Evaluating an innovative counselling service for children of divorce

An evaluation of the first counselling service in Britain for children of divorce is reported. In a previous article, the quantitative outcomes of counselling were outlined, which included such data as the children's self-esteem and perceptions of divorce. Here the focus is on the qualitative outcomes of the counselling evaluation: namely, the children's and mother's satisfaction with the counselling, and the counsellor's opinion of its success. The conclusions of the study and their implications for practice are discussed.     

EMERGENT CONDITIONAL RELATIONS IN A GO/NO‐GO PROCEDURE: FIGURE—GROUND AND STIMULUS‐POSITION COMPOUND RELATIONS

Past research has demonstrated emergent conditional relations using a go/no‐go procedure with pairs of figures displayed side‐by‐side on a computer screen. The present study sought to extend applications of this procedure. In Experiment 1, we evaluated whether emergent conditional relations could be demonstrated when two‐component stimuli were displayed in figure—ground relationships—abstract figures displayed on backgrounds of different colors. Five normally capable adults participated. During training, each two‐component stimulus was presented successively. Responses emitted in the presence of some stimulus pairs (A1B1, A2B2, A3B3, B1C1, B2C2 and B3C3) were reinforced, whereas responses emitted in the presence of other pairs (A1B2, A1B3, A2B1, A2B3, A3B1, A3B2, B1C2, B1C3, B2C1, B2C3, B3C1 and B3C2) were not. During tests, new configurations (AC and CA) were presented, thus emulating structurally the matching‐to‐sample tests employed in typical equivalence studies. All participants showed emergent relations consistent with stimulus equivalence during testing. In Experiment 2, we systematically replicated the procedures with stimulus compounds consisting of four figures (A1, A2, C1 and C2) and two locations (left — B1 and right — B2). All 6 normally capable adults exhibited emergent stimulus—stimulus relations. Together, these experiments show that the go/no‐go procedure is a potentially useful alternative for studying emergent conditional relations when matching‐to‐sample is procedurally cumbersome or impossible to use.     

The free and cued selective reminding test for predicting progression to Alzheimer's disease in patients with mild cognitive impairment: A prospective longitudinal study

Amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) patients carry a greater risk of conversion to Alzheimer's disease (AD). Therefore, the International Working Group (IWG) on AD aims to consider some cases of aMCI as symptomatic prodromal AD. The core diagnostic marker of AD is a significant and progressive memory deficit, and the Free and Cued Selective Reminding Test (FCSRT) was recommended by the IWG to test memory in cases of possible prodromal AD. This study aims to investigate whether the performance on the FCSRT would enhance the ability to predict conversion to AD in an aMCI group. A longitudinal study was conducted on 88 aMCI patients, and neuropsychological tests were analysed on the relative risk of conversion to AD. During follow‐up (23.82 months), 33% of the aMCI population converted to AD. An impaired FCSRT TR was significantly associated with the risk of conversion to dementia, with a mean time to conversion of 25 months. The FCSRT demonstrates utility for detecting AD at its prodromal stage, thus supporting its use as a valid clinical marker.     

WISC-III Cognitive Profiles in Children with ADHD: Specific Cognitive Impairments and Diagnostic Utility

This study aimed to investigate the presence of specific cognitive impairments and the diagnostic utility of the WISC-III in children with ADHD. Ninety-eight children with ADHD and 81 children without ADHD matched by age and gender (control group), between the ages of 6 and 12?years, participated in the study. Children with ADHD revealed the most pronounced deficits in the subtests tapping working memory and processing speed. Freedom from Distractibility was the cognitive profile most impaired and that showed the highest diagnostic accuracy to discriminate children with ADHD. The optimal cutoff scores of the most common WISC-III cognitive profiles revealed greater diagnostic accuracy than the traditional approach of full or partial profiles. Taken together, these results suggested that in the context of a comprehensive psychological assessment, the WISC may provide knowledge about the specific cognitive strengths and weaknesses that characterize this disorder and may be useful in the decision-making process relative to ADHD diagnosis.     

Attachment and women’s faith development

This article explores the relationship between human attachment and God attachment, particularly in Christian women’s experiences of faith. It is based on the attachment perspective as a conceptual framework. The main aim was to evolve an attachment‐theoretical approach to women’s faith development and to offer a complementary path to interpret women’s faith development. The method was qualitative, as the data were collected via biographical narrative depth interviews. The findings suggest that an early attachment experience is a significant factor in the women’s faith development; three patterns of women’s faith are presented in which the differences in their images of self and God are represented accordingly.     

