Coparenting Interventions for Fragile Families: What Do We Know and Where Do We Need To Go Next?

With a large and growing share of American families now forming outside of marriage, triangular infant–mother–father relationship systems in “fragile families” have begun to attract the interest of family scholars and clinicians. A relatively novel conceptualization has concerned the feasibility of intervening to support the development of a sustained and positive coparenting alliance between mothers and fathers who have not made an enduring relationship commitment to one another. At this point in time, there are very few published outcome studies of programs explicitly conceived to help build coparenting alliances in such families. This article reviews what we currently know from this evolving field of study, and from those related responsible fatherhood and marriage and relationship enhancement (MRE) initiatives that included any explicit targeting, strengthening, and assessment of fragile family coparenting in their designs. We summarize lessons learned thus far from Access and Visitation (AV) programs for non‐residential fathers, from MRE programs for low‐income, unmarried couples, and from newer programs for fragile families directly designed to target and support coparenting per se. We close with recommendations for charting this important new family process terrain.     

Multiple intelligences and the therapeutic alliance: Incorporating multiple intelligence theory and practice into counselling

Many of the main theoretical traditions in the sociology of the emotions have limitations in their explanations of the institutionalized styles of emotional work, of the menu of emotions available to be felt in particular settings, and of the causal processes by which particular emotions are elicited in those settings. A promising way forward is to apply neo-Durkheimian institutional theory, which also overcomes some of the limitations of Durkheim's own theory of the emotions. Central to this approach is the distinguishing of affect styles and the identification of styles of social organization that elicit these affect styles. The theory puts great weight on ritual, understood in the post-Goffman sense which encompasses quotidian everyday forms as well as grand public ceremonial, as the principal causal process by which forms of social organization produce certain emotions and styles of managing those emotions within ‘affect styles’. The latent social function, in this tradition, of the elicitation of affect is to be understood in terms of the conflictual and rival mobilization of accountability. The theory meets, the article argues, the four key criteria by which sociological theories of affect should be judged.     

Einstein’s jacket: Evidence for long-term perceptual specificity in mental imagery

To what extent are visual fantasies constrained by our perceptual experience of the real world? Our study exploits the fact that people’s knowledge of the appearance of individuals from the early 20th Century (e.g., Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill) derives predominantly from viewing black-and-white media images. An initial experiment shows that mental imagery for individuals from this period are experienced as significantly less colourful than imagery for individuals from the era of colour media. A second experiment manipulated whether participants were instructed to explicitly imagine using colour or not (i.e., “imagine Albert Einstein wearing a green jacket” vs. “imagine Albert Einstein wearing a jacket”). Results show that colour manipulation only influences imagery for black-and-white era individuals, with no comparable effect on imagery for colour era individuals. This finding is replicated in a third experiment that includes an additional control condition of imagining generic characters (i.e., “Imagine a knight wearing a cloak” vs. “imagine a knight wearing a red cloak”). Again, only imagery for black-and-white era individuals is affected by the colour manipulation. Overall these results provide evidence for long-term perceptual specificity effects in mental imagery. We argue that visual fantasies can be constrained by surface features of underlying representations in memory, even when imagining something we have never directly perceived.     

Children's and Adults’ Judgments of the Certainty of Deductive Inferences,Inductive Inferences,and Guesses

Children and adults rated their own certainty following inductive inferences, deductive inferences, and guesses. Beginning in kindergarten, participants rated deductions as more certain than weak inductions or guesses. Deductions were rated as more certain than strong inductions beginning in Grade 3, and fourth-grade children and adults differentiated strong inductions, weak inductions, and informed guesses from pure guesses. By Grade 3, participants also gave different types of explanations for their deductions and inductions. These results are discussed in relation to children's concepts of cognitive processes, logical reasoning, and epistemological development.     

