The Problematization of Sexuality among Women Living with HIV and a New Feminist Approach for Understanding and Enhancing Women’s Sexual Lives

In the context of HIV, women’s sexual rights and sexual autonomy are important but frequently overlooked and violated. Guided by community voices, feminist theories, and qualitative empirical research, we reviewed two decades of global quantitative research on sexuality among women living with HIV. In the 32 studies we found, conducted in 25 countries and composed mostly of cis-gender heterosexual women, sexuality was narrowly constructed as sexual behaviours involving risk (namely, penetration) and physiological dysfunctions relating to HIV illness, with far less attention given to the fullness of sexual lives in context, including more positive and rewarding experiences such as satisfaction and pleasure. Findings suggest that women experience declines in sexual activity, function, satisfaction, and pleasure following HIV diagnosis, at least for some period. The extent of such declines, however, is varied, with numerous contextual forces shaping women’s sexual well-being. Clinical markers of HIV (e.g., viral load, CD4 cell count) poorly predicted sexual outcomes, interrupting widely held assumptions about sexuality for women with HIV. Instead, the effects of HIV-related stigma intersecting with inequities related to trauma, violence, intimate relations, substance use, poverty, aging, and other social and cultural conditions primarily influenced the ways in which women experienced and enacted their sexuality. However, studies framed through a medical lens tended to pathologize outcomes as individual “problems,” whereas others driven by a public health agenda remained primarily preoccupied with protecting the public from HIV. In light of these findings, we present a new feminist approach for research, policy, and practice toward understanding and enhancing women’s sexual lives—one that affirms sexual diversity; engages deeply with society, politics, and history; and is grounded in women’s sexual rights.     

Psychological Skills and “the Paras”: The Indirect Effects of Psychological Skills on Endurance

We examined the indirect effects of basic psychological skills (PS) on military endurance through enhanced advanced PS while controlling for fitness. British Army recruits (n = 159) participated in three endurance events for Parachute Regiment selection and completed an adapted Test of Performance Strategies questionnaire (Hardy et al., 2010 Hardy, L., Roberts, R., Thomas, P. R., &; Murphy, S. M. (2010). Test of performance strategies (TOPS): Instrument refinement using confirmatory factor analysis. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 11, 27–35. doi:10.1016/j.psychsport.2009.04.007[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Following confirmatory factor analyses, the multiple mediation regression analyses using PROCESS (Hayes, 2013 Hayes, A.F. (2013). Introduction to mediation, moderation and conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach. New York, NY: Guilford Press. [Google Scholar]) suggested that goal setting, imagery and relaxation all had positive indirect effects on endurance via activation, with goal setting also impacting on endurance via negative thinking. These data provide some support for basic PS influencing endurance via advanced PS.     

‘Pre-crime’, Prevent,and practices of exceptionalism: Psychotherapy and the new norm in the NHS

Section ’26 of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 places a duty on local authorities and public sector institutions to have ‘due regard to the need to Prevent people from being drawn into terrorism’. Accordingly, NHS staff are now required to attend a Workshop to Raise Awareness of Prevent (WRAP), ensuring they are trained to spot the ideological symptoms and psychosocial vulnerabilities thought to predict extremist activity. In this paper, I suggest that the insertion of counter-radicalisation duties into the work of psychotherapists and other mental health professionals is not simply to be understood as an attempt to forestall and avert extremist activity. Rather, drawing on the work of Georgio Agamben and Judith Butler, I argue it can be viewed as an innovative tactic of governmentality whose technologies of surveillance ensure a culture of conformity in the NHS through which a ‘state of exception’ can be established and normalised. I illuminate this by examining two interrelated aspects of the Prevent duty: one, the decision by the government to embed Prevent within the existing rhetoric and practice of ‘safeguarding vulnerable children and adults’; and two, its discursive representation of the consulting room as ‘pre-criminal space’. I conclude by suggesting that the government’s determination to allow ‘no ungoverned space in which extremism is allowed to flourish’ targets the limits of acceptable speech and so the very conditions for radical thought and critique on which psychotherapy depends.     

A new set of 84 colored nonobjects

In this article, we present 84 nonobjects we created by using the colored object pictures from Rossion and Pourtois (2004). These nonobjects were explored on a number of measures, including object resemblance, visual complexity, and an object decision task (ODT). Object resemblance for nonobjects is a construct comparable to the “word-likeness” of phonotactically legal pseudowords. The nonobjects were rated as possible objects, showing similarity to real objects. Visual complexity ratings for objects and nonobjects were comparable. In the ODT, response times (RTs) were significantly longer for nonobjects than for real-object pictures. This RT difference is analogous to the word advantage, or lexicality effect, found in lexical decision tasks, in which responses for words are generally faster than those for nonwords. This nonobject set is freely available and has the advantage of having a companion set of real-object pictures. The nonobjects are available in color and in grayscale from brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

Genes Determine Stability and the Environment Determines Change in Cognitive Ability During 35 Years of Adulthood

ABSTRACT— Previous research has demonstrated stability of cognitive ability and marked heritability during adulthood, but questions remain about the extent to which genetic factors account for this stability. We conducted a 35-year longitudinal assessment of general cognitive ability using the Armed Forces Qualification Test administered to 7,232 male twins in early adulthood and readministered to a subset of 1,237 twins during late middle age. The proportion of variance in cognitive functioning explained by genetic factors was .49 in young adulthood and .57 in late middle age. The correlation between the two administrations was .74 with a genetic correlation of 1.0, indicating that the same genetic influences operated at both times. Genetic factors were primarily responsible for stability, and nonshared environmental factors were primarily responsible for change. The genetic factors influencing cognition may change across other eras, but the same genetic influences are operating from early adulthood to late middle age.     

