Parent-Child Engagement in Decision Making and the Development of Adolescent Affective Decision Capacity and Binge Drinking

The goal of this study was to investigate how parents’ engagement of their child in everyday decision-making influenced their adolescent’s development on two neuropsychological functions, namely, affective decision-making and working memory, and its effect on adolescent binge-drinking behavior.We conducted a longitudinal study of 192 Chinese adolescents. In 10th grade, the adolescents were tested for their affective decision-making ability using the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) and working memory capacity using the Self-ordered Pointing Test (SOPT). Questionnaires were used to assess perceived parent-child engagement in decision-making, academic performance and drinking behavior. At one-year follow-up, the same neuropsychological tasks and questionnaires were repeated.Results indicate that working memory and academic performance were uninfluenced by parent-child engagement in decision-making. However, compared to adolescents whose parents made solitary decisions for them, adolescents engaged in everyday decision-making showed significant improvement on affective decision capacity and significantly less binge-drinking one year later.These findings suggest that parental engagement of children in everyday decision-making might foster the development of neurocognitive functioning relative to affective decision-making and reduce adolescent substance use behaviors.     

A Wake-Up Call? Issues With Plagiarism in Transnational Higher Education

The views on plagiarism of 574 students at four Australian universities operating in Singapore were investigated through a survey and interviews. Analysis of students’ responses to different plagiarism scenarios revealed misconceptions and uncertainties about many aspects of plagiarism. Self-plagiarism and reuse of a friend’s work were acceptable to more than one quarter of the students, and nearly half considered collusion to be a legitimate form of collaboration. One quarter of the students also indicated that they would knowingly plagiarize. This should serve as a wake-up call regarding plagiarism in transnational higher education. Seven measures are recommended to curb plagiarism and foster academic integrity.     

Psychological Essentialism: A Review Of E. Margolis And S. Laurence (Eds.), Concepts: Core Readings.

Concepts: Core Readings (1999) is an edited volume of articles representing five major theories of concepts within cognitive psychology. Of the five, only the prototype theory can be interpreted in terms arising from a behavioral analysis. Two conceptual problems pervade nearly all of the papers in the volume. The first is an implicit commitment to essentialism; concepts are reified and are commonly discussed as though they have essential properties. Second, the theories suffer from a defective theory of verbal behavior. No distinction is made between verbal operants and words drawn from a hat.     

Boundaries,journals and counselling psychology: Stephen Palmer interviews Kasia Szymanska

You have just retired from editing Counselling Psychology Review, the in-house journal of the British Psychological Society, Division of Counselling Psychology. It seems an appropriate moment to interview you for Counselling Psychology Quarterly. In this interview I want to focus on a topic I know you are interested in, client-therapist boundary issues, and your experience editing the journal. But I'd like to start off at a slight tangent. What encouraged you to go into counselling psychology as a profession?     

Rohling's Interpretive Method and Inherent Limitations on the Flexibility of “Flexible Batteries”

Miller and Rohling (2001) proposed a 24-step algorithm, the Rohling Interpretive Method (RIM), for quantitative interpretation of results from flexible neuropsychological test batteries. We believe that the RIM as presented in that paper has several conceptual problems, including (a) a failure to distinguish "statistically significant" from pathological differences, (b) an assumption that declines in specific abilities can be inferred when a particular test score deviates from an estimate of general premorbid ability, and (c) confusion between the standard deviation associated with individual test scores versus that of a composite of those scores. As an alternative, we suggest the value of developing and using co-normed comprehensive neuropsychological test batteries from which test users might select subsets of tests.     

Effects of delayed auditory feedback on timing of music performance

Three experiments examined effects of delayed auditory feedback (DAF) on music performance as a function of the temporal location of feedback onsets within produced inter-onset intervals (IOIs). In Experiment 1, pianists performed isochronous melodies at two production rates with different amounts of DAF. Timing variability decreased for DAF amounts that caused feedback onsets to occur halfway through IOIs (binary subdivisions) in a 500-ms, but not 600-ms, IOI rate condition. In Experiment 2, pianists performed melodies with DAF delays and chose a preferred rate. Performers chose slower rates for larger delays; preferred rates approximated twice the amount of DAF. Experiment 3 tested the possibility that subjects deliberately conceptualized subdivisions in Experiments 1 and 2. Performers were given (1) no instructions, (2) instructions to mentally subdivide produced events in two, or (3) instructions to mentally subdivide produced events in three, in different blocks. Instructions to subdivide reduced timing variability for larger feedback delays. These experiments indicate that DAF disruption is reduced by subdividing instructions and sometimes by coincidences of feedback onsets with subdivisions of produced intervals. Such facilitation may reflect the use of hierarchical cognitive plans in production.     

Working memory: a developmental study of phonological recoding

A cross-sectional study using children aged 3 to 7 years and a cross-sequential study using children aged between 5 and 8 years showed that the development of phonological recoding in working memory was more complex than the simple dichotomous picture portrayed in the current literature. It appears that initially children use no strategy in recall, which is proposed to represent the level of automatic activation of representations in long-term memory and the storage capacity of the central executive. This is followed by a period in which a visual strategy prevails, followed by a period of dual visual-verbal coding before the adult-like strategy of verbal coding finally emerges. The results are discussed in terms of three working memory models (Baddeley, 1990; Engle, 1996; Logie, 1996) where strategy use is seen as the development of attentional processes and phonological recoding as the development of inhibitory mechanisms in the central executive to suppress the habitual response set of visual coding.     

Intrinsic-extrinsic religious orientation and individual coping style

The relationship between intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientation and the use of specific coping strategies was investigated among 58 volunteers who ranged in age from 17 to 57 years and who reported experiencing either high or low stress. Dependent upon the amount of stress, age interacted with religious orientation to influence the use of two coping strategies, turning against an object and turning against self.     

Certification in neurodevelopmental disabilities: the development of a new subspecialty and results of the initial examinations

The American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, in collaboration with the American Board of Pediatrics, administered the first Subspecialty Certification Examination in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities to 190 candidates on April 3, 2001, and the second to 80 candidates on April 9, 2002. This report describes the history of the certifying examination including the process of its development and the results of the first and second examination administrations. The purpose of the Certification Examination in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities is to assess knowledge of qualified candidates in the subspecialty. A committee comprised of child neurologists and pediatricians developed this examination. Of the 190 pediatricians (n = 169) and child neurologists (n = 21) who completed the examination in 2001, 157 (83%) passed the examination. The second group of examinees included 68 pediatricians and 12 child neurologists, and the pass rate was 70%. The 213 candidates certified to date have received ten-year time-limited certificates that may be renewed by recertification process beginning in 2010. After the "grandfathering period," candidates for the examination must complete ACGME-approved training programs in the subspecialty.     

Advances in prevention and treatment of cerebral palsy

In recent years there have been a number of advances in understanding of predisposing and protective factors in the development of cerebral palsy in infants. Multiple gestation births, maternal infection, and maternal and fetal thrombophilic conditions all predispose to the development of CP in the infant. Opportunities for prevention of CP may develop from an improved understanding of these factors and their mechanisms of operation. Similar progress has been made in the evaluation of treatments for CP and the effects of these treatments on the individual's impairment, function, and disability. Selective posterior rhizotomy and Botulinum toxin A are now widely used in the treatment of spasticity. The challenge remains to determine how effectively these promising interventions can alter long-term function and quality of life outcomes in children and adults with CP.