Feeling the need for (personalized) speed: how natural controls and customization contribute to enjoyment of a racing game through enhanced immersion

Prior research suggests that video game features that appear natural or that otherwise allow players to identify with their in-game experience will promote enjoyment. Using a 2 × 2 experiment, this study demonstrates the positive effects of a steering-wheel controller and the opportunity to customize the driven vehicle on enjoyment of a console driving game, as mediated by transportation and challenge-skill balance. The role of presence is also probed, with results suggesting no direct link to enjoyment.     

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and Recovery from Acute Psychosis: Case Studies of Two Contrasting Styles

In the North Wales randomised controlled trial of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) for acute schizophrenia spectrum disorders, patients who received CBT as an adjunct to treatment-as-usual (TAU) had significantly better outcomes at 12 months than patients who received only TAU. However, patients who were offered CBT but dropped out of treatment early had outcomes that were no worse than patients who stayed in. The explanation for this curious finding might be that the drop-outs and the stay-ins had different but equally valid recovery styles. Two case studies from the trial are presented to illustrate these recovery styles: sealing-over and integrating. Discussion focuses on the idea that, rather than try to alter patients' recovery styles, a more appropriate aim might be to match treatment to the patients' styles.     

The impact of early maternal verbal scaffolding and child language abilities on later decoding and reading comprehension skills

This study examined, via structural equation modeling, early predictors of children's 8 year reading decoding and 10 year comprehension at later school age. Maternal verbal scaffolding indirectly influenced both decoding and comprehension, through its support of children's language abilities at 3 and 4 years of age. Additionally, there was a trend for a direct effect of 4 year child language on reading comprehension at 10 years. As maternal verbal scaffolding was assessed during every day routines, this suggests that rich language input in the broad social context of the home promotes language and, in turn, later reading skills. Given that maternal verbal scaffolding can be enhanced through interventions, these results have important educational implications.     

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.