Reducing reliance on inaccurate information

People learn from the texts that they read, but sometimes what they read is wrong. Previous research has demonstrated that individuals encode even obvious inaccuracies, at times relying on the misinformation to complete postreading tasks. In the present study, we investigated whether the influence of inaccurate information might be reduced by encouraging the retrieval of accurate knowledge. Participants read an extended text that contained both accurate and inaccurate assertions, after which they evaluated the validity of statements associated with those assertions. In general, participants made more mistakes in their evaluations of statements after having read inaccurate as compared to accurate assertions, offering evidence of the influence of misinformation. However, when participants were tasked with correcting inaccuracies during reading, their mistakes were substantially reduced. Encouraging the retrieval of accurate knowledge during reading can reduce the influence of misinformation. These findings are discussed with respect to the contributions of episodic traces and prior knowledge on learning, as well as to the conditions that support successful comprehension.     

Examining the Meaning of Training Animals: A Photovoice Study With At-Risk Youth

Using the photovoice method, we explored the benefits of engaging in a rescue-animal training program for at-risk youth. While participating in the community-based program, five adolescent males in residential care took pictures and shared their experiences through interview and focus groups. Six themes emerged: Gaining patience, forming an attachment to the dog, wanting to better themselves or make better choices, helping others or volunteering, teaching, and relating to the dog. Individually and collectively, the themes suggest that training rescue animals may be a meaningful occupation for at-risk youth and may provide therapeutic benefits.     

Working with unrealistic or unshared hope in the counselling session

Hope has long been identified as an important therapeutic factor in counselling. Further, research evidence for the importance of hope to counselling practice and outcome is abundant. However, the field is only beginning to explicitly consider how hope can be effectively and intentionally practised. One of the most challenging dilemmas encountered by counsellors committed to working with this important therapeutic factor is that of so-called unrealistic hope. In this paper, we outline two real-life counselling vignettes illustrating unrealistic hope, and consider these scenarios alongside relevant scholarship and practice experience. Guiding principles and practices for conceptualising and working with unrealistic hope are offered as a means of beginning the conversation about this complex aspect of working with client hope.     

Stereotype Threat and Attributional Ambiguity for Trans Women

In this paper I discuss the interrelated topics of stereotype threat and attributional ambiguity as they relate to gender and gender identity. The former has become an emerging topic in feminist philosophy and has spawned a tremendous amount of research in social psychology and elsewhere. But the discussion, at least in how it connects to gender, is incomplete: the focus is only on cisgender women and their experiences. By considering trans women's experiences of stereotype threat and attributional ambiguity, we gain a deeper understanding of the phenomena and their problematic effects. ¹      

“There is Something not Quite Right with Brad…”: The Ways in Which Families Construct ADHD Before Receiving a Diagnosis

This study explored how four families who were in the midst of the process of a potential diagnosis of ‘Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder’ (ADHD) for their child negotiated competing explanations of the problems. The research drew on a social constructionist, systemic and attachment lens to understand; (a) the constellations of meanings that are constructed by the families to explain the difficulties and (b) how families use strategies in their talk to account for or contest these constellations of meaning. A discursive analysis revealed that the families in this study, following initial explorations, adopted a sequential and cumulative dismissal of psychosocial explanations. Hence, the thrust of the conversation implicitly added up to the only possibility, the inevitable conclusion that it was ADHD. The malleability and flexibility in which the families explored these explanations varied and for some families the process of closure towards ‘illness’ as a dominant explanation sealed alternative conversations more than in others. The findings also revealed a complexity for the parents in balancing the need to offer discipline versus another response and this has clinical implications and highlights the need for further research in this area.     

