Suitability and context for brief therapy

Abstract

The main point of this paper is that a client's suitability for brief or time-limited therapy is determined by various factors, including context. There is still agreement on the validity of Malan's selection criteria, which included ‘mild illness, recent onset, high motivation and response to trial interpretation’, yet many additional issues have since emerged and need to be considered. For instance, the counsellor's suitability, training and work experience, the counsellor's assessment skills and ability to establish a dynamic focus, the clients' capacity for self-reflection, their ego strength and their response to a trial therapy in the first session. Then there is the importance of the various contexts in which nowadays much brief counselling is offered free to clients, whether in education, at the workplace, in primary healthcare settings or by charitable organizations. This means that issues of money and markets have come to the fore and an initial differential assessment needs to be carried out in order to decide which method or model of therapy is best for the client. Matching the counsellor's personality to the needs and to the pathology of the client, and matching the treatment to the client's developmental stage or life stage crises are other aspects of the work, which determine the issue of suitability. In the end as always there is much that remains unknown about what works for whom and how the client's decision to take up help is made.     

Chinese Corporate Social Responsibility by Multiple Objective Portfolio Selection and Genetic Algorithms

In this paper, we study corporate social responsibility (CSR) in China through the prism of investments. We work with large stocks and assess their CSR performance from agency CSR data. We formulate Chinese CSR by a multiple objective extension of a traditional portfolio selection model and analytically solve the extension. We also solve the extension by a genetic algorithm and directly evaluate the algorithm's performance against the analytical solution. The multiple objective formulation is tested by randomly choosing nondominated portfolios with out‐of‐sample data to identify nondominated portfolios that outperform the 1/n portfolio (equally weighted portfolio). Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Strategic and automatic effects of visual working memory on attention in visual search

Previous research indicates that visual attention can be automatically captured by sensory inputs that match the contents of visual working memory. However, Woodman and Luck (2007) showed that information in working memory can be used flexibly as a template for either selection or rejection according to task demands. We report two experiments that extend their work. Participants performed a visual search task while maintaining items in visual working memory. Memory items were presented for either a short or long exposure duration immediately prior to the search task. Memory was tested by a change-detection task immediately afterwards. On a random half of trials items in memory matched either one distractor in the search task (Experiment 1) or three (Experiment 2). The main result was that matching distractors speeded or slowed target detection depending on whether memory items were presented for a long or short duration. These effects were more in evidence with three matching distractors than one. We conclude that the influence of visual working memory on visual search is indeed flexible but is not solely a function of task demands. Our results suggest that attentional capture by perceptual inputs matching information in visual working memory involves a fast automatic process that can be overridden by a slower top-down process of attentional avoidance.     

A Commentary on 'Planning and Allocating: Strategies for Managing Priorities in Complex Jobs"

Due to their excessive drive to work hard, workaholics may face difficulties with recovering from work. The present study examines the role of negative emotions in recovery from work among a selected group of workaholics and nonworkaholics. Data were collected among 118 employees who completed a survey and participated in a 5-day diary study. Based on Effort-Recovery theory, we expected and found that negative emotions at the end of the workday hamper employees' recovery during the evening. Interestingly, this effect was stronger for workaholics than for nonworkaholics. It was also found that workaholics spend more time on work-related activities during the evening than nonworkaholics when feeling negative emotions at the end of the workday. Finally, it was expected and found that a lack of recovery experiences during the evening influences negative and positive emotions the next morning. Together, these findings suggest that, especially for workaholics, negative emotions play a crucial role in recovery from work. This insight may contribute to the design of interventions that stimulate recovery from work for workaholics.     

Research note: A motivational perspective on change processes and outcomes

A reengineering process in a chemical plant with technostructural and human-process-oriented interventions was analysed in order to develop and test a generalized expectancy?–?valence-theory model for participation in the change process and effective change. It was assumed that both supervisory support and favourable colleagues' change attitudes enhance one's change motivation, and participation in the change process, by increasing participation opportunities, and positive attitudes toward change. In turn, employee participation should have a positive impact on outcomes of the change process. After 2 years of restructuring, 104 employees participated in the evaluation of the change process. Path analyses revealed results that supported our model by and large. Employee participation in the change process predicts positive organizational effects. Favourable change attitudes as well as perceived participation opportunities, and supervisory support, which were integrated into one scale, predict the degree of employee participation. The latter also showed a direct path to organizational effects.     

