Aging, inhibition, and social inappropriateness

This study explores the hypothesis that age-related declines in inhibitory ability are associated with increases in socially inappropriate behavior. Consistent with this hypothesis, older participants were less likely than younger participants to differentiate between public and private settings when inquiring about potentially embarrassing issues, according to their peers. Additionally, this indiscriminate public inquiry was associated with decreased closeness with participants' peers, particularly for older adults. Finally, this age-related increase in social inappropriateness was mediated by inhibitory deficits associated with aging. These results suggest that age-related deficits in inhibitory ability may cause people to become socially inappropriate against their will.     

Group Processes in Family Therapy: a Psychoanalytic Approach

This paper describes a model of family therapy that draws on experiences and theories of psychoanalysis as applied to individuals and groups. It suggests concepts that help to understand and work with the family as a system. A brief example is given to illustrate the effort to engage with the patients' immediate feelings in the session in relation to each other and the therapist.     

Gender Differences in Transformational Leadership: An Examination of Superior,Leader, and Subordinate Perspectives

This study examined gender differences intransformational leadership from multiple perspectives.The sample was employees of a large international bank inAustralia. Ratings were obtained from branch managers' (n = 120 female and n = 184 male), theirsuperiors (n = 32) and subordinates (n = 588). Thefindings showed that superiors evaluated female managersas more transformational than male managers. Consistent with the superior observations, at the globallevel, female managers rated themselves as moretransformational than males, however, at the morespecific, behavioral level of analysis, significantgender differences were noted only for those subscaleswhich are more interpersonally-oriented. Subordinatesevaluated their female and male leadersequally.     

Walking in sacred spaces in the therapeutic bond: therapists' experiences of compassion satisfaction coupled with the potential for vicarious traumatization

The therapeutic bond is at the heart of effective therapy, yet few studies have examined therapists' experience of this bond. Using a qualitative study design, this exploratory study examines the experiences of couple and family therapists in relation to their perceptions of the satisfactions and risks involved in the therapeutic bond. The research was conducted using grounded theory methodology and eight in-depth interviews were conducted with therapists working in five counseling agencies in Sydney, Australia. Therapists described the importance of the 3 component parts of the therapeutic bond: the empathic connection between therapist and client; the role investment of the client; and the mutual affirmation experienced by both therapist and client in the therapeutic process. Walking in sacred spaces with the client was seen as both enriching and challenging for the therapist. The therapeutic bond gave therapists intense satisfaction and posed risks for them, especially when working with traumatic client experiences. However, the findings suggest that the experience of compassion satisfaction and the development of vicarious resilience counter-balanced the intense difficulty of bearing witness to clients' traumatic experiences and the potential for vicarious traumatization. The implications for sustaining couple and family therapists in their work are discussed.     

Global Ethics and Nanotechnology: A Comparison of the Nanoethics Environments of the EU and China

The following article offers a brief overview of current nanotechnology policy, regulation and ethics in Europe and The People??s Republic of China with the intent of noting (dis)similarities in approach, before focusing on the involvement of the public in science and technology policy (i.e. participatory Technology Assessment). The conclusions of this article are, that (a) in terms of nanosafety as expressed through policy and regulation, China PR and the EU have similar approaches towards, and concerns about, nanotoxicity??the official debate on benefits and risks is not markedly different in the two regions; (b) that there is a similar economic drive behind both regions?? approach to nanodevelopment, the difference being the degree of public concern admitted; and (c) participation in decision-making is fundamentally different in the two regions. Thus in China PR, the focus is on the responsibility of the scientist; in the EU, it is about government accountability to the public. The formulation of a Code of Conduct for scientists in both regions (China PR??s predicted for 2012) reveals both similarity and difference in approach to nanotechnology development. This may change, since individual responsibility alone cannot guide S&T development, and as public participation is increasingly seen globally as integral to governmental decision-making.     

