Qualified therapists’ experience of personal therapy

Recent work shows that the majority of therapists strongly value personal therapy for what it can bring to their professional practice, and for personal development. The aim of this study was to explore qualified therapists’ experiences of personal therapy. Of the 220 qualified therapists who were contacted via post and asked to take part in a questionnaire study, 48 returned the completed questionnaire, which consisted of a series of closed and open questions. Two‐thirds of respondents had engaged in personal therapy. The two most frequently cited reasons for engaging in personal therapy were personal growth and personal distress. Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) identified two broad domains: impact on the person and impact on the professional. Results show that those surveyed recognised the value of personal therapy to themselves as a form of self‐care and personal development. Personal therapy was valued in professional practice as a form of experiential learning from being in the client role. The limitations of this research included a relatively low response rate, raising the question of whether those most likely to have had positive experiences of personal therapy were more likely to participate. Future research might deliberately seek to understand negative experiences of personal therapy. Other avenues for future research include the need to understand how experiences of therapy relate to gender, profession, and therapeutic orientation.     

Alliance and Group Cohesion in Relationship Education

Relationship education programs have been shown as an effective way to increase relationship functioning. There is less known about how process factors, such as alliance with the leader or group dynamics, affect outcomes in these interventions. We examined group cohesion and alliance with the leader in a relationship education program tailored for individuals. Specifically, we examined whether participants' ratings (n = 126) of the group cohesion and alliance with the leader were associated with changes in relationship adjustment, relationship confidence, and communication quality from pre‐ to postintervention. The results demonstrated that participants' perceptions of the cohesion among the members in their relationship education group, but not the leader–participant alliance, made a significant contribution to the changes in participants' relationship functioning. These results suggest that the group dynamics among the members in the group are important ingredients in relationship education. Implications for relationship programs are provided.     

Teaching preschool children to report suspicious packages to adults

Law enforcement agencies stress that public reporting of terror‐related crime is the predominant means for disrupting these actions. However, schools may be unprepared because the majority of the populace may not understand the threat of suspicious materials or what to do when they are found on school grounds. The purpose of this study was to systematically teach preschool children to identify and report suspicious packages across three experiments. In the first experiment, we used multiple exemplar training to teach children to identify the characteristics of safe and unsafe packages. In the second experiment, we taught participants to identify the locations where packages should be considered unsafe. Finally, in the third experiment, we used behavioral skills training to teach participants to avoid touching unsafe packages, leave the area where they were located, and report their discovery to an adult. Results suggest the participants quickly developed these skills. Implications for safety skills in young school children are discussed.     

Parenting Surviving Children After the Death of a Child from Cancer: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis

Journal of Child and Family Studies - The death of a child is a tragic, devastating event with enormous emotional and relational impact on the family unit. Parental changes are significant,...     

INFANT ATTACHMENT SECURITY AND AFFECTIVE-COGNITIVE INFORMATION PROCESSING AT AGE 3

Abstract— Three-year old's attention toward and memory of affectively laden information presented in specialty designed puppet snows were examined to test the hypothesis, based on Bowlby's theory of attachment and the internal-working-model construct central to the theory, that children with secure attachment histories (measured at 12 months) would prove less distractable during positive than negative events and would remember positive events more accurately than negative events, with the reverse being true of children with insecure attachment histories Support for this hypothesis emerged in the case of memory but not attention (for which no attachment effects emerged), even when infants' temperament-emotionality and general verbal intelligence were taken into consideration Results are discussed in terms of life-course implications of affective-cognitive information processing and directions for future research.     

The use of an ultrasonic monitor for recording locomotor activity

An ultrasonic activity monitor has been designed that can be used to detect motion in air or within an aquarium. Stability and linearity of response of the monitor have been measured. The system has been used to examine activity rhythms of the marine invertebrate,Octoput ornatus Gould.     

An Investigation of the Discourses Children Draw on Their Constructions of Gender

The mechanisms behind children's constructions of gender are examined in an attempt to identify the various narratives that children draw on. The ways in which these narratives are used in children's talk about gender are analyzed in order to provide a greater understanding of discursive resources available to children. The different types of discourse evident in children's discussion of gender are listed. The discursive contradictions in children's speech and discursive resistance to the construction of gender dichotomy are examined. It is concluded that the children in the sample drew on a wide variety of gender discourses, suggesting that they have a more developed understanding of gender issues than has been recognized previously. Finally, the paper considers the possible methods for deconstruction of dominant gender discourses.     

Nonadversarial Methods for Sensitizing Jurors to Eyewitness Evidence

Tested the effects, on juror decision making, of court-appointed expert testimony and judge's instructions designed to sensitize jurors to eyewitness evidence. Subjects ( N = 144) viewed a videotaped trial in which the primary evidence was the testimony of and identification by an eyewitness. Three levels of expert advice (court-appointed expert, judge's instructions, no expert advice) were crossed with two levels of witnessing and identification conditions and two levels of witness confidence The court-appointed expert produced skepticism toward the identification but did not improve juror sensitivity to the eyewitness evidence. The judge's instructions produced neither skepticism or sensitization effects.     

Evaluation of subclinical depression in children using self-, peer-, and teacher-report measures

This study reports on several classification issues utilizing the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI), the Child Behavior Checklist-Teacher Form (CBCL-T), and the Peer Nomination Inventory of Depression (PNID). The first sample contained 752 public school children in grades 5, 6, and 9. A second sample of 142 fifth-graders was included to have an additional PNID comparison group. Results revealed moderate correlations between the CDI and the CBCL-T and PNID. Use of multiple criteria for selecting children as depressed was discussed, and selection rates using multiple measures with either strict or lenient cutoff scores were given. Normative data on the PNID were evaluated, and it was suggested that norms for the PNID may not be generalizable to other samples. Finally, race and gender analyses showed that CDI scores for females were significantly higher than for males, whereas CDI scores for Hispanics were significantly higher than for non-Hispanic whites. However, Omega-squared analyses for these two variables showed this to be of little practical significance.     

The Effectiveness and Trustworthiness of Faith-Based and Other Service Organizations: A Study of Recipients' Perceptions

Drawing on a new community study of more than 2,000 residents of low-income neighborhoods, we examine information about the kinds of service organizations respondents have contacted for assistance and the perceptions of these respondents about the effectiveness and trustworthiness of those organizations. We compare contact with and perceptions of faith-based organizations, nonsectarian organizations, government agencies, hospitals, and churches and employ a method that takes account of respondents' varying portfolios of service providers. The results indicate that the recipients of faith-based organizations resemble those of the public welfare department in the extent of financial need and scope of family problems, and differ significantly from recipients of help from congregations. The results also indicate that recipients' evaluations of the effectiveness and trustworthiness of their portfolio of service organizations are lower when they have sought assistance from public welfare agencies and higher when they have sought assistance from congregations, but are not significantly affected by having contacted faith-based or nonsectarian organizations.