Developing Praxis: Mobilising Critical Race Theory in Community Cultural Development

Race remains a significant issue in the lives of many people in Australia. For example, Indigenous Australians lives continue to be marked by social and economic disadvantage and everyday experiences of exclusion. Within this context, the Community Arts Network Western Australia promote social change and the empowerment of Indigenous groups through community cultural development. With an emphasis on community strengths and resources, community arts practice is employed to create, promote, and improve opportunities for participation, network development and empowerment. In this article, we explore these projects from a community psychology orientation, which is committed to developing opportunities for inclusion and also exposing the workings of power in everyday settings. Although there have been many positive outcomes that have resulted from the different activities with communities, there have also been significant barriers to transformative practice, in particular, issues of racialisation and continuing colonisation. We discuss our efforts aimed at understanding racism, which have included engaging with critical race theory and whiteness studies within the context of Indigenous and non‐Indigenous partnerships for change. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Water as a Commons: An Exploratory Study on the Motives for Collective Action Among Italian Water Movement Activists

In many communities, supplying water and sanitation is a huge task, and the fact that these essential services can be carried out by the private sector is a debated issue. This article presents an exploratory study aimed to identify the range of motives for collective action shared by activists of the Italian Movement for ‘Public Water’. In‐depth interviews were conducted with 28 activists and were qualitatively analysed. Five main motivational categories emerged: defending the right to water, preserving community ties, opposing to the Government and ‘water sellers’, preserving the environment and money interests. Each motive is based on a specific representation of the issue of water and privatization process. Findings provide further support for the importance of moral convictions and sense of community in collective action development and suggest a critical reconsideration of the role played by collective efficacy. The results are discussed in the framework of the psychosocial literature on collective action and community psychology perspectives on participatory processes. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Learning new vocabulary during childhood: Effects of semantic training on lexical consolidation and integration

Research suggests that word learning is an extended process, with offline consolidation crucial for the strengthening of new lexical representations and their integration with existing lexical knowledge (as measured by engagement in lexical competition). This supports a dual memory systems account, in which new information is initially sparsely encoded separately from existing knowledge and integrated with long-term memory over time. However, previous studies of this type exploited unnatural learning contexts, involving fictitious words in the absence of word meaning. In this study, 5- to 9-year-old children learned real science words (e.g., hippocampus) with or without semantic information. Children in both groups were slower to detect pauses in familiar competitor words (e.g., hippopotamus) relative to control words 24 h after training but not immediately, confirming that offline consolidation is required before new words are integrated with the lexicon and engage in lexical competition. Children recalled more new words 24 h after training than immediately (with similar improvements shown for the recall and recognition of new word meanings); however, children who were exposed to the meanings during training showed further improvements in recall after 1 week and outperformed children who were not exposed to meanings. These findings support the dual memory systems account of vocabulary acquisition and suggest that the association of a new phonological form with semantic information is critical for the development of stable lexical representations.     

Intuitive Covariation Assessment of the Illusory Correlation

Most of the research concerned with the illusory correlation is modeled after the seminal work of D. L. Hamilton and R. K. Gifford (1976). However, S. A. Haslam and C. McGarty (1994) have voiced concerns over the dependent measures used within this paradigm. Therefore, in this study, the authors tested a new dependent variable that has high face validity. This measure was modeled after the work of J. R. McGahan and R. Wight (1989) and consisted of a set of propositional statements representing either the illusory correlation, the contingency opposite the illusory correlation, or the noncontingency. A second purpose of this study was to validate other studies that have used dependent measures modeled after the work of J. R. McGahan and R. Wight (1989). Demonstrating that this measure can be used to detect a well-documented phenomenon (i.e., the illusory correlation) would strengthen the results and conclusions from other studies. To this end, results from 2 experiments indicate that this measure does provide a valid alternative to those measures that are commonly used in illusory correlation studies. The results thereby give credence to other studies that have used similar dependent measures.     

Patterns of Daily Time Use of Young Adults With or Without First-Episode Psychosis

This study compared patterns of daily activities and satisfaction with time use of young adults with first-episode psychosis and healthy volunteers. Fifty young adults participated in retrospective structured interviews on time use. Young adults with first-episode psychosis spend more time in sleep, passive leisure, and personal care activities, and less in total productive activities and education. No difference appeared for leisure, paid work, and household work, or satisfaction with daily time use. Reasons underlying dissatisfaction with daily time use differed between the groups. Clinical and research implications are discussed.     

It takes one to know one: Relationship between lie detection and psychopathy

We investigated primary and secondary psychopathy and the ability to detect high-stakes, real-life emotional lies in an on-line experiment (N = 150). Using signal detection analysis, we found that lie detection ability was overall above chance level, there was a tendency towards responding liberally to the test stimuli, and women were more accurate than men. Further, sex moderated the relationship between psychopathy and lie detection ability; in men, primary psychopathy had a significant positive correlation with the ability to detect lies, whereas in women there was a significant negative correlation with deception detection. The results are discussed with reference to evolutionary theory and sex differences in processing socio-emotional information.     

Organizational schism: Looking after a psychiatric service

What is opposed to psychoanalysis is not psychiatry but psychiatrists. (Freud, 1916–1917, p. 254)     

The devil and the deep blue sea: dyadic narcissism and the problem of individuation 1

This paper addresses issues of infantile gender identity as they are demonstrated through group processes amongst the carers of disturbed adolescents. It uses this and other clinical material to explore gender narcissism – both male and female. It examines how such narcissism is linked to sado-masochism, and how it can impede a healthy development towards bisexual and triadic functioning.     

Fostering Feminist Principles in Our Community

SUMMARY

In a recent focus group discussion at the Feminist Therapy Institute conference participants outlined a vision for a future community based on feminist principles. It is built on five critical ideals, including more equitable distribution of resources, genuine respect for human diversity and varying world views, caring and compassionate members, increased connections and collaborations, and political/personal empowerment. While the challenges inherent to such vision must be acknowledged, greater attention will be placed on ways in which we can begin to foster environments and micro communities that are conducive to feminist practice and ideology.     

The influence of external stimulation on airflow detection by children with asthma

Abstract

The relevance and significance of the concept of a ‘competition of cues’ for the understanding of symptom perception in childhood asthma was investigated during detection of externally applied resistive loads on breathing. The concept predicts that subjects would respond less frequently and less accurately during external stimulation. The sample consisted of 36 children with and 36 without asthma, aged 7-18 years. Detection of airflow was measured in a neutral and in an external stimulation condition. The children breathed through a facemask and responded to changes in airflow by pressing a button. The stimulus presented and withdrawn was analogous to a decrease in lung function (Forced Expiratory Volume in one second) of 39%. Accuracy of detection of airflow was defined as correct minus false positive responses to load stimuli.

The results showed that children with and without asthma responded significantly less frequently during external stimulation than in the neutral condition. However, the accuracy of detection among non-asthmatics was not affected by external stimulation. Children with asthma responded significantly more accurately during external stimulation. The results are discussed in the light of children's accuracy to perceive actual airways obstruction.