Predictive validity of the Westmead Post-Traumatic Amnesia Scale for functional outcomes in school-aged children who sustained traumatic brain injury

The Westmead Post-Traumatic Amnesia Scale (WPTAS) is routinely used for the assessment of post-traumatic amnesia (PTA) in children who sustained traumatic brain injury (TBI). Yet, the WPTAS' predictive validity for functional outcomes is largely unknown. We aimed to determine whether PTA duration measured by the WPTAS (i) differentially predicts functional outcomes and (ii) contributes to predictions of outcomes beyond the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) in children who sustained TBI. Participants were children and adolescents with moderate-to-severe TBI (n = 55) aged 8–15 years. PTA duration was assessed with the WPTAS. Outcomes at the first outpatient follow-up were scored on the Kings Outcome Scale for Childhood Head Injury (KOSCHI) and the TBI Outcome Domain Scale-Extended (ODS-E). Longer PTA and lower GCS were both significantly correlated with worse (i) global outcomes: presence of disability on the KOSCHI and lower score on the ODS-E and (ii) select specific outcomes on the ODS-E: mobility, mood and cognition. PTA duration predicted cognitive outcome on the ODS-E independently, beyond GCS. Together, PTA duration and GCS, predicted the global KOSCHI outcome, as well as the ODS-E mobility and mood outcomes. Neither GCS nor PTA duration correlated with the ODS-E communication, impulsivity/disinhibition, headache, fatigue, sensory impairments or somatic complaints outcomes. PTA duration measured by the WPTAS is a significant unique predictor of functional cognitive outcomes in children who sustained moderate-to-severe TBI, and in combination with the GCS, a significant predictor of global, and several specific functional outcomes.     

The Role of Perfectionism in Relation to an Intervention to Reduce Anxious and Depressive Symptoms in Children

Research has demonstrated an association between perfectionism and depressive and anxious symptoms in children. We examined whether a school-based program targeting anxious and depressive symptoms would reduce perfectionism, and whether perfectionism would interfere with intervention outcomes. The participants were 78 school-age children identified as at-risk for anxiety and/or depression. At-risk children took part in a randomized controlled trial of a school-based intervention program. Levels of perfectionism, depression, and anxiety were assessed at pre-treatment (Time 1) and again at post-treatment (Time 2) after participating in either a cognitive behavioral group or a structured activity group. Participation in either group was associated with significant reductions in overall levels of self-oriented perfectionism, anxious symptoms, and depressive symptoms. Supplementary analyses indicated that pre-treatment self-oriented perfectionism influenced post-treatment depression scores, suggesting that perfectionism interferes with treatment outcome. Perfectionism in children appeared amenable to group-based intervention, and identifying perfectionism may be important for treating children with depressive symptoms.     

Christ-Centred Solidarity in a Time of Pandemic

The article proposes a reading of Colossians 1:15-20 for the time of COVID-19, arguing that the assertion that all things “hold together” in the incarnate Christ should lead Christians not only to practise solidarity with those most at risk, but also to evaluate societal and systemic responses to COVID-19 in the light of their effects on the most vulnerable members of society. The article considers the use and misuse of the rhetoric of self-sacrificial love or loving self-sacrifice, and the use and misuse of the image of warfare – arguing that in both of these areas, Christian communities offer urgent challenges and correctives on the basis of their traditions of Christ-centred solidarity.     

Socrates and the Ethic of Resistance: Comments on Buss

I respond to Sarah Buss first by considering Socrates as an exemplar of courageous resistance to injustice, then by adding two caveats: exemplary resistance seems to flow from very diverse psychological profiles, and cowardice may not always be best understood as expressing fearful self-attachment.     

WHITE URBAN IMMERSION,INTERSUBJECTIVITY, AND AN ETHICS OF CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA

The past decades have seen a rise in religious and secular responses to inequality that seek to offer those who are relatively wealthy an opportunity to personally engage with impoverished people and places. This article examines three cases of elite white South Africans who intentionally immersed themselves in poor urban environments. In dialogue with the anthropology of ethics, I argue that immersion was seen as an experimental tool for transforming the self and cultivating virtues of empathy and responsibility towards others. In this way, immersion acted as a technology of the self, linking care of the self to care of others. Yet such experimentation was not without risk. Though imagined as a tool that could promote care of the self and care of others, immersion carries with it the potential to reinforce power divides and/or solicit negative moral judgment.