Investing in Success: Key Strategies for Building Quality in After-School Programs

This paper examines the relation between the implementation quality of after-school literacy activities and student reading gains. The data are from an evaluation of a multi-site after-school program in California in which continuous program quality improvement strategies were implemented to improve the delivery of a new balanced literacy program. Strategies included: (1) targeted staff training throughout the year, (2) regular observations and coaching of staff, and (3) the use of data to measure progress. Programs struggled to successfully implement these strategies early in the initiative, but gradually improved the quality and consistency of their use. Program quality, as measured through observations, also increased. Results suggested that the size of student reading gains were positively correlated with the quality of literacy programming provided by each instructor.     

FDG-PET Analysis and Findings in Amnesia Resulting From Hypoxia

The assumptions underlying neuroimaging, and problems in its analysis and interpretation, are commonly underestimated in neuropsychology. The ways in which fluoro-deoxy-glucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET) data can be analysed are discussed. PET findings from four patients who had suffered severe amnesia, following episodes of acute hypoxia, are presented. These patients had shown evidence of medial temporal (hippocampal and parahippocampal) atrophy on MRI brain scans. The PET data were analysed in several different ways. The converging findings were that the patients showed bilateral thalamic hypometabolism, and there was also evidence of retrosplenial hypometabolism bilaterally. Cognitively, these patients performed most like other patients with medial temporal lesions, but the results indicate that structural lesions can have distal metabolic effects on structures elsewhere. These findings are interpreted in the light of neuroanatomical observations concerning parallel projections between medial temporal lobe structures and the thalamus, some of which pass via the retrosplenium.     

Anxiety Responses and Psychological Skill Use During the Time Leading up to Competition: Theory to Practice I

This study investigated temporal responses associated with competitive anxiety in athletes with facilitative and debilitative interpretations of their anxiety symptoms. Qualitative interviews assessed the intensity, frequency, and direction of cognitive and somatic symptoms experienced during a 7-day competitive cycle and the psychological strategies used to attain/maintain a positive psychological state. Analysis indicated three distinct temporal phases within the competitive cycle during which the intensity and frequency of cognitive and somatic symptoms increased. The facilitators utilized a refined repertoire of psychological skills to internally control and re-interpret the cognitive and somatic symptoms experienced. The debilitators did not possess this refined repertoire of psychological skills and relied on external strategies to stabilize the negative symptoms experienced. The findings emphasize the dynamic properties of the stress response and provide a framework for the structure, timing, and content of psychological skills interventions for use with performers who interpret anxiety symptoms as debilitative.     

Remarks on the Case of Pamela

This is a discussion of Robert Grossmark's paper: “The Case of Pamela.” It emphasizes the trauma in her early upbringing and uses her own words to describe the severe damage this did to both her physical and her emotional sense of existence. It touches on the crumbling of her ability to trust, the dysregulation of her physical and mental economy, the substitution of false self personnae for the endangered real self, and the inevitable enactments that occur in a treatment of this sort. Though recognizing the remarkable help that this treatment afforded her, it suggests that a further phase of explicit negative transference is being postponed and might be necessary for the full completion of this treatment.     

On Digital Consciousness and Psychic Death

This paper describes states of consciousness in some disturbed or traumatized patients in which time is not experienced as being linked to future or past. The patient's experience in this state is “digital” rather than continuous, making it difficult for him to have an inner sense of continual “aliveness” and to link analytic sessions together. In extreme cases, his world may be experienced as a succession of moments interrupted by little blanks or psychic deaths. The experiential, developmental, and neurobiological aspects of these states are explored with an emphasis on implications for psychoanalytic treatment.     

Discussion of Katherine Oram's Case

This case is a wonderful example of the impressive transformations that can be achieved in a psychoanalytic encounter between a gifted clinician and a gifted patient. It is discussed from the point of view of the development of evocative object constancy and of the sadomasochistic relationships that ensue when there are deficits in object constancy and attachment. For many patients with these issues, to be with anyone means being in pain and to be without pain means being alone. This is illustrated with examples in both the transference and the countertransference.     

The Family Story Technique and Intrafamily Analysis

The Family Story Technique (FST) was devised because of its promising versatility in the assessment among family members of affect, interactional patterns, and outlook on the future. The FST makes use of ten selected TAT cards and a modification of Fine's scoring system. Reliability of scoring in terms of per cent agreement between two scorers was found to range from 67% to 100% for usable categories. Potential usefulness of the FST in family diagnosis and family patterning of interactions is illustrated by a case presentation of family FST scores.     

A Direct Study of Halo Effect

Five individuals were evaluated on a 7-point scale from strongly dislike (1) to strongly like (7). A week later the same people were rated on 16 relatively distinct traits, such as carefulness, sense of humor, fairness, and sociability. For three of the rated individuals, there were no extreme ratings on the general impression (liking) scale by raters, and the correlations between those scores and mean trait ratings were .26, .32, and .36. For the other two, there were sharp and extreme ratings on the general liking scale, and correlations between those scores and mean trait ratings were .60 and .76. This method provides a more appropriate and more meaningful index of halo effect than other methods because it is based more directly on Thorndike's (1920) original concept.