Lactate threshold prediction by blood glucose and rating of perceived exertion in people with type 2 diabetes

The validity of rating of perceived exertion (RPE) in predicting lactate threshold during an incremental test was analyzed in 15 men with type 2 diabetes (M age = 53.4 yr., SD = 12.9). Blood glucose, lactate, and minute ventilation (VE)/VO2 responses identified the lactate, ventilatory, and glucose thresholds. Workloads (W) corresponding to RPEs 12, 13, 14, and 15 were determined. Second-order polynomials fit to VE/W and [lac]/W ratios corresponding to RPEs of 9-10, 12-13, and 16-17 also identified workloads above which there was an overproportional increase in VE and [lac]. These workload breakpoints did not differ, although at RPE 12 underestimated and at RPE 15 overestimated lactate threshold. RPE 13 and 14 and the responses of VE/W and [lac]/W to submaximal exercise accurately predicted lactate threshold.     

Blazing the trail versus trailing the group: Culture and perceptions of the leader’s position

Research suggests that power triggers assertive action. However, people from different cultures might expect different types of action from powerful individuals such as leaders. In comparing cultural differences in leadership imagery, we find that Americans represent leaders standing ahead of groups, whereas Asians also represent leaders behind groups. We propose that front versus back positions embody two faces of leader action: individual assertion versus group-focused action. Studies 1a and 1b respectively employed etic and emic methods to demonstrate that Singaporeans were more likely than Americans to represent leaders behind groups. In Study 2, Singaporeans evaluated back leaders more favorably than Americans did, and group focus mediated cultural differences. Simulating the conditions under which cultural differences arise, Study 3 demonstrates that a primarily Western managerial sample primed with threat (versus opportunity) preferred back leaders. By describing cultural variations in imagery, we reveal more nuanced implicit theories of leader action.     

Gender roles in relation to assertiveness and eysenckian personality dimensions: Replication with a spanish population sample

The objective of the present study was to evaluate the cross-national replicability of the usual pattern of associations observed in Anglo-Saxon samples between masculinity and femininity on the one hand and difficulty and distress in assertiveness and the major Eysenckian dimensions of personality on the other hand. Participants were 925 SpanishSs (54% females; and 95.5% “European or other white”). Both the masculinity theory of psychological well-being and the notion thathigh femininity would not be implicated in self-assessed psychologicaldistress ordysfunction were supported by the data. Higher-order analysis showed that masculinity loaded highly on Positive Affect, whereas femininity had its primary loading on Constraint. Tentative support was found for the femininity-humility hypothesis advanced by P. B. Zeldow, S. R. Clark, and D. C. Daugherty in 1985.     

Computerized Cognitive Tests (CCT) in elderly: A psychometric review

Introduction/aim

Computerized Cognitive Tests (CCT) play an increasing role in the assessment of elderly cognitive impairment. In this framework, it is important to review the psychometric data of the available CCT in the detection of cognitive decline.

Procura-PALavras (P-PAL): A Web-based interface for a new European Portuguese lexical database

In this article, we present Procura-PALavras (P-PAL), a Web-based interface for a new European Portuguese (EP) lexical database. Based on a contemporary printed corpus of over 227 million words, P-PAL provides a broad range of word attributes and statistics, including several measures of word frequency (e.g., raw counts, per-million word frequency, logarithmic Zipf scale), morpho-syntactic information (e.g., parts of speech [PoSs], grammatical gender and number, dominant PoS, and frequency and relative frequency of the dominant PoS), as well as several lexical and sublexical orthographic (e.g., number of letters; consonant–vowel orthographic structure; density and frequency of orthographic neighbors; orthographic Levenshtein distance; orthographic uniqueness point; orthographic syllabification; and trigram, bigram, and letter type and token frequencies), and phonological measures (e.g., pronunciation, number of phonemes, stress, density and frequency of phonological neighbors, transposed and phonographic neighbors, syllabification, and biphone and phone type and token frequencies) for ~53,000 lemmatized and ~208,000 nonlemmatized EP word forms. To obtain these metrics, researchers can choose between two word queries in the application: (i) analyze words previously selected for specific attributes and/or lexical and sublexical characteristics, or (ii) generate word lists that meet word requirements defined by the user in the menu of analyses. For the measures it provides and the flexibility it allows, P-PAL will be a key resource to support research in all cognitive areas that use EP verbal stimuli. P-PAL is freely available at http://p-pal.di.uminho.pt/tools.