Essential theory, processes, and procedures for successful group psychotherapy: Group cohesion as exemplar

With few exceptions or at the very least cautions (cf. Burlingame, MacKenzie & Strauss, 2003) group psychotherapy has proven to be an effective and efficient treatment for a number of psychological disorders (Burlingame, Kapetanovic, & Ross, 2005). This article will briefly describe a theory that underlies successful group therapies. In addition, certain group processes—those elements that occur during the group itself that appear to be necessary conditions for improved patient outcomes—will also be addressed, although unfortunately, the sufficient conditions tying moment-to-moment process to actual outcome (improved patient functioning by the end of therapy, and at 6-month follow-up, for instance) are not quite as easily delineated. A closer study of the group therapeutic factor cohesion will be utilized as an example of these practice and research dilemmas. Finally, suggestions for future directions, which might more clearly uncover important connections between process and outcome, are addressed.     

Evolution of the wealth gap in child development and mediating pathways: Evidence from a longitudinal study in Bogota,Colombia

Large gaps in cognition and language on the Bayley‐III between the top and bottom household wealth quartiles in 1,330 children aged 6–42 months in a representative sample of low‐ and middle‐income families in Bogota were previously shown. Maternal education and the home environment mediated these wealth effects, whereas height‐for‐age mediated a small amount of the language deficit only. At ages 6–8 years, we relocated 72% of the children and assessed their IQ on the WISC‐V, school achievement, and behavior to investigate the evolution of the wealth gaps and potential mediators. The wealth gap in IQ at 6–8 years was significantly larger than that in a factor combining Bayley‐III language and cognition at 6–42 months; whereas the gap in achievement was larger but not significantly. Moreover, in cross‐sectional analysis, the IQ gap increased from 6 to 8 years reaching over 1 SD. In contrast, the gap in behavior was not significant in either childhood stage. Parental education and early home environment remained major mediators of the wealth gap in IQ and achievement at 6–8 years; later home environment and attending private education also had an effect; and early height‐for‐age was no longer significant. The home environment partly mediated the effect of parental education on wealth. All mediators combined explained most of the variance in the wealth gap; the remaining gaps being not significant. Results highlight the importance of the early home environment and suggest that interventions focusing on that should have long‐term benefits. Also, continued intervention through to 8 years may be desirable. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/_U53iXNww3I .     

Putting to a bigger hole: Golf performance relates to perceived size

When people are engaged in a skilled behavior, such as occurs in sports, their perceptions relate optical information to their performance. In the present research, we demonstrate the effects of performance on size perception in golfers. We found that golfers who played better judged the hole to be bigger than did golfers who did not play as well. In follow-up laboratory experiments, participants putted on a golf mat from a location near or far from the hole and then judged the size of the hole. Participants who putted from the near location perceived the hole to be bigger than did participants who putted from the far location. Our results demonstrate that perception is influenced by the perceiver’s current ability to act effectively in the environment.     

"Elicitation hooks": a discourse analysis of chaplain-patient interaction in pastoral and spiritual care

The article considers the communicative role of the hospital chaplain and maps some of the language strategies deployed to facilitate disclosure of the patients' concerns and achieve enhanced spiritual care. These include: i) involvement, ii) politeness and iii) encouraging disclosure or exploring emotion.     

Does Psychological Empowerment Mediate the Relationship Between Psychological Climate and Job Satisfaction?

This study tested a model in which empowerment was hypothesised to mediate the relationship between psychological climate and job satisfaction. Individual levels of negative affectivity were controlled for. The sample consisted of 174 customer service employees (59% female and 39% male). Support was found for a model in which empowerment mediated the relationship between climate and job satisfaction, the dimensions of meaning and competence were largely responsible for the mediating effects of empowerment. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings were explored.     

Links between grievance, complaint and different forms of entitlement

The author argues that different kinds of object relationships underlie the phenomena of grievance and complaint. Grievance is addressed to an object held responsible for a failure of idealisation, and the object is scolded or punished for this failure. Nursing grievance can restore the ideal object in phantasy and block mourning the ideal. With pathological grievance the self is seen as ideal and awareness of dependence on the libidinal other is denied, as are the passage of time and the transience of experience. An attitude of narcissistic entitlement to be special and exempt from ordinary reality is seen as intrinsic to the more persistent and pathological forms of grievance, and this narcissistic entitlement fuels grievance. Turning to complaint, the author argues that complaint is addressed to an object that is less idealised; there is more open acknowledgement of the need for and dependence on the other to realise liveliness. Complaint is the voice of the authentic lively self and intrinsic to complaint is a sense of lively entitlement. The author presents clinical material to illustrate these themes, and to show movement between complaint and grievance. Some technical difficulties in working with grievance are discussed.     

Empty Wells: How well are we doing at spiritual well-being?

This paper presents ten teachers' perceptions of spirituality and considers how these can be categorized. A small research project, recently undertaken, is described. Teachers' stories are contextualised with biographical details, and are presented within a framework of four dimensions of Spirituality (the inner, the social and moral, the environmental and the transcendental) and Spirituality is defined metaphorically as a hologram with four dimensions. I argue that by viewing spirituality in four broad dimensions the bland consensus definition can be avoided resulting in rich fulfilling opportunities for developing children's own unique and varied spiritualities.     

ROMANTIC PARTNERS' COPING STRATEGIES AND PATTERNS OF CORTISOL REACTIVITY AND RECOVERY IN RESPONSE TO RELATIONSHIP CONFLICT

Stress in close relationships can have significant negative consequences for mental health, physical health, and long-term relationship functioning. Dysregulated physiological responses to stress are potential pathways through which relationship stress may lead to these kinds of outcomes, and the ways in which individuals attempt to cope with relationship stress are likely to impact their physiological responses. However, our understanding of the specific coping strategies that predict physiological reactivity and recovery in these contexts is rather limited. This study explored relations between young adult college students' self-reported methods of coping with stress in their romantic relationships and their physiological reactivity to and recovery from negotiating conflict with their romantic partners. Partners' coping styles were also examined as predictors of physiological stress responses. One hundred and ninety opposite-sex couples (N = 380; modal length of relationship = 1-2 years) participated in an experimental conflict discussion task. Physiological stress reactivity to the task was assessed using salivary cortisol, a primary hormonal product of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis. Growth modeling of the cortisol levels before, during, and after the conflict task indicated that men who typically coped with relationship stress by seeking social support showed greater physiological reactivity to the conflict task. Partners' need for social support predicted stronger stress responses for both men and women, as well. While seeking social support is generally thought to be an adaptive coping strategy for couples, the results suggest that within the context of conflict negotiation in which receiving and providing support may be more difficult, seeking support from a partner is associated with greater phyisological stress.     

ON THE EFFICIENCY OF VISUAL SELECTIVE ATTENTION:

Abstract— The ability to ignore irrelevant peripheral distractors was assessed as a junction of the efficiency in visual search for a target at the center of display. Efficient target search, among dissimilar nontargets, led to greater distraction than inefficient search, among similar nontargets. This seemingly paradoxical result is predicted by the recent proposal (Lavie, 1995a) that irrelevant processing can be prevented only by increasing the load for relevant processing. Varying the set size of similar items in the central search task demonstrated that interference from irrelevant distractors was eliminated only with more than four relevant items. These results demonstrate how capacity limits determine the efficiency of selective attention, and raise questions about some standard assumptions of most visual search models.