The Family Environment in Chronic Pain Patients: Comparison to Controls and Relationship to Patient Functioning

Operant and cognitive-behavioral models of chronic pain have called attention to the importance of examining the marital and family environments of chronic pain patients. In this study, 50 chronic pain patients and their spouses and 33 control participants and their spouses completed measures of the family environment, marital satisfaction, and patient physical and psychological functioning. Patients' overt pain behaviors were coded from videotapes of patient–spouse interactions. Compared to controls, pain patients and their spouses rated their family environments as lower in cohesion and higher in control, and there was a trend for spouses to report more marital dissatisfaction. Chronic pain patient depression was associated negatively with patient-rated family cohesion and expressiveness and spouse-rated family organization and positively with patient-rated family conflict. Overt patient pain behaviors and spouse-rated patient disability were related negatively to spouse-rated family cohesion. Spouse marital satisfaction was associated negatively with patient depression and with spouse ratings of patient disability and pain behaviors.     

There is no such thing as environmental ethics

Engineers and scientists, whose professional responsibilities often influence the natural environment, have sought to develop an environmental ethic that will be in tune with their attitudes toward the non-human environment, and that will assist them in decision making regarding questions of environmental quality. In this paper the classical traditions in normative ethics are explored in an attempt to formulate such an environmental ethic. I conclude, however, that because the discipline of ethics is directed at person-person interactions, ethics as a scholarly discipline does not help us understand how we ought to treat non-human nature. We therefore cannot look to ethics as a source for understanding our attitudes and for providing guidance to our actions with regard to the environment. To do so is to ask too much of ethics. If we are to find an acceptable environmental morality, it must come from a new paradigm. One approach might be to understand our attitudes on the basis of spirituality, modeled after animistic religions.     

Creating a safe place for growth in supervision

When people are afraid, learning is inhibited. In too many disturbed families, institutional settings, rigid organizations, and some supervision groups, a feeling of emotional safety is missing. The first step in teaching, supervising, or therapy is the necessity to provide a safe environment. The author suggests a model applicable to any supervision group, work group, organization, classroom, or family. A group model, specifically applied to the relationship between family therapy students or interns and supervisors, suggests ways to enhance growth by minimizing fear.     

The effects of a cooperation contingency on behavior in a continuous three-person environment

Five groups of three subjects resided for 10 or 15 days within a continuously programmed environment. Subjects followed a programmatic arrangement of required and optional private and social activities that determined the individual and group baseline behaviors into which experimental operations were introduced and withdrawn. A cooperation condition was in effect when all three subjects were required to select simultaneous access to a group area before it became available for use. A noncooperation condition was in effect when access to a group area could be selected by individual subjects, without regard to the other subjects' selections. For all groups, the effects of these two conditions on individual and group behaviors were investigated in reversal designs where several successive days occurred under each condition. Groups 1, 4, and 5 had the noncooperation condition interposed between cooperation conditions. Groups 2 and 3 had the cooperation condition interposed between noncooperation conditions. Durations of triadic activities, per cent of time in triadic activities, intercom use, and intersubject program synchronization were greater during cooperation conditions than during noncooperation conditions. These data show that a cooperation contingency within the behavioral program affected both social behavior and the collateral individual behavior necessary to execute the cooperation response.     

GENERALIZATION BY AUTISTIC-TYPE CHILDREN OF VERBAL RESPONSES ACROSS SETTINGS

Generalization of verbal behavior by autistic-type children across physically different settings was assessed. Four boys learned responses to common questions in two settings at school and were probed to determine transfer of learning to home. Three of the children demonstrated little generalization to home when trained in a cubicle. Greater generalization was indicated when they received training at varied locations. The fourth child generalized most responses to his home regardless of training setting. Simple manipulations of the school environment to more closely simulate home conditions may facilitate transfer of training to the natural environment.     

The Biophilia Hypothesis and Life in the 21st Century: Increasing Mental Health or Increasing Pathology?

