A modified “Parts Party” for couples work

The Parts Party exercise, developed by Virginia Satir for use in a workshop with an audience of at least 10 participants (Satir & Baldwin, 1983), has been modified in order to be applicable to couples therapy in which only the spouses are present. Exact instructions for conducting the game are described and interpretation strategy is illustrated for two case studies.Private Practice in Haifa, Israel.The author gratefully acknowledges the constructive comments of Virginia Satir.     

Changes in imitative behavior during early infancy

Changes in imitative behavior and attentiveness were observed in 40 infants when they were 2 to 6 months of age. The facial expressions happy, sad, and surprised were modeled in a trials-to-criterion procedure, and the infants' looking time and mouth movements were recorded by an observer who was unaware of the face being modeled. In addition, the observer recorded her guess as to the expression being modeled by the corresponding expression on the infant's face and rated the infant's expressivity. The results suggested that looking time, correspondence between the mouth expression of the infant and the mouth expression modeled, accuracy of the observer's guess, and expressivity ratings decreased from 2 to 3 and 4 to 6 months. Although matching of mouth movements with the modeled mouth movements and accuracy of guesses were greater than chance over the 2 to 6 month-period, the decreases in these measures suggest that imitative behavior declined across early infancy. The decrease in looking time suggests that imitative behavior and attentiveness may be related and highlights the limitation of this paradigm for assessing the development of imitation during early infancy.     

Exploring Behavioral Activation and Inhibition Sensitivities Among College Students at Risk for Bipolar Spectrum Symptomatology

We explored cross-sectionally the roles in bipolar spectrum symptomatology of two broad motivational systems that are thought to control levels of responsiveness to cues of threat and reward, the Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS) and the Behavioral Activation System (BAS). Undergraduate students (n = 357) completed questionnaires regarding (a) bipolar spectrum disorders [the General Behavior Inventory (GBI), a well-established clinical screening measure], (b) current depression and mania symptoms (the Internal State Scale; ISS), and (c) BIS/BAS sensitivities (the BIS/BAS scales). Validated cutoff scores on the GBI were used to identify individuals at risk for a mood disorder. It was hypothesized that, among at-risk respondents, high BAS and low BIS levels would be associated with high current mania ratings, whereas low BAS and high BIS would be associated with high current depression ratings. Multiple regression analyses indicated that, among at-risk individuals (n = 63), BAS accounted for 27% of current mania symptoms but BIS did not contribute. For these individuals, BAS and BIS were both significant and together accounted for 44% of current depressive symptoms.     

The effects of alcohol intoxication and sexual interest on men's sexual persistence and hostility in a dating simulation

Perpetrators of sexual assault are often intoxicated; however, few experimental studies evaluate alcohol's “in the moment” effects on sexual aggression. This study extends past theory and research by examining the acute effects of alcohol on men's decisions about how to respond to sexual refusals in a dating simulation. Men (N = 62) ages 21–29 were randomly assigned to consume alcohol (target breath alcohol level 0.080%) or no alcohol. Participants were encouraged to talk to a simulated woman and act as they would on an actual date. They made choices from a list which included nonsexual and sexual options. The female agent was programmed to engage in some sexual activities but refuse others. Refusals became more intense if participants persisted. Negative binomial regression analysis was used to test a path analytic model. As predicted, participants' self‐reported desire to have sex was positively associated with choosing more consensual sexual activities during the simulation (i.e., activities in which the woman willingly engaged). Consensual sexual activities were positively associated with the number of times participants persisted after the woman refused. Alcohol moderated this relationship such that it was stronger for intoxicated men than sober men. The more sexual refusals participants received, the more hostile verbal comments they made to the woman. Contrary to our predictions, this relationship was not moderated by alcohol condition. Because participants had multiple opportunities to escalate their aggression or desist, this paradigm provides new insights into the mechanisms through which intoxication enhances the likelihood of sexual aggression in dating situations.

     

Screen Time as a Mechanism Through Which Cumulative Risk is Related to Child Socioemotional and Developmental Outcomes in Early Childhood

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - Socio-demographic risks are associated with higher child screen time and higher screen time is associated with poor socioemotional and...     

Reuben's fall: complicating ‘goodness’ and schoolroom disobedience

This article offers a snapshot of children's sentient and relational spirituality within a moment of disobedience in a kindergarten classroom. It is a portion of a study that employed a combination of qualitative inquiry (by Eisner in 1998 Eisner, E. 1998. The enlightened eye: Qualitative inquiry and the enhancement of educational practice, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice‐Hall.  [Google Scholar]) and rhizoanalyis, adapted from the work of Deleuze and Guattari (of 1987 Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. 1987. A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia, Edited by: Massumi, B. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.  [Google Scholar]), MacNaughton (of 2005 MacNaughton, G. 2005. Doing Foucault in early childhood studies: Applying poststructural ideas, New York: Routledge. [Crossref] [Google Scholar]). The purpose of the larger study was to present moments of kindergarten children's disobedience in order to more fully understand the complexity of each moment. Rhizoanalysis was engaged in order to open lateral paths toward new understandings and questions regarding the disobedient actions of children, and so served to destabilise and challenge the known and given texts of children's disobedience and to disrupt the assumptions often made regarding the actions and interactions of young children as ‘bad’ or ‘good’ and offer ways to ‘see’ each moment of interaction as many things – both and neither bad nor good. The moment of disobedience and discussion offered within this paper focus on the children's engagement with one another as sensory and spiritual, using Hay and Nye's notion of spirituality as awareness‐, mystery‐, and value‐sensing.     

Risk for mania and positive emotional responding: too much of a good thing?

Although positive emotion research has begun to flourish, the extremes of positive emotion remain understudied. The present research used a multimethod approach to examine positive emotional disturbance by comparing participants at high and low risk for episodes of mania, which involves elevations in positive emotionality. Ninety participants were recruited into a high or low mania risk group according to responses on the Hypomanic Personality Scale. Participants' subjective, expressive, and physiological emotional responses were gathered while they watched two positive, two negative, and one neutral film clip. Results suggested that participants at high risk for mania reported elevated positive emotion and irritability and also exhibited elevated cardiac vagal tone across positive, negative, and neutral films. Discussion focuses on the implications these findings have for the diagnosis and prevention of bipolar disorder, as well as for the general study of positive emotion.