The On‐Site Mentor of Counseling Interns: Perceptions of Ideal Role and Actual Role Performance

This study examined the role of the ideal on‐site mentor and the actual mentor's role performance, as perceived by 158 mentor counselors and 171 school counseling interns. Results indicated that the ideal mentor's professional traits were given priority by both groups and that the teacher role was the most salient among role domains. In the actual role performance, the 2 groups differed regarding the perceived contribution of the mentor‐specific behaviors in each examined role domain.     

Adult attunement and child availability: Interaction of mother and caregiver with three‐year‐old kibbutz children

Relationships of mother and nonmaternal caregiver with 33 three‐year‐old kibbutz toddlers were investigated. Attunement and intrusiveness of these caregivers in their contact with children were determined by analysis of discrete child–adult interactions rather than by a global assessment of their relationships. The validity of these adult attunement scores was examined first by comparison of the attunement and intrusiveness scores of mother and of caregiver, and second by determining their association with independent scores of child availability to each of these caregiving adults. Results tended to support the validity of the present measures of adult attunement to the child. They indicated that in cases of disagreement mothers were more attuned than nonmaternal caregivers to the signals of the child, and the level of adult attuned agreement to the child was positively associated with cooperative attempts of children to involve caregivers in their activities © 2000 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.     

Availability of three-year-old kibbutz children to mothers and metapelets in two functional contexts

Responsiveness and availability of kibbutz children to mothers and to metapelets in two functional contexts were studied. Thirty-three 3-year-old children, participated in the study. Every child participated twice in two co-construction tasks: once with the mother and once with the metapelet. A factor analysis conducted over the present categories yielded six orthogonal factors: Three pertained to cooperative child involvement of the adult and three referred to oppositional involvement. Analyses of variance indicated that children involved the mother more often than the metapelet in their activities and were more responsive to her. Additional analyses conducted on each factor separately showed that this higher level of involvement of the mother was evident in the cooperative factors. The children's involvement of the adults and their responsiveness to the adults' bids differed significantly between tasks. © 1997 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health     

An evaluation of the Brief Symptom Inventory-18 using item response theory: which items are most strongly related to psychological distress?

The psychometric structure of the Brief Symptom Inventory-18 (BSI-18; Derogatis, 2001) was investigated using Mokken scaling and parametric item response theory. Data of 487 outpatients, 266 students, and 207 prisoners were analyzed. Results of the Mokken analysis indicated that the BSI-18 formed a strong Mokken scale for outpatients and prisoners, indicating strong unidimensionality. For students, only the depression and anxiety items formed a medium Mokken scale. Parametric item response theory analyses showed that the best discriminating items came from the depression and anxiety subscales.     

Interest inventories based on Roe's classification modified for negative respondents

The Ramak and Courses interest inventories (Meir, 1974; Meir, Sohlberg, & Barak, 1973) based on Roe's 1956 occupational classification, were modified for use with subjects who answer negatively to most items in the traditional forms. One hundred thirty-six males, aged 19–21, responded to the Ramak and Courses inventories with the R ? A (Refuse, Undecided, Agree) scale. The split half reliability of the modified inventories is 0.75, and their occupational structure has the same shape and arrangement as the inventories with the Y ? N scale. Negative respondents give more positive responses (p < .05) on the modified forms than on the traditional ones.     

The concept of culture in the contexts and practices of professional counselling: A constructivist perspective

In this paper we first describe two approaches to the concept of culture as they relate to counselling: the first approach emphasizes the organizational culture of the institution where the counsellor works; the second - the multicultural approach - calls for the recognition of the variety of ethnic cultural backgrounds of those involved in the counselling situation. Then, we present recent developments in the understanding of culture within constructivist perspectives. Last, we suggest a new orientation for counselling training, that of the professional counsellor as a cultural agent, one attentive to context and practices in all their complexities.     

Mother–child and metapelet–child touch behavior with three‐year‐old kibbutz children in two contexts

The frequency and function of self‐touch and of touching another was studied among 32 three‐year‐old kibbutz children, their mothers, and their metaplot [caretakers; singular: metapelet] in two contexts: coconstruction of a narrative with Duplo toys, and coconstruction of a narrative with an emotion‐evoking picture book without text. Self‐touch, mainly fidgeting, was more frequent for children during the task with the picture book and more frequent for adults during the task with the Duplo toys. Mothers and children touched each other more often than metaplot and children. Adults' touches of the children were perceived as either expressions of affection or as acts of grooming and were task‐related. The children's touching of the adults was mainly task‐related. It appears that self‐touch is for children and adults alike a mode of self‐regulation of mild stress and that touching the other has a wide range of functions, especially in intimate relationships. ©2003 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.     

Remote control,umbilical cord and beyond: The mobile phone as a transitional object

This paper investigates mobile phone use as a medium of inter‐generational communication. Research on teenage mobile phone use has tended to focus on its peer group functionality. In this paper, the mobile phone is examined as a transitional object in parent–teen interrelationships. Specifically, drawing on ethnographic work conducted in Israel among teenagers between 2000 and 2006, the paper focuses on mobile telephones as physical objects that can connect people and mediate relationships. It is shown that, for parents and their teenage children, the mobile phone is important more for the possibility of communication and less for the text or voice conversation it actually carries. Analysis focuses also on the role of the mobile phone in enabling inter‐generational distance and intimacy, attending to the complicated ways in which the mobile phone is employed by parents and their teenage children. It is argued that the analysis of mobile phone practices needs to take directly into account the specific cultural contexts of production and consumption, as culture, technology and family mutually shape one another.