Explorations of the effectiveness of a voluntary sector psychodynamic counselling service

This paper reports two studies of individual psychodynamic counselling provided by a voluntary sector service. The first study examines evidence of the effectiveness of counselling, as evaluated by the General Health Questionnaire and Personal Opinion Survey. Measures of the process of counselling indicated the improvements that clients attributed to counselling, the changes that occurred during it, and the factors that were most beneficial, as well as the approaches used by counsellors. The second study, using the CORE Outcome Measure and ratings of problem severity, found counselling to be equally effective with disadvantaged and non‐disadvantaged clients, as defined by British Department of Health criteria, but these clients differed somewhat in their perceptions of helpful aspects of counselling. Both studies also indicated predictors of positive outcome of counselling. The studies are used to illustrate some of the methodological issues around research in this area.     

Eldercare demands, strain, and work engagement: The moderating role of perceived organizational support

Demographic changes give rise to an increasing number of middle-aged employees providing home-based care to an elderly family member. However, the potentially important role of employees' perceptions of organizational support for eldercare has so far not been investigated. The goal of this study was to examine a stressor–strain–outcome model (Koeske & Koeske, 1993) of eldercare strain as a mediator of the relationship between eldercare demands and caregivers' work engagement. Perceived organizational eldercare support was expected to attenuate the positive relationship between eldercare demands and eldercare strain and to buffer the negative relationship between eldercare strain and work engagement. Results of mediation and moderated mediation analyses with data collected from 147 employees providing eldercare supported the hypotheses. The findings suggest that perceived organizational eldercare support is especially beneficial for employees' work engagement when eldercare demands and strain are high.     

Category transfer in sequential causal learning: the unbroken mechanism hypothesis

The goal of the present set of studies is to explore the boundary conditions of category transfer in causal learning. Previous research has shown that people are capable of inducing categories based on causal learning input, and they often transfer these categories to new causal learning tasks. However, occasionally learners abandon the learned categories and induce new ones. Whereas previously it has been argued that transfer is only observed with essentialist categories in which the hidden properties are causally relevant for the target effect in the transfer relation, we here propose an alternative explanation, the unbroken mechanism hypothesis. This hypothesis claims that categories are transferred from a previously learned causal relation to a new causal relation when learners assume a causal mechanism linking the two relations that is continuous and unbroken. The findings of two causal learning experiments support the unbroken mechanism hypothesis.     

Screening selves: sciences of memory and identity on film, 1930-1960

Chemicals that could be used scientifically to force an individual to tell the truth - dubbed truth sera - were first described in the early 1920s. Ever since, the notion of "truth drugs" has remained tenaciously within popular culture. One of the most important reasons for the survival of the notion of a pharmaceutical technology of authenticity was the role of the barbiturates sodium amytal and sodium pentothal in psychiatric research and treatment during the 1930s through the 1950s. This article traces that history, giving special emphasis to the role of motion pictures. The article argues that researchers were seeking to develop a technology of authenticity (rather than of the truth per se). It examines how they used motion pictures to help them develop and disseminate this technology.     

The motivational basis of concessions and compromise: archival and laboratory studies

A content analysis system for measuring positive concessions (offering concessions) and negative concessions (rejecting offered concessions) was introduced and validated through an archival study of government-to-government documents from 4 crises, 2 of which escalated to war and 2 of which were peacefully resolved. In the archival documents, concession making was positively associated with affiliation motivation and negatively associated with power motivation. A 2nd, laboratory experimental study confirmed these relationships and demonstrated priming effects of motive imagery and concession making, in a received diplomatic letter, on participants' responses. Finally, the motive imagery and concessions scores in participants' responses were related in predicted ways to their policy choices.     

The Changing Age of Individuals Seeking Presymptomatic Genetic Testing for Huntington Disease

Huntington disease (HD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder. Presymptomatic genetic testing allows at-risk individuals to clarify their risk status. Understanding the characteristics and motivations of individuals seeking HD presymptomatic genetic testing better equips genetic counselors and other healthcare professionals to provide comprehensive and personalized care. The aims of this study were to (1) determine whether the average age when individuals seek presymptomatic HD genetic testing has decreased over time, (2) assess motivations for seeking testing, (3) explore whether there is a relationship between age and motivations, and (4) explore genetic counselors’ perceptions of the shift in age. Data from the US HD testing centers (N?=?4) were analyzed. A small but statistically significant decrease in age of individuals seeking presymptomatic testing was observed (p?=?0.045). HD community members (N?=?77) were surveyed regarding presymptomatic testing motivations. Younger individuals were more likely than older individuals to cite “To learn whether or not you would develop HD” and “To make choices about further education or a career” compared to older individuals (p?<?0.05). Conversely, older individuals more frequently cited “To give children a better idea of their risk” (p?<?0.002). Sixteen percent of genetic counselors surveyed (6/37) perceived a change in age of testing. All of these respondents had provided HD testing for ten or more years and anecdotally believed the age at testing has decreased over time. Study results help providers personalize counseling based on patient’s age and serve as a starting point for more research into the relationship between age at testing and motivations for testing.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Justice for Hedgehogs</Emphasis>, Conceptual Authenticity for Foxes: Ronald Dworkin on Value Conflicts