Wilson's biophilia hypothesis includes the claim that, as a consequence of evolution, humans have an innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes. A review of various literatures converges to support this central claim. One area of support for our innate affiliation with nature comes from research demonstrating increased psychological well-being upon exposure to natural features and environments. Support also comes from the strength and prevalence of phobic responses to stimuli of evolutionary significance and near absence of such responses to potentially dangerous human-made stimuli. That survival emotions of equivalent intensity and prevalence have failed to develop in response to modern life-threatening stimuli can be explained by the extremely rapid process of change and progress that has occurred post World War II and continues at an ever increasingly rapid pace. Given that our modern ways of living, as prescribed by Western industrialised culture, stand in stark contrast to our evolutionary history, it is proposed that we may currently be witnessing the beginnings of significant adverse outcomes for the human psyche.     

A mixed methods exploration of the parent perspective of talent development environments across a national multi-sport landscape

Parents are known to be important influencers in the talent development process but are often overlooked. Understanding the parent perspective may help National Governing Bodies and coaches improve their support for young talented athletes. This study aims to understand the parent perspective of the talent development experience across a national multi-sport landscape using mixed methods. Four hundred and eighty-five parents of pathway athletes completed the talent development environment questionnaire for parents (TDEQ-P), which included the opportunity for parents to respond in an open fashion. The results revealed several key relative strengths and weaknesses of the talent development environment. Areas identified for improvement included 1) Communication related to pathway understanding, planning, guidance, and feedback, 2) Individualised training, goal setting, and feedback, 3) Facilities, 4) Access to a specialist support network, in particular psychology support, 5) Engagement between coaches and, 6) Dual career management and engagement with educational institutions. The results also revealed evidence of context specific needs between performance level, sport type, and age group. The TDEQ-P may be an efficient and effective way coaches can access important feedback, improve communication, and build relationships with parents in sport.     

儿童早期读写能力发展的环境影响因素研究

自1966年Clay首次提出早期读写能力(Emergent Literacy)的观点以来,对于0—6岁学前儿童读写能力的研究引起了教育学家、心理学家、语言学家的广泛关注和重视,该文首先介绍了早期读写能力的提出与界定．然后具体从社会文化背景、家庭读写环境、幼儿园读写环境三个方面对影响儿童早期读写能力的环境因素进行了分析。最后对目前的研究进行了简单的小结,并指出了在我国进行相关研究的迫切性和重要意义。     

Dynamics of Interpersonal Political Environment and Party Identification: Longitudinal Studies of Voting in Japan and New Zealand

The dynamical systems theory of groups claims that interpersonal political environment and party identification are dynamically interrelated to provide heuristics under uncertainty. Panel data over the course of a year examined the longitudinal dynamics between social networks, social identifications, and voting behavior among a national sample of registered voters in Japan and a regional sample in Wellington, New Zealand. Respondents with more stable party identification had greater stability in the political preferences of their interpersonal network in both countries; moreover, stability in party identification was predicted by interpersonal political environment and older age in both countries. Stability of party identification predicted voting consistency in both countries, whereas stability of interpersonal political environment made an independent contribution to voting consistency in Japan only. There were cultural differences in levels of interpersonal political environment stability, but the amount of political discussion and ideological stability did not make independent contributions to any of the three main variables. Results provided support for the dynamical systems theory of groups.     

Differential perceptions of and feelings about sibling children: implications for research on parenting stress

Parenting stress is influenced by parents' perceptions of their relationships with their children, which can vary widely for each parent depending on which child in the family is being considered. Because this within‐parent variation is rarely studied, we investigated some of the differential perceptions that arise with respect to children's behaviour problems and parent–child negativity/positivity. Participants included a national sample of adoptive parents of 486 pairs of genetically unrelated siblings. Mothers reported different perceptions of their sibling children, and within the family, the child who was rated higher in behaviour problems also was regarded with more negativity and less positivity. Furthermore, the magnitude of the difference was uncorrelated with various indicators of the family and home environment, including parental education and occupational prestige, type of housing and crowding in the home, and progressive versus traditional childrearing attitudes. This pattern of results was consistent with three previously published sibling studies utilizing similar methods. The results point to the importance of examining child effects and within‐parent differences in subjective aspects of the parenting experience. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.