Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and the Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Where Counseling and Neuroscience Meet

There is increasing evidence to support the biological basis of mental disorders. Subsequently, understanding the neurobiological context from which mental distress arises can help counselors appropriately apply cognitive behavioral therapy and other well‐researched cognitive interventions. The purpose of this article is to describe the neurobiological context underlying the formation and treatment of posttraumatic stress disorders, a mental disorder frequently encountered by counselors, from a cognitive therapy framework.     

Eating Issues in Schools: Detection,Management, and Consultation With Allied Professionals

School counselors play a crucial role in the prevention, assessment, treatment, and overall management of eating‐related problems among children and adolescents. This article provides a framework for conceptualizing these difficulties on a continuum of severity and includes recommendations at each level for intervention and consultation. Collaboration with other professionals is encouraged when confronted with these multifaceted issues. Efforts by school counselors are vital to prevention and recovery from eating disorders.     

Young Indigenous Australians' Sexually Transmitted Infection Prevention Practices: A Community‐based Participatory Research Project

National surveillance data indicate marked differences between Indigenous and other Australians in the prevalence of many sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Young Indigenous people bear a particularly high burden of these infections. A collaboration of university researchers, Indigenous health workers and young Indigenous people conducted 45 field interviews to examine how young Indigenous Australians keep themselves healthy and protected against STIs. Our findings emphasise the complexity of health behaviours, where individuals are rarely always ‘risky’ or always ‘safe’, as well as subtle gender differences in health practices. Preventive strategies employed by the young people were contingent on beliefs and knowledge about sexual partners, the type of relationship, the context of the sexual encounter and access to condoms. Tangible strengths such as young Indigenous people's commitments to condoms and STI screening should be celebrated and bolstered to enhance their ability to protect themselves against adverse health outcomes and enhance their resilience against STIs. Focusing on strengths helps to counter the deficit model of health commonly deployed in Indigenous health research and draws attention to health issues facing young Indigenous people and their communities, without reinforcing negative stereotypes or focusing solely on individual risk behaviour. We provide concrete recommendations for health promotion and education. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Meta-Analysis of Interventions for Basic Mathematics Computation in Single-case Research

This study examined interventions for addition and subtraction that were implemented through single-case design (SCD) research studies. We attempted to extend prior SCD meta-analyses by examining differences in effect sizes across several moderating variables and by including a novel index of effect, improvement rate difference (IRD). We also examined the extent to which effect sizes differed by degree of experimental control achieved in the studies. Forty-seven effect sizes were obtained across 11 studies. IRD effect sizes ranged from .59 to .90 and suggested a moderate to large effect for the math interventions. Variables that appeared to moderate the effects were student age, time spent in intervention, and intervention type. We also identified a relationship between experimental control and the obtained effect sizes. Findings indicated that further SCD research in basic arithmetic and rigorous experiments are necessary to establish an evidence base that accurately characterizes intervention effectiveness.     

Priming honesty reduces subjective bias in self-report measures of mind wandering

Using self-report as a measure of conscious experience has been a point of contention in mind wandering research. Whereas prior work has focused on the introspective component of self-report validity, the current research introduces an honesty prime task to the current paradigm in order to assess the role of goal states and social factors on self-report accuracy. Findings provide evidence for an inflated report of mind wandering frequency arising from demand characteristics, intensified by the divergent properties of the subjective and behavioural measures and the general deficit in meta-awareness of off task episodes.     

Defining the Role of Laboratory Genetic Counselor

An increasing number of genetic counselors are moving into non-clinical roles, where their primary duties do not involve direct patient contact. According to the National Society of Genetic Counselors Professional Status Survey in 2010, 23% of counselors working in non-clinical roles identified laboratory or genetic testing as their primary area of work. Using a survey, we identified 43 genetic counselors who work predominately in laboratory settings. The two primary tasks performed by participants, include acting as a customer liaison (95%) and calling out test results (88%). Nineteen participants (44.2%) also reported spending a considerable amount of time signing reports. The most prevalent areas of job satisfaction were support from laboratory directors (76.8%), autonomy (76.7%), interactions with clinicians (69.7%) and interaction with other genetics counselors (67.5%). This is the first study specifically looking at the roles of laboratory genetic counselors, which is an expanding area of genetic counseling.     

Racial and Ethnic Differences in Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Tests Awareness in HINTS 2007: Sociodemographic and Numeracy Correlates

To examine the association of 1) race/ethnicity and 2) numeracy with awareness of DTC genetic tests. Secondary analysis of 6,754 Hispanic, black, and white adult respondents to the National Cancer Institute’s 2007 Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS). Logistic regression was used to examine sociodemographic predictors of DTC genetic tests awareness including race/ethnicity, income, education, and gender. Next, two numeracy variables were added to the model. After controlling for sociodemographic variables, black respondents were significantly less likely to have heard of DTC genetic tests compared to white respondents (OR = 0.79; CI: 0.65–0.97). When numeracy variables were added to the model, the effect of black race was no longer significant (OR = 0.84; CI: 0.69–1.04). Hispanic respondents did not significantly differ from white respondents in awareness of DTC genetic tests. Other significant correlates of DTC genetic tests awareness in the full model included education, income, age, and numeracy variables including degree to which people use medical statistics and numbers to make health decisions, and preference for words or numbers when discussing “the chance of something happening.” Although black respondents were generally less aware of DTC genetic tests than white respondents, this relationship appears to be partially mediated by numeracy.     

An optimal adjustment procedure to minimize experiment time in decisions with multiple alternatives

Decisions between multiple alternatives typically conform to Hick’s Law: Mean response time increases log-linearly with the number of choice alternatives. We recently demonstrated context effects in Hick’s Law, showing that patterns of response latency and choice accuracy were different for easy versus difficult blocks. The context effect explained previously observed discrepancies in error rate data and provided a new challenge for theoretical accounts of multialternative choice. In the present article, we propose a novel approach to modeling context effects that can be applied to any account that models the speed–accuracy trade-off. The core element of the approach is “optimality” in the way an experimental participant might define it: minimizing the total time spent in the experiment, without making too many errors. We show how this approach can be included in an existing Bayesian model of choice and highlight its ability to fit previous data as well as to predict novel empirical context effects. The model is shown to provide better quantitative fits than a more flexible heuristic account.     

The design and analysis of state-trace experiments

State-trace analysis (Bamber, 1979) addresses a question of interest in many areas of psychological research: Does 1 or more than 1 latent (i.e., not directly observed) variable mediate an interaction between 2 experimental manipulations? There is little guidance available on how to design an experiment suited to state-trace analysis, despite its increasing use, and existing statistical methods for state-trace analysis are problematic. We provide a framework for designing and refining a state-trace experiment and statistical procedures for the analysis of accuracy data using Klugkist, Kato, and Hoijtink's (2005) method of estimating Bayes factors. The statistical procedures provide estimates of the evidence favoring 1 versus more than 1 latent variable, as well as evidence that can be used to refine experimental methodology.