Effects of Attachment on Coping Efficacy,Career Decision Self‐Efficacy,and Life Satisfaction

This study examined attachment, self‐efficacy variables, and life satisfaction of 583 undergraduate students. The type of analysis used was structural equation modeling. Findings indicated that students with greater avoidant and anxious attachment patterns reported lower levels of career decision self‐efficacy and coping efficacy, which then had a positive relationship with life satisfaction. Implications for theory, research, and practice were provided.     

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Early Psychosis: A Case Series

Persons with psychosis often report high levels of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, which render them more vulnerable to relapse, symptom exacerbation, and reduced well-being. However, less is known about how to adequately accommodate the needs of persons recovering from a first episode of psychosis, presenting with PTSD. Further, the existing evidence-based interventions for PTSD seem less equipped to deal with serious mental disorder and comorbid conditions. This study aimed to assess the efficacy, acceptability, and safety of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) for persons suffering from PTSD with comorbid trauma and psychosis. Three consecutively referred participants meeting ICD-10 criteria for PTSD and a first-episode nonaffective psychotic disorder were treated in an outpatient service within a case-series analysis. A manual-guided ACT intervention of 12 sessions showed clinically relevant improvement on self-report measures of PTSD symptoms and emotional distress. These initial findings are promising and appear to justify a more controlled evaluation of this brief intervention.     

Measurement as transcendental–empirical <Emphasis Type="Italic">écart</Emphasis>: Merleau-Ponty on deep temporality

Merleau-Ponty’s radical reflection conceptualizes the transcendental and the empirical as intertwined, emerging only via an écart. I advance this concept of transcendental empirical écart by studying the problem of measurement in science, in both general and quantum mechanical contexts. Section one analyses scientific problems of measurement, focusing on issues of temporality, to show how measurement entails a transcendental that diverges with the empirical. Section two briefly interprets this result via Merleau-Ponty’s concept of depth, to indicate how measurement reveals a temporality that is not an already given ground that would guarantee the transcendental in advance: temporality is instead ‘deep,’ itself engendering a divergence of transcendental and empirical operations that first allows for measurement and sense.     

BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS AND ECOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY: PAST,PRESENT, AND FUTURE. A REVIEW OF HARRY HEFT'S ECOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY IN CONTEXT

Relations between behavior analysis and ecological psychology have been strained for years, notwithstanding the occasional comment on their affinities. Harry Heft's (2001) Ecological Psychology in Context provides an occasion for reviewing anew those relations and affinities. It describes the genesis of ecological psychology in James's radical empiricism; addresses Holt's neorealism and Gestalt psychology; and synthesizes Gibson's ecological psychology and Barker's ecobehavioral science as a means for understanding everyday human behavior. Although behavior analysis is excluded from this account, Heft's book warrants a review nonetheless: It describes ecological psychology in ways that are congruent and complementary with behavior analysis (e.g., nonmediational theorizing; the provinces of natural history and natural science). After introducing modern ecological psychology, I comment on (a) Heft's admirable, albeit selective, historiography; (b) his ecological psychology—past and present—as it relates to Skinner's science and system (e.g., affordances, molar behavior); (c) his misunderstandings of Skinner's behaviorism (e.g., reductionistic, mechanistic, molecular); and (d) the theoretical status of Heft's cognitive terms and talk (i.e., in ontology, epistemology, syntax). I conclude by considering the alliance and integration of ecological psychology and behavior analysis, and their implications for unifying and transforming psychology as a life science, albeit more for the future than at present.     

Parental Overprotection, Cultural Value Conflict, and Psychological Adaptation among Asian Indian Women in America

The present study related generational status, marital status, parental overprotection (control), and cultural value conflict to self-esteem and depression among first and second-generation Asian Indian immigrant women in the south-midwestern United States. Self-report data from 73 community-dwelling women supported the hypotheses that unmarried and second-generation women would report greater maternal control and cultural value conflict than would married and first-generation women. Second-generational status, high maternal control, and high cultural value conflict correlated with higher depressive symptomology; being married, low maternal control, and low cultural value conflict were related to high self-esteem. Regression analyses indicated a mediating role for cultural value conflict for depression symptom predictors, but not for self-esteem predictors. Open-ended response data provided enriched understanding of these women’s cultural and family conflicts.     

Fear reactivity and effortful control in overt and relational bullying: a six-month longitudinal study

This study examined the roles of fear reactivity and emotional regulatory abilities in overt and relational bullying behaviors. Survey data were collected from 124 middle school students (mean age=10.3 years, 47% males, 61% Caucasian) and their teachers in the fall and spring of a school year. Surveys included teacher- and self-rated measures of students' overt and relational bullying along with self-reported fear reactivity and effortful control. Findings show that low levels of fear reactivity and effortful control predict higher future levels of overt bullying, but not relational bullying. These results suggest that despite high correlations between overt and relational bullying, these two forms of aggression develop through different processes. The findings from this investigation are discussed with respect to their implications for theory on the development of aggression as well as prevention and intervention programming for youth aggression.     

Sidney w. Bijou: the illinois years, 1965-1975

Sidney W. Bijou is among the founders of behavior analysis, but the record of his contributions is incomplete. It has not systematically described his contributions beyond his tenure at the University of Washington (1948-1965). The purpose of this paper is to describe his contributions over the course of the next decade-his years at the University of Illinois (1965-1975). I begin by reviewing his education and training, contributions at Washington, and why he left and moved to Illinois. Then, I describe his Illinois years: his appointments, colleagues, and service; the Child Behavior Laboratory; grant funding and publications; further service, awards, and recognition; and influence on his colleagues, students, classroom teachers and research supervisors, and visiting scholars. Bijou is modest about his contributions at Illinois, but he advanced the field in many ways over the course of the decade, especially the careers of his colleagues and students.     

Fast pairs: a visual word recognition paradigm for measuring entrenchment, top-down effects, and subjective phenomenology

When word pairs having a familiar order are sequentially flashed on a computer in their non-familiar order, (code zip), observers have a strong phenomenology of seeing them in familiar order (zip code). Reversal errors remained frequent even when participants obtained perceptual experience of reverse-display items by beginning with a block of longer-duration trials. A forced-choice order-detection procedure reduced but did not eliminate reversal errors, showing that "fast pairs" is a robust perceptual illusion. Even adjective + noun pairs (green skirt) showed reversal errors, and reversal errors increased with the log frequency of the word pair, consistent with a strong role for statistical processing at the level of multi-word units.