Addressing Mental Health Disparities With Asian American Clients: Examining the Generalizability of the Common Factors Model

Although mental health disparities for Asian Americans are known, reasons for the disparities are not well understood within the counseling process. This study coded Asian American and White clients' reports of helpful counselor actions into empirically supported common factors to determine which within‐session processes might reduce mental health disparities for Asian American clients. Asian American clients' reports of helpful therapist actions did not differ from those of White clients, suggesting that disparities do not originate in differences in the foundational aspects of counseling. Implications for addressing disparities are discussed.     

Microaggressions and Perceptions of Cultural Humility in Counseling

The purpose of this study was to explore how microaggressions affect counseling outcomes. Participants were 128 racial/ethnic minority individuals who had been in counseling within the past year. Results indicated that identity attributions were associated with counseling outcomes (i.e., working alliance and perceived improvement in counseling). Furthermore, perceptions of cultural humility mediated the relationship between negative emotion due to rupture and counseling outcomes (i.e., working alliance and perceived improvement in counseling).     

Hegel,Danto, Adorno,and the end and after of art

In this paper, I consider Adorno's claim that art is at, or is coming to, an ‘end’. I consider Adorno's account in relation to the work of Arthur Danto and G. W. F. Hegel. I employ Danto's account, together with two distinct interpretive glosses of Hegel's account, as heuristic devices in order to clarify both Adorno's own arguments, and the context within which they are being advanced. I argue that while Danto and Hegel see art as coming to an end autonomously, owing to art's successful realization of its governing principle, Adorno by contrast sees art as coming to an end heteronomously. Art's narrative is forcibly broken off, rather than completed. Adorno's account, indebted to Hegel, of art's commitment both to autonomy and the realization of ‘spiritual needs’ is explored in order to clarify how, on Adorno's view, this has happened to art; and why, precisely, he believes art is coming to an end.     

Skepticism in Kant's Groundwork

This paper offers a new interpretation of Kant's relationship with skepticism in the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. My position differs from commonly held views in the literature in two ways. On the one hand, I argue that Kant's relationship with skepticism is active and systematic (contrary to Hill, Wood, Rawls, Timmermann, and Allison). On the other hand, I argue that the kind of skepticism Kant is interested in does not speak to the philosophical tradition in any straightforward sense (contrary to Forster and Guyer). On my reading, Kant takes up a skeptical method in the Groundwork as a way of exposing certain obstacles in our ordinary and philosophical thinking about morality. The central obstacle he is interested in is practical in character, arising from a natural tendency we have to rationalize against the moral law. In attempting to resolve this tendency, I argue, the Groundwork turns out to have a profoundly educative task.     

Social cognition is not associated with cognitive reserve in older adults

Social and general cognitive abilities decline in late life. Those with high cognitive reserve display better general cognitive performance in old age; however, it is unknown whether this is also the case for social cognition. A total of 115 healthy older adults, aged 60–85 years (m = 44, f = 71) were assessed using The Awareness of Social Inference Test (TASIT-R; social cognition), the Lifetime of Experiences Questionnaire (LEQ; cognitive reserve), and the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI-II; general cognitive ability). The LEQ did not predict performance on any TASIT-R subtest: Emotion Evaluation Test (β = -.097, p = .325), Social Inference – Minimal (β = -.004, p = .972), or Social Inference – Enriched (β = -.016, p = .878). Sensitivity analyses using two alternative cognitive reserve measures, years of education and the National Adult Reading Test, supported these effects. Cognitive reserve was strongly related to WASI-II performance. Unlike general cognitive ability, social cognition appears unaffected by cognitive reserve. Findings contribute to the emerging understanding that cognitive reserve differentially affects individual cognitive domains, which has implications for the theoretical understanding of cognitive reserve and its brain correlates. Cognitive measures unbiased by cognitive reserve may serve as best indicators of brain health, free of compensatory mechanisms.     

Close interpersonal proximity modulates visuomotor processing of object affordances in shared,social space

Research suggests that the human brain codes manipulable objects as possibilities for action, or affordances, particularly objects close to the body. Near-body space is not only a zone for body-environment interaction but also is socially relevant, as we are driven to preserve our near-body, personal space from others. The current, novel study investigated how close proximity of a stranger modulates visuomotor processing of object affordances in shared, social space. Participants performed a behavioural object recognition task both alone and with a human confederate. All object images were in participants’ reachable space but appeared relatively closer to the participant or the confederate. Results revealed when participants were alone, objects in both locations produced an affordance congruency effect but when the confederate was present, only objects nearer the participant elicited the effect. Findings suggest space is divided between strangers to preserve independent near-body space boundaries, and in turn this process influences motor coding for stimuli within that social space. To demonstrate that this visuomotor modulation represents a social phenomenon, rather than a general, attentional effect, two subsequent experiments employed nonhuman joint conditions. Neither a small, Japanese, waving cat statue (Experiment 2) nor a metronome (Experiment 3) modulated the affordance effect as in Experiment 1. These findings suggest a truly social explanation of the key interaction from Experiment 1. This study represents an important step toward understanding object affordance processing in real-world, social contexts and has implications broadly across fields of social action and cognition, and body space representation.     

Profiling Movement and Gait Quality Characteristics in Pre-School Children

There is a dearth of suitable metrics capable of objectively quantifying motor competence. Further, objective movement quality characteristics during free play have not been investigated in pre-school children. The aims of this study were to characterize children's free play physical activity and investigate how gait quality characteristics cluster with free play in pre-school children (3–5 years old). Sixty-one children (39 boys; 4.3 ± 0.7 years, 1.04 ± 0.05 m, 17.8 ± 3.2 kg) completed the movement assessment battery for children and took part in free play while wearing an ankle- and hip-mounted accelerometer. Characteristics of movement quality were profiled using a clustering algorithm. Spearman's rho and the Mann-Whitney U tests were used to assess relationships between movement quality characteristics and motor competence classification differences in integrated acceleration and spectral purity, respectively. Significant differences were found between motor competency classifications for spectral purity and integrated acceleration (p < .001). Spectral purity was hierarchically clustered with motor competence and integrated acceleration. Significant positive correlations were found between spectral purity, integrated acceleration and motor competence (p < .001). This is the first study to report spectral purity in pre-school children and the results suggest that the underlying frequency component of movement is clustered with motor competence.