Integrating Narrative Family Therapy in an Outdoor Behavioral Healthcare Program: A Case Study

Adolescent mental health is a significant societal concern in the United States. Diagnosable mental health disorders have been reported at rates of 10–20 % among children and adolescents and this does not include adolescents experiencing personal and interpersonal distress not meeting diagnostic criteria. Adolescents who do not respond to traditional mental health services are often placed in residential treatment centers or other out-of-home treatment programs. Outdoor Behavioral Healthcare (OBH) is growing as a viable treatment option for adolescents who struggle with emotional, behavioral or substance related problems; however, questions have been raised about how to integrate the family into an OBH treatment setting. This article describes a case study illustrating how techniques from Narrative Family Therapy can be used to accomplish this integration, and offers a view of using Narrative Family Therapy to further involve families in the treatment and post-treatment process in an OBH program.     

Sellars and Nonconceptual Content

In this paper I take up the question of whether Wilfrid Sellars has a notion of non‐conceptual perceptual content. The question is controversial, being one of the fault lines along which so‐called left and right Sellarsians diverge. In the paper I try to make clear what it is in Sellars' thought that leads interpreters to such disparate conclusions. My account depends on highlighting the importance of Sellars' little discussed thesis that perception involves a systematic form of mis‐categorization, one where perceivers mistake their sensory states to be properties of physical objects. I argue that the counterpart color and shape attributes of these states, which become ‘point of viewish’ when organized by the productive imagination, provides perceptual experience with its non‐conceptual representational content. I then argue that this content is not a form of the mythical Given because one can only have a non‐conceptual point of view on an object when an object is introduced into one's perceptual experience through the conceptual mis‐taking of one's sensory states. So, while Sellars has a notion of non‐conceptual representational content, it can only be salient in the context of a perceptual act that is conceptual overall.     

Mass Effect – 1st Place

Journal of Medical Humanities -     

Developmental dynamics between reading and math in elementary school

Reading and math attainment develop during elementary grades. Questions remain, though, about the co‐developmental nature of the relation between reading and math. This study examined dynamic, longitudinal pathways between reading and math in first through fourth grades. Participants of the study were 554 academically at‐risk children (M_age at the first assessment point = 6.57 years; SD = 0.38) from Texas Project Achieve. Children were assessed utilizing the Woodcock‐Johnson–III reading and math measures. Results from dynamic bivariate latent change score models indicated unidirectional longitudinal coupling effects from reading to math. Specifically, average and high levels of reading performance were associated with subsequent gains in math growth, in particular for below average performing children in math. In contrast, low levels of reading performance had negligible or no amplifying influences on change in math growth. The nature of the dynamics was replicated even when controlling for nonverbal cognitive abilities. Results demonstrated that good reading skills pave the way for children to develop their math skills. Such findings underscore the importance of considering reading performance in treating math difficulties.     

Inferring the Number of Attributes for the Exploratory DINA Model

Psychometrika - Diagnostic classification models (DCMs) are widely used for providing fine-grained classification of a multidimensional collection of discrete attributes. The application of DCMs...     

Community Violence and Support for Violent Extremism: Evidence From the Sahel

This article examines the effects of exposure to communal violence on support for violent religious extremism. We argue that in communities with high levels of reported violence, individuals lose political and social trust, develop exclusionary attitudes towards outgroups, and find appeal in nonconventional, black-or-white religious teachings, all of which can promote support for extremist violence. Using survey data from over 17,000 respondents in 84 communes surveyed between 2013 and 2017 in Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad, we find strong support for these predictions. More violent communities express substantially greater support for violent extremism, with an increase in exclusionary outgroup biases and a turn to fundamentalist religious views being the primary mechanisms explaining—and amplifying—the effect. The findings run counter to arguments suggesting that exposure to violence leads to “war weariness” or generates community resilience to extremism via prosocial behaviors.     

The sales manager as a unit of analysis: a review and directions for future research

This article analyzes empirical research in which the sales manager is the unit of analysis to determine what knowledge has been generated by sales scholars about sales managers and sales management practice. It examines what we have learned from sales managers about their jobs and themselves with particular emphasis on the managerial relevance of the work. While the sales literature is vast and despite the importance of sales managers being widely recognized and accepted, an extensive search of the sales literature identified only 163 articles in which the sales manager was the focus of empirical research about what they do. To help better understand what has been discovered, these articles are examined and categorized according to the main focus of each article's research. The results show that with respect to sales managers, our knowledge is limited and substantial opportunities exist for additional research to expand our understanding of the nature, roles, and impact of sales managers as well as providing usable advice for the practice of sales management.     

Dispositional optimism and luck attributions: Implications for philosophical theories of luck

We conducted two studies to determine whether there is a relationship between dispositional optimism and the attribution of good or bad luck to ambiguous luck scenarios. Study 1 presented five scenarios that contained both a lucky and an unlucky component, thereby making them ambiguous in regard to being an overall case of good or bad luck. Participants rated each scenario in toto on a four-point Likert scale and then completed an optimism questionnaire. The results showed a significant correlation between optimism and assignments of luck: more optimistic people rated the characters in the ambiguous scenarios as more lucky while more pessimistic people rated the same characters in the same scenarios as more unlucky. Study 2 separated the good and bad luck components of the study 1 scenarios and presented the components individually to a new group of participants. Participants rated the luckiness of each component on the same four-point scale and then completed the optimism questionnaire. We found that the luckiness of the bad luck component could be significantly predicted by their level of optimism. We discuss how these findings pose problems for philosophical accounts that treat luck as an objective property.