An evaluation of Headsprout early reading as an online parent-mediated intervention for primary school children

Due to the Coronavirus pandemic and lengthy absences from the classroom, there is a need for large-scale remedial programs to support young children to “catch-up” on literacy and numeracy skills. A stratified randomized controlled trial was used to evaluate the Headsprout Early Reading (HER) program as a parent-mediated digital literacy intervention. A between-groups design compared differences in reading-dependent outcome measures for 36 children assigned to one of three intervention groups: with support, without support, and waitlist-control. Children completed significantly more episodes when parents received implementation support from the researcher compared to the without support group. Children receiving Headsprout instructions demonstrated marginally greater gains than the waitlist-control group in posttest outcome measures; however, differences in reading outcomes were not significant between groups at posttesting. The current research provides tentative support for HER and importantly, highlights the importance of providing support for parents implementing interventions at home.     

Intense classification training to increase the detection of drowning swimmers

Lifeguards engage in a continuous process of deciding whether swimmers are in danger or not. The variety of behaviours that distressed swimmers show makes it difficult to impart declarative knowledge to this effect during lifeguard training. As an alternative, we propose a novel training tool that requires novice participants to rapidly categorise 3-s video clips of real-life swimmers as either ‘safe’ or ‘drowning’. A control group also completed a sham intervention, with surfers that may ‘fall’. Due to the complex nature of swimming pools, a scaffolded training approach was employed, which gradually increased the amount of background information over subsequent training rounds. Results demonstrated that the drowning classification training improved responses in a subsequent drowning detection test, compared with the active control-group. The scaffolded approach appeared to prepare participants for processing swimmers in the drowning-detection test. The results provide a foundation for a novel training protocol to improve lifeguard skills.     

Preventing Vicarious Trauma: What Counselors Should Know When Working With Trauma Survivors

Counselors in all settings work with clients who are survivors of trauma. Vicarious trauma, or counselors developing trauma reactions secondary to exposure to clients' traumatic experiences, is not uncommon. The purpose of this article is to describe vicarious trauma and summarize the recent research literature related to this construct. The Constructivist Self‐Development Theory (CSDT) is applied to vicarious trauma, and the implications CSDT has for counselors in preventing and managing vicarious trauma are explored.     

Engineering students’ perceptions of engineering specialties

The field of engineering is defined by a number of specialty areas, thus most engineering students must decide upon an educational specialty track within the engineering major. Data on familiarity with, and perceptions of similarity among 11 engineering specialties were collected from 129 undergraduate engineering students from a public urban university. Similarity data were collected by way of a paired comparison task, and multidimensional scaling techniques were used to map these data into spatial representations. A three-dimensional solution was selected. Analysis of variance procedures also were used to examine differences in perceptions of engineering specialties by gender, ethnicity, commitment to career choice, and career decision-making self-efficacy. Results indicated that female students rated engineering specialties as more prestigious than male students, and students with a more dogmatic stance towards career rated engineering as relatively exclusive to men.     

Cognitive Factors Affecting Freeze-like Behavior in Humans

Contemporary research on survival-related defensive behaviors has identified physiological markers of freeze/flight/fight. Our research focused on cognitive factors associated with freeze-like behavior in humans. Study 1 tested if an explicit decision to freeze is associated with the psychophysiological state of freezing. Heart rate deceleration occurred when participants chose to freeze. Study 2 varied the efficacy of freezing relative to other defense options and found “freeze” was responsive to variations in the perceived effectiveness of alternative actions. Study 3 tested if individual differences in motivational orientation affect preference for a “freeze” option when the efficacy of options is held constant. A trend in the predicted direction suggested that naturally occurring cognitions led loss-avoiders to select “freeze” more often than reward-seekers. In combination, our attention to the cognitive factors affecting freeze-like behavior in humans represents a preliminary step in addressing an important but neglected research area.     

Psychological Experiences Associated with Robotic Chair Massage: A Pilot Study

This pilot study examined 186 healthy adults who received a 20-min full-body massage in a robotic massage chair. The majority of the participants rated the experience to be highly pleasurable, and this evaluation was influenced by age and life satisfaction. Large changes in pre- to post-massage symptoms of anxiety and tranquillity were also observed. These preliminary findings support the psychological effectiveness of robotic chair massage which can be readily used by lay people and professionals alike to promote mental health and well-being.     

Cultural Differences in the Reciprocal Relations between Emotion Suppression Coping,Depressive Symptoms and Interpersonal Functioning among Adolescents

The current study examined the prospective relations between emotion suppression and maladjustment (i.e., depressive symptoms, family stress events, peer stress events, and family and peer support) among Vietnamese American (n = 372) and European American adolescents (n = 304). We found that at baseline Vietnamese Americans adolescents reported greater use of emotion suppression coping than European American adolescents. Multi-group structural equation modeling indicated that for European American teens emotion suppression was significantly related to increased depression symptoms and decreased quality of peer relationships. In contrast, for the Vietnamese Americans teens emotion suppression relations to later maladjustment was either nonsignificant or attenuated relative to the European American. These findings suggest ethnic group differences in both the utilization, and consequences and function of emotion suppression among Vietnamese American and European American adolescents.     

The theory of agency and breastfeeding

Objective: In this paper, we apply psychological agency theory to women’s interviews of their breastfeeding experiences to understand the role of agency in relation to breastfeeding initiation, maintenance and duration.

Design: Qualitative, video interviews were collected from 49 women in the UK from a wide range of ethnic, religious, educational and employment backgrounds about their breastfeeding experiences. We undertook secondary analysis of the data focusing on their accounts of vulnerability and agency.

Findings: Women’s agency was impacted by a variety of factors including their own vulnerability, knowledge, expectations and experience, the feeding environment and the support of health professionals in sharing decision-making and dealing with uncertainty.

Conclusion: Health professionals as co-agents with women are well positioned to maintain, enhance or restore women’s sense of agency. Breastfeeding goals should be included in women’s birth plans. Training related to agency, continuity of care, and staffing and workload management supported by national breastfeeding policies could improve breastfeeding rates and experiences.     

Young Women’s Experience of Anorexia,Family Dynamics and Triangulation

The study explored the experience of triadic family relationships of six young women with a diagnosis of Anorexia Nervosa alongside a consideration of their attachment strategies. The research methods employed semi-structured individual interviews, a family sculpt and use of an adapted version of the Adolescent Separation Anxiety Test (SAT). This adaptation featured a unique development for this study of photographs depicting triadic family separation and conflict situations. These attempted to offer an integrated view of their experience of anorexia and of family relationships alongside a consideration of the attachment strategies evoked. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to generate themes that captured the young women’s experience, and a modified version of the SAT protocol coding was used to explore attachment strategies. The main themes to emerge from the data were found to be: Relational distance to attachment figures, Barriers to emotional connection, and Perception of parents’ relationship. Attachment strategies were shown to influence perceptions of family relationships and of triadic processes and conflicts. Clinical implications of the findings are discussed alongside limitations of the study and indications for future research.