Feedback in Couple and Family Therapy: A Randomized Clinical Trial

Routine Outcome Monitoring (ROM) is recommended as a psychotherapy procedure to serve as clinical feedback in order to improve client treatment outcomes. ROM can work as a warning signal to the therapist if the client shows signs of no change or deterioration. This study has investigated whether any difference in outcome could be detected between those clients in couple and family therapy who used the Systemic Therapy Inventory of Change (STIC) feedback system (ROM condition) versus those who were offered treatment without the use of STIC (“treatment as usual” or TAU condition). A sample of 328 adults seeking couple and family therapy in Norway was randomly assigned to ROM versus TAU conditions. Outcome measures were The Outcome Questionnaire–45 and The Revised Dyadic Adjustment Scale. The results demonstrated no significant differences in outcomes between the ROM and TAU. Possible explanations of this result related to design and implementation issues are discussed.     

An interactive procedure for learning about preferences: Case study of a portfolio manager

This paper presents a new interactive procedure for learning and interpreting the choices available to a decision maker confronted with a discrete decision problem. The procedure guides a decision maker through the evaluation process, has an ability ‘to learn’ from previous choices and generates a set of rules that describe a decision maker's posterior preferences. The validity of the procedure was tested by creating an investment portfolio. The emphasis of the application is on assisting the portfolio manager to determine the decision consistency of a given portfolio selection process.     

Satisfaction of Health Science teachers with the convergence process of the European Higher Education Area

The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) has implied a major transformation of university studies in European countries. The aim of this study was to assess the satisfaction of university teachers in the area of Health Sciences with the convergence process to determine positive and negative aspects in their practices. The sample was composed of 1,361 teachers of Spanish public universities. They all participated in an ad hoc survey that included questions pertaining to the following issues: a) personal and professional information, b) general and institutional aspects, c) aspects related to teaching, research, and administrative work, d) methodology and the teaching-learning process, e) assessment of students, f) training of teachers, and g) coordination, organization, and resources at the school. Results reveal that teachers are not totally satisfied with the way the EHEA is being established. In conclusion, certain changes would be necessary to achieve real convergence between countries.     

Asynchrony in discrete bimanual aiming: Evidence for visual strategies of coordination

The bimanual coupling literature supposes an inherent drive for synchrony between the upper limbs when making discrete bimanual movements. The level of synchrony is argued to be task dependent, reliant on the visual demands of the two targets, and the result of a complex pattern of hand and eye movements (Bingham, Hughes, & Mon-Williams, 2008 Bingham, G. P., Hughes, K. and Mon-Williams, M. 2008. The coordination patterns observed when two hands reach-to-grasp separate objects. Experimental Brain Research, 184: 283–293. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Riek, Tresilian, Mon-Williams, Coppard, & Carson, 2003 Riek, S., Tresilian, J. R., Mon-Williams, M., Coppard, V. L. and Carson, R. G. 2003. Bimanual aiming and overt attention: One law for two hands. Experimental Brain Research, 153: 59–75. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). However, recent work by Bruyn and Mason (2009 Bruyn, J. L. and Mason, A. H. 2009. Temporal coordination during bimanual reach-to-grasp movements: The role of vision. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 62(7): 1328–1342. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]) suggests that temporal coordination is not solely influenced by visual saccades. In this experimental series, a total of 8 participants performed congruent movements to targets either near or far from the midline. Targets far from the midline, requiring a visual saccade, resulted in greater terminal asynchrony. Initial and terminal asynchrony were not consistent, but linked to the task demands at that stage of the movement. If the asynchrony evident at the end of a bimanual movement is due to a complex pattern of hand and eye movements then the removal of visual feedback should result in an increase in synchrony. Sixteen participants then completed congruent and incongruent bimanual aiming movements to near and/or far targets. Movements were made with or without visual feedback of hands and targets. Analyses revealed that movements made without visual feedback showed increased synchrony between the limbs, yet movements to incongruent targets still showed greater asynchrony. We suggest that visual constraints are not the sole cause of asynchrony in discrete bimanual movements.     