In his 2011 book Justice for Hedgehogs, Ronald Dworkin makes a case for the view that genuine values cannot conflict and, moreover, that they are necessarily mutually supportive. I argue that by prioritizing coherence over the conceptual authenticity of values, Dworkin’s ‘interpretivist’ view risks neglecting what we care about in these values. I first determine Dworkin’s position on the monism/pluralism debate and identify the scope of his argument, arguing that despite his self-declared monism, he is in fact a pluralist, but unusual in denying conflict between plural values. I then set out the structure of his interpretive theory of value relations and present a case of value conflict which I think interpretivism cannot deal with. Following this I argue that there are structural reasons why cases like this are liable to occur and suggest that interpretivism will frequently fail to properly reflect people’s moral commitments because reinterpretation of values has the side effect of excluding important moral commitments from our conceptions of values. While, as Dworkin argues, there are no brute moral facts concerning values, moral psychology constrains the range of acceptable conceptions of values. Given the shortcomings of interpretivism I conclude that we should acknowledge that values may conflict.     

Sexual behavior in young adulthood: a population-based twin study.

OBJECTIVE: With behavior genetic analyses of data from young adult twins, we evaluated theoretical perspectives that differentially emphasize biological dispositions, social/cultural factors, or universal pathways to explain individual differences in sexual behaviors. DESIGN: We fit biometric sex limitation models to three aspects of sexual behavior reported by 4,925 Finnish twins ages 23-27. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: From a postal questionnaire, we obtained self-report information on initiation/abstinence of sexual intercourse, onset age, and number of sexual partners. RESULTS: Genetic and non-shared environmental influences were significant for all three measures. There were trends for common environmental influences on initiation and, in females, age at first intercourse. Some differential effects in males and females were found. Results comparing onset age and number of partners among experienced twins from pairs concordant and discordant for initiation found genetic and environmental influences on initiation/abstinence overlapped those found for the other aspects of sexual behavior. CONCLUSIONS: These results document genetic variation in individual differences in sexual behavior of young adults. Incorporating genetic dispositions into integrated models of sexual behavior will facilitate more effective health promotion and risk taking intervention.     

Behavioral deficits and subregion-specific suppression of LTP in mice expressing a population of mutant NMDA receptors throughout the hippocampus

