hippocampal-dependent task--the virtual Morris Water task--to assess hippocampal function in people with PTSD and age-matched controls during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Performance on the task was equivalent between the groups. However, when correlating fMRI-derived hippocampal activity during this task with PTSD severity, we observe a -0.84 correlation, indicating that those with reduced hippocampal activity show more severe PTSD symptoms. This correlation is not explained by differences in task performance, IQ, duration since trauma, nor time with PTSD. Hence, PTSD severity is predicted by functionally assessing the hippocampus using the virtual Morris water task, suggesting that this task may be used to identify those at risk for developing PTSD following a trauma.     

Existential psychotherapy with fast-track,suburban couples

In this article, the authors describe the existential situation of the fast-track suburban couple and a treatment approach based upon the philosophical concepts of Gabriel Marcel and Viktor Frankl. In this treatment approach, the therapist uses availability, primary reflection and secondary reflection treatment experiences to host the client couple's discovery and actualization of the meaning potential in their intimate life.     

Differential gender effects of exposure to rap music on African American adolescents' acceptance of teen dating violence

The purpose of the present study was to assess the effects of exposure to nonviolent rap music on African American adolescents' perceptions of teen dating violence. African American male and female subjects were exposed to nonviolent rap videos (which contained images of women in sexually subordinate roles) or they saw no videos. They read a vignette that involved teen dating violence perpetrated by a male. The results indicated that there was a significant interaction between gender and video exposure. More specifically, acceptance of the use of violence did not vary as a function of exposure for male subjects. Conversely, female subjects who were exposed to the videos showed greater acceptance of the violence than females who were not exposed. Possible basis and implications for these findings are discussed.To whom reprint requests should be addressed at Department of Psychology, The University of North Carolina at Wilmington, 601 South College Road, Wilmington, NC 28403-3297.     

Single-Session Brief Counseling in a High School

Counseling designed to be time-limited is a valuable tool for counselors in school settings. Three approaches to brief counseling were investigated in this naturalistic study: problem-focused with task, problem-focused without task, and solution-focused with task. Quantitative and qualitative measures were used to explore aspects of single-session brief counseling. High school students made significant changes from the second-week follow-up to the sixth-week follow-up in alleviating their concerns and increasing the percentage of goal achieved. Students dramatically decreased the intensity of undesired feelings from before the counseling session through the second follow-up. Solution-focused counseling was as effective as the other two approaches, while taking less time.     

A comparison of the classification capabilities of the 1-dimensional kohonen neural network with two pratitioning and three hierarchical cluster analysis algorithms

Neural Network models are commonly used for cluster analysis in engineering, computational neuroscience, and the biological sciences, although they are rarely used in the social sciences. In this study we compare the classification capabilities of the 1-dimensional Kohonen neural network with two partitioning (Hartigan and Späthk-means) and three hierarchical (Ward's, complete linkage, and average linkage) cluster methods in 2,580 data sets with known cluster structure. Overall, the performance of the Kohonen networks was similar to, or better than, the performance of the other methods.     

Prime time advertisements: Repetition priming from faces seen on subject recruitment posters

Repetition priming is defined as a gain in item recognition after previous exposure. Repetition priming of face recognition has been shown to last for several months, despite contamination by everyday exposure to both experimental and control faces in the interval. Here we show that gains in face recognition in the laboratory are found from faces initially seen in a rather different context— on subject recruitment posters, even when the advertisements make no specific mention of experiments involving face recognition. The priming was greatest when identical pictures were shown in the posters and in the test phase, although different views of faces did give significant priming in one study. Follow-up studies revealed poor explicit memory for the faces shown on the posters. The results of these experiments are used to develop a model in which repetition priming reflects the process of updating representations of familiar faces.     

The importance of ‘mass’ in line drawings of faces

Previous research (Davies, Ellis and Shepherd, 1978; Rhodes, Brennan and Carey, 1987) has shown that accurate line drawings of familiar faces are identified rather poorly. However, artists can produce lifelike portraits with pen and ink, and Pearson and Robinson (1985) described an automatic method for producing computer-drawn sketches (‘cartoons’) of faces which appear very similar to those produced by a human artist. In this paper we show that subjects can identify famous faces depicted in such computer-drawn ‘cartoons’ almost as well as full grey-scale images. The cartoon algorithm comprises two components. One component draws lines at the locations of intensity changes corresponding to luminance valleys and edges (the ‘valledge’ detector). The other component applies a ‘threshold’ to the original intensity distribution, and replaces any area darker than threshold with black. Thus the full cartoon contains both ‘line’ and ‘mass’. Neither the valledges nor the threshold components alone were as well identified as full cartoons containing both components. The results suggest that the addition of the threshold component adds significantly to the identifiability of line drawings of faces.     

Serial Fluctuations in Exercise Behavior as a Function of Social Support and Efficacy Cognitions1

The present study investigated the role of social support provisions and efficacy cognitions in adherence to a prescribed exercise regimen. A generalized estimating equations approach was employed to estimate regression coefficients via an iterative weighted least squares algorithm. Findings indicated that when employed as time-varying covariates, the social provisions of reassurance of worth, attachment, and, to a lesser extent, guidance were significantly associated with intraindividual fluctuations in program adherence. Specifically, individuals with a greater sense of self-worth were more likely to adhere throughout the program, whereas the effects of subject's perceptions of greater attachment, although generally related to sustained adherence, fluctuated over time. Findings also suggest that individuals perceiving higher levels of guidance were less likely to adhere during the early and concluding stages of the exercise program. Although synchronous covariation existed between efficacy cognitions and attendance, self-efficacy was not predictive of intraindividual change in attendance over time. Results are discussed in regard to the importance of self-referent processes and social provisions in exercise adherence, and the utility of the proposed generalized estimating equations approach to the analysis of longitudinal data.