The influence of context‐specific and dispositional achievement goals on children's paired collaborative interaction

Background . Research has demonstrated that working collaboratively can have positive effects on children's learning. While key factors have been identified which influence the quality of these interactions, little research has addressed the influence of children's achievement goals on collaborative behaviour. Aims . This paper investigates the influence of mastery and performance goals on the nature of children's collaborative participation while playing a problem‐solving computer game with a peer. Sample . Forty‐eight primary schoolchildren aged 8–10 years were divided into two groups: those displaying strong personal goal preferences (dispositional group: N = 14) and those whose goal preferences were context‐dependent, displaying no consistent bias for either mastery or performance goals (context‐dependent: N = 34). Children were paired on the basis of same gender, year group, and goal orientation. Method . Context‐dependent pairs were assigned to either a mastery or a performance condition in which they received goal‐focused instructions. Dispositional pairs received only the instructions to collaborate given to all groups. Collaborative sessions were videotaped and interactions coded. Results . Children who were assigned mastery goals engaged in significantly more elaborated problem‐solving discussion whilst children who were assigned performance goals engaged in more executive help seeking and displayed lower levels of metacognitive control. Dispositional pairs shared some similar patterns, according to goal orientation, as context‐dependent pairs. Conclusions . Goal‐focused instructions can be used to influence the nature and quality of children's paired interactions. Instructing children towards mastery goals appears to promote a more collaborative style of interaction.     

'The power of being seen': an interpretative phenomenological analysis of how experienced counselling psychologists describe the meaning and significance of personal therapy in clinical practice

There is a widely acknowledged lack of clarity in psychotherapeutic training about the role of personal therapy in developing practitioner competence. This paper presents part of a wider ongoing qualitative study exploring the role that personal therapy plays in the clinical practice and training of experienced counselling psychologists. Results derived from an interpretative phenomenological analysis suggest that personal therapy is valued mainly as a means of enhancing reflectiveness within clinical work. Detailed examination of a subset of the data offers scope for exploring how this process may occur within therapy, and points to the potential significance of early attachment experiences in the development and amplification of participants' reflective capacities. A possible theoretical framework is proposed and implications for future research discussed.     

Couple communication in stepfamilies

Effective communication is assumed to help sustain couple relationships and is a key focus of most relationship education programs. We assessed couple problem-solving communication in 65 stepfamily and 52 first-time-marrying couples, with each group stratified into high risk and low risk for relationship problems based on family-of-origin experiences. Relative to partners in first-time couples, partners in stepfamily couples were less positive, less negative, and more likely to withdraw from discussion. Risk was associated with communication in first-time but not stepfamily couples. Stepfamily couples do not exhibit the negative communication evident in high-risk first-time-marrying couples, and available relationship education programs that focus on reducing negative communication are unlikely to meet the needs of stepfamilies.     

Ontogenetic changes in the neural mechanisms of eyeblink conditioning

The rodent eyeblink conditioning paradigm is an ideal model system for examining the relationship between neural maturation and the ontogeny of associative learning. Elucidation of the neural mechanisms underlying the ontogeny of learning is tractable using eyeblink conditioning because the necessary neural circuitry (cerebellum and interconnected brainstem nuclei) underlying the acquisition and retention of the conditioned response (CR) has been identified in adult organisms. Moreover, the cerebellum exhibits substantial postnatal anatomical and physiological maturation in rats. The eyeblink CR emerges developmentally between postnatal day (PND) 17 and 24 in rats. A series of experiments found that the ontogenetic emergence of eyeblink conditioning is related to the development of associative learning and not related to changes in performance. More recent studies have examined the relationship between the development of eyeblink conditioning and the physiological maturation of the cerebellum, a brain structure that is necessary for eyeblink conditioning in adult organisms. Disrupting cerebellar development with lesions or antimitotic treatments impairs the ontogeny of eyeblink conditioning. Studies of the development of physiological processes within the cerebellum have revealed striking ontogenetic changes in stimulus-elicited and learning-related neuronal activity. Neurons in the interpositus nucleus and Purkinje cells in the cortex exhibit developmental increases in neuronal discharges following the unconditioned stimulus (US) and in neuronal discharges that model the amplitude and time-course of the eyeblink CR. The developmental changes in CR-related neuronal activity in the cerebellum suggest that the ontogeny of eyeblink conditioning depends on the development of mechanisms that estavlish cerebellar plasticity. Learning and the induction of neural plasticity depend on the magnitude of the US input to the cerebellum. The role of developmental changes in the efficacy of the US pathway has been investigated by monitoring neuronal activity in the inferior olive and with stimulation techniques. The results of these experiments indicate that the development of the conditioned eyeblink response may depend on dynamic interactions between multiple developmental processes within the eyeblink neural circuitry.