Anger as “seeing red”: Evidence for a perceptual association

Metaphor representation theory contends that people conceptualise their non-perceptual states (e.g., emotion concepts) in perceptual terms. The present research extends this theory to colour manipulations and discrete emotional representations. Two experiments (N=265) examined whether a red font colour would facilitate anger conceptions, consistent with metaphors referring to anger to “seeing red”. Evidence for an implicit anger-red association was robust and emotionally discrete in nature. Further, Experiment 2 examined the directionality of such associations and found that they were asymmetrical: Anger categorisations were faster when a red font colour was involved, but redness categorisations were not faster when an anger-related word was involved. Implications for multiple literatures are discussed.     

Psychoanalysis and University in Brazil: Possibilities and Limits of This Articulation

The goal of this article is to clarify some of the aspects concerning the academic teaching and research that is carried out in the field of psychoanalysis in the Brazilian Universities, versus the transmission and training in psychoanalytic institutions. The author describes how psychoanalysis is present in the Brazilian university context, from undergraduate to graduate studies, and also points out perspectives regarding the future of psychoanalysis in Brazil.     

Socioemotional selectivity in older adults: Evidence from the subjective experience of angry memories

Few studies have compared the phenomenological properties of younger and older adults' memories for emotional events. Some studies suggest that younger adults remember negative information more vividly than positive information whereas other studies suggest that positive emotion yields phenomenologically richer memories than negative emotion for both younger and older adults. One problem with previous studies is a tendency to treat emotion as a dichotomous variable. In contrast, emotional richness demands inclusion of assessments beyond just a positive and negative dimension (e.g., assessing specific emotions like anger, fear and happiness). The present study investigated different properties of autobiographical remembering as a function of discrete emotions and age. Thirty-two younger and thirty-one older adults participated by recalling recent and remote memories associated with six emotional categories and completed the Memory Characteristics Questionnaire for each. Results demonstrated that older adults' angry memories received lower ratings on some phenomenological properties than other emotional memories whereas younger adults' angry memories did not show this same pattern. These results are discussed within the context of socioemotional selectivity theory.     

Relationships between Teachers' Occupational Stress and Their Burnout and Distress: Roles of Coping and Negative Mood Regulation Expectancies

Teaching school is a highly stressful occupation. Consequences of this stress are burnout, physical and emotional distress, and choosing to leave the profession. Research on teacher stress and burnout has largely focused on environmental and contextual factors while ignoring personality characteristics of teachers that may have an impact on relationships between job stress and its consequences. The current study has a cross-sectional self-report design, focusing on teachers' negative mood regulation (NMR) expectancies as predictors of their coping, burnout and distress, in response to occupational stress. NMR expectancies are people's beliefs that they can control the negative moods they experience. Participants were 86 primary and secondary school teachers, who filled out questionnaire measures of teacher stress, NMR expectancies, coping, burnout, and distress. Simultaneous regression analyses showed that higher stress on the job did indeed predict greater burnout and distress. Additionally, stronger NMR expectancies predicted more active coping. NMR expectancies also predicted less burnout and distress, independent of stress level and coping. Believing one could control one's negative moods was associated with more adaptive outcomes for teachers. Results argue for the value of examining individual difference variables in research on occupational stress, in particular negative mood regulation expectancies.     

An investigation of the partial-assignment completion effect on students' assignment choice behavior

This study was designed to investigate the partial assignment completion effect. Seventh-grade students were given a math assignment. After working for 5 min, they were interrupted and their partially completed assignments were collected. About 20 min later, students were given their partially completed assignment and a new, control assignment that contained the same number of equivalent problems that were incomplete on their partially completed assignment. Students were told that they would have to complete an assignment but could choose which assignment they completed. Significantly more students chose their partially completed assignment. Theoretical and applied implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Teaching practices and elementary classroom peer ecologies

Teachers and students in 39 1st, 3rd and 5th grade classrooms participated in a study of teaching practices and classroom peer networks. Teachers reported on their attitudes towards aggression and withdrawal, provided rationales for their seating arrangements, and were observed on patterns of emotional and instructional support and classroom organization. Students were surveyed or interviewed for peer nominations of friendship, popularity, being cool, and aggressive and prosocial behavior, and from these nominations classroom-level indices were derived concerning the richness of positive and negative social ties among children, the egalitarian or hierarchical nature of social status hierarchies, and classroom norms for aggressive and prosocial behavior. Preliminary results suggest that teachers' attitudes towards social behavior are associated with the degree of liking and disliking their students express; teachers' grouping patterns are associated with numerous features of classroom social networks; and teachers' observed emotional support was associated with higher rates of friendship reciprocation.