Ward v. Wilbanks: Students Respond

Ward v. Wilbanks is the most important legal case for the profession of counseling in the last 25 years. This qualitative research used general content analysis to examine master's‐level counseling students’ responses to the Ward v. Wilbanks case. Emergent themes from data analysis include (a) the role of gatekeeping; (b) Julea Ward and Eastern Michigan University: inflexible and uncompromising; (c) Ward v. Wilbanks: confusion, complexity, and certainty; and (d) personal values, professional values, and the ACA Code of Ethics (American Counseling Association, 2005 ).     

Young Offenders’ Emotion Recognition Dysfunction Across Emotion Intensities: Explaining Variation Using Psychopathic Traits,Conduct Disorder and Offense Severity

Antisocial individuals have problems recognizing negative emotions (e.g. Marsh & Blair in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 32:454–465, 2009); however, due to issues with sampling and different methods used, previous findings have been varied. Sixty-three male young offenders and 37 age-, IQ- and socio-economic status-matched male controls completed a facial emotion recognition task, which measures recognition of happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, and surprise and neutral expressions across 4 emotional intensities. Conduct disorder (YSR), and psychopathic and callous/unemotional traits (YPI) were measured, and offenders’ offense data were taken from the Youth Offending Service’s case files. Relative to controls, offenders were significantly worse at identifying sadness, low intensity disgust and high intensity fear. A significant interaction for anger was also observed, with offenders showing reduced low- but increased high-intensity anger recognition in comparison with controls. Within the young offenders levels of conduct disorder and psychopathic traits explained variation in sadness and disgust recognition, whereas offense severity explained variation in anger recognition. These results suggest that antisocial youths show specific problems in recognizing negative emotions and support the use of targeted emotion recognition interventions for problematic behavior.     

Parent-Child Interaction Therapy for ADHD: A Conceptual Overview and Critical Literature Review

ABSTRACT

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), a chronic disorder beginning in childhood, is identifiable and diagnostically valid during the preschool years. Compared to school-aged children, preschoolers have not received as much attention in the literature. Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) is an empirically-supported parent training program for young children with disruptive behaviors that may also be effective in treating ADHD. The purpose of the current article was to explore the theoretical rationale for utilizing PCIT with this population and to conduct a literature review of published PCIT treatment outcome studies that measured ADHD symptoms. The literature demonstrates that children with ADHD have been included in PCIT research and evidence suggests that PCIT may be effective for young children with ADHD. However, future research is needed to specifically examine the effects of PCIT on ADHD.     

Decreasing Self-Injurious Behavior in a Student with Autism and Tourette Syndrome through Positive Attention and Extinction

This case study was conducted with a student diagnosed with autism and Tourette syndrome who displayed severe self-injurious behavior (SIB). We conducted a functional behavioral assessment which indicated that SIB was maintained by multiple functions using an ABAC design to determine the effect of positive social attention and extinction. Results show a considerable decrease in SIB incidents, particularly when session duration was reduced from 10 minutes to 5 minutes during the second intervention phase. Thus, the combination of contingent social attention formulated from the functional assessment and extinction was successful in bringing about significant decreases in SIB. This combination holds great promise as a nonintrusive positive strategy for SIB.     

Illegitimate concept equating in the partial fusion of construct validation theory and latent variable modeling

There has come to exist a partial fusion of construct validation theory and latent variable modeling at the center of which is located a practice of equating concepts such as construct, factor, latent variable, concept, unobservable, unmeasurable, underlying, hypothetical variable, theoretical term, theoretical variable, intervening variable, cause, abstractive property, functional unity, and measured property. In the current paper we: a) provide a structural explanation of this concept equating; b) provide arguments to the effect that it is illegitimate; c) suggest that the singular reason for the presence of construct in the literature of the social and behavioral sciences is to mark an allowance taken by the social and behavioral scientist to obliterate the concept/referent distinction that is foundational of sound science.     

Perinatal Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Implications for Occupational Therapy in Early Intervention Practice

The purpose of this article is to present literature regarding perinatal posttraumatic stress disorder and to describe the implications of research findings for occupational therapy screening and treatment in early intervention practice. Changes in legislation regarding early intervention practice and family centered care are presented as a rationale for including maternal mental health screening as a standard practice in the field of early intervention. A case study illustrates symptoms of perinatal posttraumatic stress disorder and the effect on maternal-infant co-occupational engagement. The Model of Human Occupation is used to guide clinical reasoning about potential occupational therapy interventions.     

Relevant dimensions of cyberbullying — Results from two experimental studies

Cyberbullying is a prevalent problem of adolescents. However, several conceptual and measurement questions, regarding its defining characteristics and relevant dimensions in comparison to conventional bullying, remain unanswered. To this end we conducted two studies with experimental methods. Study I shows that power imbalance in terms of perceived popularity is relevant for the affective, cognitive, and behavioral experience of cyberbullying. Cyberbullying by a popular bully is more distressing than cyberbullying by an unpopular bully. Study II shows that factors unique to cyberbullying are also relevant for the experience of cyberbullying, namely the media and the type of cyberbullying. For example, different types of cyberbullying are related to different patterns of relevant coping strategies. Therefore, cyberbullying seems both a unique phenomenon and closely related to conventional bullying.     

Conflict management: A premarital training program in mutual problem solving

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a structured educational program designed to train premarital couples in communication and mutual problem-solving skills. Twenty-six couples participated in an eight-week, 24-hour problem-solving training program, while 28 similar couples participated in an eight-week, 24-hour relationship discussion group. Results indicated that the problem-solving group, as compared to the relationship-discussion group, showed a significant increase in communication and mutual problem-solving skills. Discussion focused on the benefits for premarital couples of learning effective problemsolving procedures as well as the need for follow-up assessments of both behavioral skill level and relationship satisfaction and adjustment.     

Choice as a Moderator of Placebo Expectation Effects: Additional Support From Two Experiments

Two experiments investigated the hypothesis that treatment choice enhances placebo treatment efficacy. In Experiment 1, prior to a pain task, participants were given either an expectation that two (inert) products could reduce pain or no expectation. In addition, participants either selected between the two products or were assigned a product to use. Participants given both the placebo expectation and treatment choice reported the lowest pain. Experiment 2 conceptually replicated this finding using a placebo paradigm with aversive auditory stimuli. Additional control conditions indicated that a choice availability (rather than choice restriction) explanation best accounted for these results.     

Personality consistency: Eminent architects 25 years later

One hundred and twenty‐four American male architects representing three levels of eminence and creativity were studied by Donald W. MacKinnon and his collaborators in 1958–1960. The present report is based on a follow‐up of 70 of the 83 (78%) surviving architects (mean age 71 years, with a range of 62–88). The architects were individually interviewed at their place of residence between 1983–1984 and received several of the same tests they had received 25 years before, including the Adjective Check List (ACL) and the California Psychological Inventory (CPI). The present study offered the architects a chance to look back at lifelong careers, and it allowed the researchers to establish that the distinct personality characteristics of the three groups of architects remained remarkably stable, and were at least partially responsible for moderating longevity and achievement. Opportunities for full‐time practice were radically different for the three groups after age 65. The interview data suggested that factors that are responsible for successful productivity in old age include: (a) commitment and drive; (b) overlearned skills; (c) aesthetic sensitivity; (d) ability to be a good salesman; and (e) ability to delegate responsibility. The continuing impressive creativity of the architects can be best explained by Simonton's (1984) constant probability of success model.