A Systemic Treatment of Families with a Child Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder Using a Narrative Lens

Abstract

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopment disorder that now affects one in 59 children, a 15% increase from the 2012 report. Although there have been numerous studies on the treatment of ASD, interventions focus primarily on the individual diagnosed with ASD. Marriage and family therapists’ (MFT) are in a unique position to handle the systemic dynamics of ASD. As a result, many MFTs find it difficult and outside their scope of practice to work with these families. We will explore aspects of narrative family therapy, conceptualization, and interventions, giving the reader a base understanding of how to implement narrative therapy while working with this population.     

Gender‐role egalitarianism predicts desirable traits of potential marriage partners: A cross‐cultural comparison

We examined whether gender‐role egalitarianism predicted participants' rank‐order preferences for traits in potential marriage partners of the opposite sex, and whether gender‐role egalitarianism mediated cultural differences between participants from North America, Polynesia and East Asia. Participants completed the Sex‐Role Egalitarianism Scale and ranked the following traits in terms of their importance in choosing a potential marriage partner: kindness, physical attractiveness, social level, athleticism, creativity and liveliness. Parallel analyses for male and female participants reveal that traditional males value physical attractiveness more than egalitarian males, and that traditional females value social level more and kindness less than egalitarian females. Gender‐role egalitarianism fully mediated the effect of culture on kindness rankings, but no others. These results expand upon previous findings by accounting for individual differences regarding beliefs about traditional gender roles.     

Re-examining Religiosity as a Protective Factor: Comparing Alcohol Use by Self-Identified Religious,Spiritual, and Secular College Students

Religiosity has been found to be associated with lower alcohol use by college students. The majority of studies on this topic, however, fail to differentiate religiosity and spirituality. This is potentially problematic due to the changing face of religion in America today. A study was conducted to explore similarities and differences between self-identified religious and spiritual college students. A modified version of the Core Alcohol and Drug Survey was administered online with a sample of 2,312 students. As hypothesized, self-identified religious and spiritual students differed significantly on key variables related to religious practices, alcohol consumption, and postmodern social values.     

A Q Analysis on the Impact of Shadow Education on the Academic Life of High School Students

Shadow education, more commonly known as private tutoring, has been actively supplementing the formal mainstream education system in both developed and developing countries. Using the Q methodology, a quali-quantilogical approach, the study determined how private tutoring has impacted the academic life of high school students by exploring and analyzing their subjective experiences in relation to being part of shadow education. This was done by asking 30 high school students to perform a Q sort of 48 statements that depicts the impact of shadow education or private tutoring. The findings revealed that exposure to shadow education activities affected the general attitude of the participants towards their studies and learning and their perception about their selves and their ability to perform tasks related to their schooling. Likewise, results also showed that exposure to shadow education activities had an effect on the academic performance of the participants. The effect of exposure to shadow education activities are not limited to those commonly reported in literature.     

Moving the Pendulum Back to the Middle: Reflections on and Introduction to the Inductive Research Special Issue of Journal of Business and Psychology

This special issue of the Journal of Business and Psychology contains a diverse set of 13 papers that adopted an inductive approach. In addition to setting the stage for the special feature, the case for inductive research is broached. The papers in the special feature used a variety of approaches, both qualitative and quantitative, that shared the characteristic that they did not report tests of deductive theory-driven hypotheses. Rather these papers presented exploratory findings that were not limited by an explicit a priori theoretical framework. The special issue heeds calls that the field needs more inductive research to serve as the basis for theory. It is hoped that it will inspire editors of other journals to be more accepting of good inductive papers that report novel findings.     

Cognitive control processes underlying time-based prospective memory impairment in individuals with high depressive symptomatology

The current study compared time-based prospective memory (PM) for individuals with high depressive symptomatology (HDS) and low depressive symptomatology (LDS). We examined PM accuracy rate, clock-checking frequency, and decrements in ongoing task performance (i.e., costs to ongoing tasks) associated with an embedded time-based PM task. HDS participants demonstrated numerically lower but statistically comparable clock-checking frequency to LDS participants. However, their PM performance was significantly poorer than that of LDS participants. The pattern of observed costs to ongoing tasks and correlational analyses between ongoing task performance and PM accuracy showed that, relative to LDS participants, HDS participants were restricted in their allocation of attentional resources to support PM. We concluded that although HDS and LDS participants externally controlled their time-based PM task performance (i.e., clock-checking) similarly, the HDS participants lacked the cognitive initiative to allocate attentional resources to internally control PM task performance. Such internal control might reflect time-estimation processes, the resources required to maintain the PM task response intention, and/or the ability to coordinate the PM task response with ongoing task demands. To our knowledge, this is the first paper to have examined time-based PM strategies used by HDS individuals beyond clock-checking. The data suggest that interventions that encourage intermittent strategic reviews of PM goals may be beneficial for individuals with high depressive symptomatology.