The Experience of Being a Qualified Female BME Clinical Psychologist in a National Health Service: An Interpretative Phenomenological and Repertory Grid Analysis

This study explores the lived experience of black and minority ethnic (BME) clinical psychologists employed in the U.K. National Health Service (NHS). A mixed method qualitative approach was employed using repertory grids and interpretative phenomenological analysis. Six female BME clinical psychologists took part. Four master themes emerged from the analysis, including standing out as different, negotiating cultural and professional values, sitting with uncertainty, and feeling proud to be a clinical psychologist. The repertory grid analysis supported these findings and enriched the study. Implications of the study are discussed—namely, the importance of the profession increasing the cultural competency and sensitivity of its members as well as becoming more diverse.     

Ebola ‘Done Done’—But What Has It Left Behind?

Sierra Leone, a country that has been recovering from a brutal civil war, was in 2014 struck by a new crisis in the Ebola epidemic. This article reports on interviews and repertory grids completed by two groups of people who had been affected by the epidemic: amputee footballers who had lost family members or friends, and burial workers. The interviews and grids are analyzed in terms of the professional constructs of personal construct psychology, highlighting the anxiety, threat, guilt, and shame experienced by the participants; similarities in their construing of the Ebola epidemic and the civil war; and their positive anticipations of the future.     

Iconicity in the speech of children and adults

Iconicity – the correspondence between form and meaning – may help young children learn to use new words. Early‐learned words are higher in iconicity than later learned words. However, it remains unclear what role iconicity may play in actual language use. Here, we ask whether iconicity relates not just to the age at which words are acquired, but also to how frequently children and adults use the words in their speech. If iconicity serves to bootstrap word learning, then we would expect that children should say highly iconic words more frequently than less iconic words, especially early in development. We would also expect adults to use iconic words more often when speaking to children than to other adults. We examined the relationship between frequency and iconicity for approximately 2000 English words. Replicating previous findings, we found that more iconic words are learned earlier. Moreover, we found that more iconic words tend to be used more by younger children, and adults use more iconic words when speaking to children than to other adults. Together, our results show that young children not only learn words rated high in iconicity earlier than words low in iconicity, but they also produce these words more frequently in conversation – a pattern that is reciprocated by adults when speaking with children. Thus, the earliest conversations of children are relatively higher in iconicity, suggesting that this iconicity scaffolds the production and comprehension of spoken language during early development.     

The Effect of Behavioral Family Intervention on Knowledge of Effective Parenting Strategies

There is a paucity of research considering the effect of behavioral family intervention (BFI) on parenting knowledge and the relative importance of both knowledge and parent confidence in reducing parenting dysfunction and problematic child behavior is unclear. In this study ninety-one parents (44 mothers, 47 fathers) of children aged 2–10?years completed an evidence-based BFI and were assessed at pre and post-intervention on knowledge of effective parenting strategies, parenting confidence, parent dysfunction, and reported intensity of externalised child behavior. Results showed that at pre-intervention parents higher in education (N?=?57) demonstrated greater knowledge than those lower in education (N?=?34). Relative to baseline, parents in both groups significantly improved their knowledge and confidence, reduced their dysfunction and reported less externalised child behavior. Effect sizes for the latter two variables were similar for both groups, however for parents higher in education the effect for confidence was larger than knowledge. Change in level of dysfunction explained the largest amount of unique variance in change to externalised child behavior. Results suggest that for optimal outcomes for parenting and child behavior management more knowledgeable parents may benefit from interventions that focus on practice and consolidation of already learned skills in order to increase confidence whereas for less knowledgeable parents the teaching of new skills and strategies, alongside increasing confidence, are important.     

The effect of tire grip on learning driving skill and driving style: A driving simulator study

There is a need for training methods that improve the driving skill and driving style of novice drivers. Previous research in motor learning has shown that degrading the task conditions during practice can enhance long-term retention performance. Inspired by these findings, this study investigated the effects of the tire-road friction coefficient on learning a self-paced lane-keeping task in a driving simulator. A sample of 63 young and inexperienced drivers were divided into three groups, low grip (LG), normal grip (NG) and high grip (HG), who practiced driving with a friction coefficient of 0.45, 0.90, and 1.80, respectively. All groups drove six 8 min sessions on a road with curves in a rural environment: four practice sessions, an immediate retention session, and a delayed retention session on the next day. The two retention sessions were driven with normal-grip tires. The results show that LG drove with lower speed than NG during practice and retention. Transferring from the last practice session to the immediate retention session, LG’s workload decreased, as measured with a secondary task, whereas HG’s workload increased. During the immediate retention session, LG had less road departures than HG, but HG drove closer to the lane center in curves than the other two groups. HG reported elevated confidence during practice, but not in retention. In conclusion, this simulator-based study showed that practicing with low-grip tires resulted in lower driving speeds during retention tests, an effect which persisted overnight. These results have potential implications for the way drivers are trained.     