The NMDA receptor (NMDAR) subunit GluN1 is an obligatory component of NMDARs without a known functional homolog and is expressed in almost every neuronal cell type. The NMDAR system is a coincidence detector with critical roles in spatial learning and synaptic plasticity. Its coincidence detection property is crucial for the induction of hippocampal long-term potentiation (LTP). We have generated a mutant mouse model expressing a hypomorph of the Grin1^N598R allele, which leads to a minority (about 10%) of coincidence detection-impaired NMDARs. Surprisingly, these animals revealed specific functional changes in the dentate gyrus (DG) of the hippocampal formation. Early LTP was expressed normally in area CA1 in vivo, but was completely suppressed at perforant path-granule cell synapses in the DG. In addition, there was a pronounced reduction in the amplitude of the evoked population spike in the DG. These specific changes were accompanied by behavioral impairments in spatial recognition, spatial learning, reversal learning, and retention. Our data show that minor changes in GluN1-dependent NMDAR physiology can cause dramatic consequences in synaptic signaling in a subregion-specific fashion despite the nonredundant nature of the GluN1 gene and its global expression.According to Hebb''s postulate, neurons require a molecular mechanism to detect synchronous activity in order to change the strength of synaptic connectivity (Hebb 1949). NMDA receptors (NMDARs) are molecular coincidence detectors, and selective NMDAR antagonists block the induction of long-term potentiation (LTP) in both the dentate gyrus (DG) and CA1 regions of the hippocampus (Bliss and Collingridge 1993; Martin et al. 2000). NMDARs have been long known for their role in spatial learning, but more recently have been implicated in other forms of cognitive function and dysfunction (Gruart et al. 2006; Whitlock et al. 2006; Castner and Williams 2007; Kristiansen et al. 2007; Wilson and Linster 2008).Neuronal NMDARs are hetero-tetrameric ligand-gated ion channels typically comprised of two types of subunits. Two copies of the mandatory GluN1 subunit (or NR1 subunit [Collingridge et al. 2009] encoded by Grin1) are associated with two copies from the GluN2 family, GluN2A–D (or NR2A–D). The GluN1 subunit is expressed ubiquitously both spatially and temporally throughout the developing and adult brain. Global knockout mice models of the GluN1 subunit are postnatally lethal within hours after birth (Forrest et al. 1994; Li et al. 1994), and cell-specific GluN1 mice knockouts (Tsien et al. 1996; Nakazawa et al. 2002; McHugh et al. 2007; Niewoehner et al. 2007) have provided insights on how specific synapses and regional neuronal networks are dependent on NMDAR function.The early postnatal lethality of the global GluN1 knockout is in contrast to the null mutants of the four AMPA receptor genes and other major synaptic proteins, such as αCaMKII (Silva et al. 1992a,b; Jia et al. 1996; Zamanillo et al. 1999; Meng et al. 2003). This can be at least partially explained by the absence of any close GluN1 homologs, which could functionally compensate for the absence of the GluN1 subunit. Recombinant expression studies defined the GluN1 subunit as a mandatory component of NMDARs. This constellation provides a specific opportunity to test whether different local neuronal subnetworks are affected differentially by mutant Grin1 alleles associated with subtle alterations of the functional properties of NMDARs.GluN1 subunits with the N598R point mutation (GluN1^R) yield functional NMDARs that are Mg²⁺ insensitive and Ca²⁺ impermeable (Burnashev et al. 1992; Mori et al. 1992). The Grin1^N598R allele that codes for GluN1^R subunits is a gain-of-function mutation that is dominant lethal, even in heterozygous and hemizygous lines (Single et al. 2000; Rudhard et al. 2003). NMDARs with GluN1^R subunits do not act as coincidence detectors and, interestingly, mice expressing exclusively the GluN1^R allele lack whisker-related pattern formation in the neonate brainstem (Rudhard et al. 2003).To investigate the functional importance of GluN1 subunits with the N598R point mutation, we took advantage of the generation of a variant mutant line of mice (GluN1^Rneo/+) expressing a minority (around 10%) of these mutant NMDARs. Even though the majority of the NMDARs are normal, all neurons expressing NMDARs will contain a subset of receptors carrying this mutation.Therefore, this mouse model is an ideal candidate to study the impact of subtle alterations of NMDAR function on different neuronal networks, such as those comprising the hippocampal formation.Studies examining region-specific targeted disruption of GluN1 expression in subregions of the hippocampus have revealed subtle yet important contributions of this NMDAR subunit in synaptic plasticity and spatial learning and memory. CA1-restricted knockout of GluN1 expression in the hippocampus caused impaired spatial learning and memory as well as reduced CA1-LTP (Tsien et al. 1996). In the case of the disruption of GluN1 expression in the DG region of the hippocampus, more subtle behavioral impairments were apparent, including the inability to discriminate between two similar contexts (pattern separation) and deficits in spatial working memory despite normal LTP in the CA1 region (McHugh et al. 2007; Niewoehner et al. 2007).Our GluN1^Rneo/+ mice differ from the region-specific GluN1 mutant mice in that they express the mutant hypomorph at the same level in different subregions of the hippocampus. Interestingly, we found that this allele leads to substantial differences in short- and long-term plasticity between area CA1 and the DG of the hippocampus. The specific impairment in the DG was accompanied by impaired spatial recognition, spatial learning, reversal learning, and retention. Our data establish the possibility of a circuit-specific phenotype caused by a mutant variant of a globally expressed major nonredundant synaptic protein.     

A Motivational Analysis of Russian Presidents, 1994–2018

This article analyzes the motivations of the three presidents of Russia since the end of the Soviet Union: Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin, and Dmitry Medvedev. Imagery for the achievement, affiliation, and power motives was scored from the texts of annual presidential addresses to the Federal Assembly from 1994 through 2018. Although there were fluctuations from president to president, and from year to year within each term, the Russian presidents overall tended to be higher in achievement than power. This contrasts with many political leaders from other countries and suggests modification in previous conclusions about the problems of high achievement motivation in politics. The scores of each president are related to the events and policies of that president's term of office. The third term of Vladimir Putin is particularly interesting, because his achievement scores were lower, and power and affiliation scores higher, than in his previous terms. These changes seem to fit with his changes in foreign and domestic policies from his earlier terms.