Oculomotor involvement in spatial working memory is task-specific

Many everyday tasks, such as remembering where you parked, require the capacity to store and manipulate information about the visual and spatial properties of the world. The ability to represent, remember, and manipulate spatial information is known as visuospatial working memory (VSWM). Despite substantial interest in VSWM the mechanisms responsible for this ability remain debated. One influential idea is that VSWM depends on activity in the eye-movement (oculomotor) system. However, this has proved difficult to test because experimental paradigms that disrupt oculomotor control also interfere with other cognitive systems, such as spatial attention. Here, we present data from a novel paradigm that selectively disrupts activation in the oculomotor system. We show that the inability to make eye-movements is associated with impaired performance on the Corsi Blocks task, but not on Arrow Span, Visual Patterns, Size Estimation or Digit Span tasks. It is argued that the oculomotor system is required to encode and maintain spatial locations indicted by a change in physical salience, but not non-salient spatial locations indicated by the meaning of a symbolic cue. This suggestion offers a way to reconcile the currently conflicting evidence regarding the role of the oculomotor system in spatial working memory.     

The impact of breastfeeding on mothers' attentional sensitivity towards infant distress

Background

Maternal response towards infant distress has an important impact on infant development. In animals it is established that lactation and pup suckling plays an important role in maintaining maternal responses. Previous research suggests that breastfeeding is associated with sensitive maternal responses in human mothers. However, this may be because women who are more sensitive to their infant choose to breastfeed. The current study investigated the attentional sensitivity towards infant distress in women who went on to breast or formula feed during pregnancy as well as after birth. We hypothesised that differences in breast and formula feeding mothers would only emerge after birth once feeding had commenced.

Method

Women were recruited during pregnancy through community midwives as part of a longitudinal study. 51 women were seen during late pregnancy and between 3 and 6 months after birth (27 were breast and 24 were formula feeding). Sensitivity to infant distress was measured as the extent of women's attentional bias towards infant distress stimuli.

Results

After birth, we found that our index of attentional bias towards infant distress was 37 ms (0.5 S.D.s) (CI; 6-69, p = 0.021) higher in breastfeeding compared to formula feeding mothers. However, mothers who went on to breastfeed did not show greater attentional bias towards infant distress already during late pregnancy.

Conclusions

Our results suggest that the act of breastfeeding may influence mothers’ attentional sensitivity towards infant distress. Previous research suggests breastfeeding is indicative of sensitive parenting. The current findings may suggest a mechanism by which breastfeeding and/or associated infant interaction could contribute to this sensitivity.     

The impact of counsellor training on emotional intelligence

This study evaluated the impact of counsellor training on emotional intelligence (EI) in 45 undergraduates and 58 postgraduates. Significant improvements were recorded by students on completion of both programmes, suggesting that these were attributable to training which enhanced intra- and interpersonal aspects of emotional functioning. As a group, postgraduates were older than undergraduates, and at the outset of the study, EISAQ scores were comparable; however, at follow-up, undergraduates recorded significantly higher EISAQ scores. Students’ EI was not significantly related to their age, and these findings indicate the potential for effective EI-skills training which is unrelated to quantity of life experiences. It is hoped that this study contributes to a growing quantitative evidence base from which the counselling profession can evaluate its training profile.     

Sources of renewal: A qualitative study on the experience and role of leisure in the life of counsellors and psychologists

The purpose of this study was to investigate the experience and role of leisure in the lives of practicing counsellors and psychologists. Qualitative methods involving semi-structured interviews were employed with ten participants, between the ages of 39–55. The findings of the study revealed that: (a) leisure improves the ability of counsellors and psychologists to cope with and improve performance at work, (b) attitude plays an important role in experiencing true leisure, (c) true leisure moments are often described in similar terms as spiritual moments, (d) leisure facilitates meaningful connections with others, (e) leisure in nature facilitates receptivity to spiritual experience, (f) one's choices of leisure and ways of approaching it reveal much about who the person is, and, (g) leisure is a major factor in promoting balance and integration.