Processing motion implied in language: eye-movement differences during aspect comprehension

Previous research on language comprehension has used the eyes as a window into processing. However, these methods are entirely reliant upon using visual or orthographic stimuli that map onto the linguistic stimuli being used. The potential danger of this method is that the pictures used may not perfectly match the internal aspects of language processing. Thus, a method was developed in which participants listened to stories while wearing a head-mounted eyetracker. Preliminary results demonstrate that this method is uniquely suited to measure responses to stimuli in the absence of visual stimulation.     

Effort denial in self-deception

We propose a mixed belief model of self-deception. According to the theory, people distribute belief over two possible causal paths to an action, one where the action is freely chosen and one where it is due to factors outside of conscious control. Self-deceivers take advantage of uncertainty about the influence of each path on their behavior, and shift weight between them in a self-serving way. This allows them to change their behavior to provide positive evidence and deny doing so, enabling diagnostic inference to a desired trait. In Experiment 1, women changed their pain tolerance to provide positive evidence about the future quality of their skin, but judgments of effort claimed the opposite. This “effort denial” suggests that participants’ mental representation of their behavior was dissociated from their actual behavior, facilitating self-deception. Experiment 2 replicated the pattern in a hidden picture task where search performance was purportedly linked to self-control.     

Hierarchical Relationships in Dependency Grids: Explorations in Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse

A methodology for representing the patterns of dependency in a dependency grid using partial order scalogram analysis by coordinates (POSAC) is presented. The technique, devised by Shye (1985) Shye, S. 1985. Multiple scaling: The theory and application of partial order scalogram analysis, Amsterdam: North Holland.  [Google Scholar], shows these patterns as hierarchical relationships that indicate superordinate and subordinate resources. An index of depth of resource support is calculated in addition to an index of breadth of resource (which is shown to correspond to an index of dispersion of dependency). The procedure was applied to data from 54 survivors of child sexual abuse and a similar number of control subjects who all completed both an adult and child dependency grid. There was significantly less breadth of resource in the abuse group, more so for the child version than the adult, but there was significantly more depth of resource in the dependency grids from the child sexual abuse survivors.     

Comparing the Predictive Accuracy of Case Linkage Methods in Serious Sexual Assaults

The empirical support for linkage analysis is steadily increasing, but the question remains as to what method of linking is the most effective. We compared a more theory‐based, dimensional behavioural approach with a rather pragmatic, multivariate behavioural approach with regard to their accuracy in linking serial sexual assaults in a UK sample of serial sexual assaults (n = 90) and one‐off sexual assaults (n = 129). Their respective linkage accuracy was assessed by (1) using seven dimensions derived by non‐parametric Mokken scale analysis (MSA) as predictors in discriminant function analysis (DFA) and (2) 46 crime scene characteristics simultaneously in a naive Bayesian classifier (NBC). The dimensional scales predicted 28.9% of the series correctly, whereas the NBC correctly identified 34.5% of the series. However, a subsequent inclusion of non‐serial offences in the target group decreased the amount of correct links in the dimensional approach (MSA–DFA: 8.9%; NBC: 32.2%). Receiver operating characteristic analysis was used as a more objective comparison of the two methods under both conditions, confirming that each achieved good accuracies (AUCs = .74–.89), but the NBC performed significantly better than the dimensional approach. The consequences for the practical implementation in behavioural case linkage are discussed. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Child Delinquents: Examining the Market for Criminal Futures

This article investigates child delinquency (offenders younger than 13 years of age). The population of child delinquents under various dispositions in the state of Louisiana, at one point in time, is described. Eighty youth are examined using the following characteristics: Race, Gender, Age, Offense Type (violent, nonviolent) Crime Category (felony, status offense, misdemeanor, and felony or misdemeanor) and Disposition (supervision, secure custody, and non-secure custody). Child delinquency is an important topic because the younger the age of first offense the greater the probability of a delinquent and criminal career. Findings reveal very few youth in secure custody and black males account for over half of the population of child delinquents. Over 75% of the population was 12 years of age.