Not all skilled readers have cracked the code: individual differences in masked form priming

This experiment investigated whether individual differences in written language proficiency among university students predict the early stages of lexical retrieval tapped by the masked form priming lexical decision task. To separate the contributions of sublexical facilitation and lexical competition to masked form priming, the effects of prime lexicality were directly compared for both transposed-letter (TL) primes (e.g., sung SNUG; salb SLAB) and neighbor primes (e.g., snag SNUG; sleb SLAB) in a sample of 100 university students assessed on measures of reading, spelling and vocabulary. The data for the whole sample showed facilitation from nonword primes, but inhibition from word primes. Linear mixed models including the individual difference measures showed that higher scores on a principal component that captured the shared variance among reading, spelling, and vocabulary were associated with both stronger inhibition from TL word primes and stronger facilitation from neighbor nonword primes. These findings are consistent with the lexical quality hypothesis of reading that predicts that skilled readers vary in the extent to which they have developed precisely specified orthographic representations.     

Comprehensive Trail Making Test performance in children and adolescents with traumatic brain injury

The sensitivity of the Trail Making Test to brain damage has been well-established over many years, making it one of the most commonly used tests in clinical neuropsychological evaluations. The current study examined the validity of scores from a newer version of the Trail Making Test, the Comprehensive Trail Making Test (CTMT), in children and adolescents with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Participants included 242 children and adolescents, 121 with sustained TBI and 121 normal control participants, who were matched to the individuals with TBI on age and sex. Receiver operating characteristic analysis indicated that the CTMT composite index provided the best overall classification, with a correct classification rate of 79%. Differences between the TBI and control groups remained stable across age. These findings indicate that the CTMT is sensitive to TBI and overall demonstrates classification rates that are comparable with some other versions of the Trail Making Test. Whether the CTMT will exhibit similar classification accuracy in adults with TBI and for other neurological disorders awaits further investigation.     

Anxiety, conscious awareness and change detection

Attentional scanning was studied in anxious and non-anxious participants, using a modified change detection paradigm. Participants detected changes in pairs of emotional scenes separated by two task irrelevant slides, which contained an emotionally valenced scene (the 'distractor scene') and a visual mask. In agreement with attentional control theory, change detection latencies were slower overall for anxious participants. Change detection in anxious, but not non-anxious, participants was influenced by the emotional valence and exposure duration of distractor scenes. When negative distractor scenes were presented at subliminal exposure durations, anxious participants detected changes more rapidly than when supraliminal negative scenes or subliminal positive scenes were presented. We propose that for anxious participants, subliminal presentation of emotionally negative distractor scenes stimulated attention into a dynamic state in the absence of attentional engagement. Presentation of the same scenes at longer exposure times was accompanied by conscious awareness, attentional engagement, and slower change detection.     

A Practical Guide to Building an Integral World

We stand at the start of a new millennium with a growing awareness of what is wrong with our civilization but little agreement as to what to do. From environmental crises to democratic systems dominated by moneyed interests, the list of dangers is long and growing. Each issue has a band of defenders who struggle to right that particular wrong but, because these bands are disjointed, the broad movement they serve remains incoherent and weak. The broad movement is usually described as toward "sustainable civilization," but its precise designation is "integral society." The challenge for the emerging "new science" is to provide a framework for understanding that unifies and gives direction to the disparate efforts that comprise the integral movement. This framework must address three needs. First, it must provide a sound understanding of why, despite our sophistication, things seem to be going badly in so many spheres. Secondly, it must present a believable vision of where our civilization should be headed. Finally, it must provide a sense that there are concrete steps we can take to achieve the deep dreams that most of us actually share. What we need, in short, is not more disparate insights, but rather a collective intellectual unity that integrates existing insights into a logically coherent and emotionally compelling whole. Such integration, however, cannot be constructed artificially, by committee or consensus. Rather, true integration can only come from a unified scientific understanding of why various ideas connect. Today, a scientific story capable of such unifying understanding is found in the expanded theory of evolution that is emerging from the union of a broad range of scientific efforts. This theory also serves as a unifying thread for an integrated new science. This article outlines the "dynamic" view of evolution and how it unites integral efforts.