Webcam testing: Validation of an innovative open-ended multimedia test

A modern test that takes advantage of the opportunities provided by advancements in computer technology is the multimedia test. The purpose of this study was to investigate the criterion-related validity of a specific open-ended multimedia test, namely a webcam test, by means of a concurrent validity study. In a webcam test a number of work-related situations are presented and participants have to respond as if these were real work situations. The responses are recorded with a webcam. The aim of the webcam test which we investigated is to measure the effectiveness of social work behaviour. This first field study on a webcam test was conducted in an employment agency in The Netherlands. The sample consisted of 188 consultants who participated in a certification process. For the webcam test, good interrater reliabilities and internal consistencies were found. The results showed the webcam test to be significantly correlated with job placement success. The webcam test scores were also found to be related to job knowledge. Hierarchical regression analysis demonstrated that the webcam test has incremental validity up to and beyond job knowledge in predicting job placement success. The webcam test, therefore, seems a promising type of instrument for personnel selection.     

‘Poor girl’: a case of active psychosis': clinical commentary

This paper presents the Clarkson Intervention Priority Sequencing Model for clarification and decision making in counselling, psychotherapy, supervision, consultancy As well as in the training and supervision of practitioners in these fields. The model can assist professionals to differentiate whether the focus for most urgent intervention in any part of the supervisory system primarily concerns areas of Danger, Confusion, Conflict, Deficit or Development and gives examples referring to health psychology and cultural diversity as well as providing some guidelines for application.     

The dreaming brain/mind, consciousness and psychosis

Several independent lines of research in neurobiology seem to support the phenomenologically-grounded view of the dreaming brain/mind as a useful model for psychosis. Hallucinatory phenomena and thought disorders found in psychosis share several peculiarities with dreaming, where internally generated, vivid sensorimotor imagery along with often heightened and incongruous emotion are paired with a decrease in ego functions which ultimately leads to a severe impairment in reality testing. Contemporary conceptualizations of severe mental disorders view psychosis as one psychopathological dimension that may be found across several diagnostic categories. Some experimental data have shown cognitive bizarreness to be equally elevated in dreams and in the waking cognition of acutely psychotic subjects and in patients treated with pro-dopaminergic drugs, independent of the underlying disorder. Further studies into the neurofunctional underpinnings of both conditions will help to clarify the use and validity of this model.     

Choosing the best means to an end: The influence of ingroup goals on the selection of representatives in intergroup negotiations

According to Scheepers, Spears, Doosje, & Manstead (2006), instrumental goals refer to the maximization of profit whereas identity goals are associated with the attainment of a positive social identity. In two experiments, we show that when negotiations are purely instrumental individuals prefer pro-outgroup deviants as representatives (Experiments 1 and 2). In contrast, when negotiations are identity-related, group members increase their preference for normative (Experiments 1 and 2) and pro-ingroup deviants (Experiment 1). Furthermore, these goals also impact perceptions of typicality of group members. Taken together, these results suggest strategic acceptance of deviance when the goal is to bring the other party to concede and increased preference for normativity when identity is the group's main preoccupation. We discuss implications of these results for research on negotiation as well as on the influence of the intergroup context on intragroup dynamics.     

Properties of reverse hazard functions

For continuous distributions reverse hazard is defined as the probability density divided by the cumulative probability, F(x); whereas the usual hazard function is the density divided by the survivor function, 1−F(x). Reverse hazard corresponds to the conditional density of an immediate failure or state change, conditioned by the fact that the state change occurred. For example, of all the items that failed, the proportion of those items that immediately failed is reverse hazard. Reverse hazard exhibits many symmetrical properties with hazard. In this paper a set of theorems are developed that explicate the properties of reverse hazard for both continuous and discrete probability distributions. Taken together, hazard and reverse hazard are a powerful set of theoretical constructs that are valuable for understanding stochastic systems.