Development of the Idiographic functional status assessment: A measure of the personal goals and goal attainment activities of people with AIDS

Abstract

This study presents the development of the Idiographic Functional Status Assessment (IFSA), an interview to assess functional status according to each person's unique point of view. This idiographic method asks people to state their personal goals in terms of things they want to accomplish, problems they want to solve, situations they hope to avoid, roles and relationships they want to maintain, and pursuits they want to relinquish. After describing their goals, respondents rate goal attainment activities they have pursued in the past month in terms of level of difficulty, dependence and other performance dimensions. In a study of 224 people with AIDS, the idiographic measure provided functional status scales that were relatively stable over time, and that correlated well with other subjective well-being measures and heath status criteria. Goal content measures derived from the interview can be used to distinguish sub samples that differ in terms of the determinants of quality of life.     

On the Origins of Children's Compliance and Opposition: Family Context, Reinforcement, and Rules

Interactional synchrony and context dependent reinforcement are presented as similar phenomena in this discussion of children's dispositions to comply with or to oppose parental instructions. I argue that consistent and appropriate parental reactions to the full range of a child's response repertoire will establish a family context conducive to positive reinforcement of child compliance. In contrast, inconsistent parental reactions appear to create a chaotic family context conducive to the negative reinforcement of child opposition. Depending on these two forms of context, the parents and children seem to generate distinctive personal rules which outline the functional arrangements of context, behavior and reinforcement. The importance of these personal rules in helping parents and children to improve the lawfulness of family context is highlighted.     

Big Five Personality Traits as the Predictors of Creative Self‐Efficacy and Creative Personal Identity: Does Gender Matter?

The aim of this study was to examine the relation of the Big Five personality factors to two self‐concept variables of growing importance in creativity literature: creative self‐efficacy (CSE) and creative personal identity (CPI). The analysis, conducted on a large (N = 2674, 49.6% women) and varied‐in‐age (15–59 years old) nationwide sample of Poles, using the structural equation model, demonstrated that personality factors are responsible for 23% of CSE and 21% of CPI variances. CSE and CPI were associated with all five personality dimensions: positively with Openness to Experience, Extraversion and Conscientiousness, negatively with Neuroticism and Agreeableness. The separate analyses conducted on men and women showed the differences among the predictors of CSE and CPI. Although Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, and Neuroticism predicted CSE among both men and women, Extraversion was positively and Agreeableness negatively related to women's CSE. Conscientiousness was positively related to CPI only among men, and Agreeableness was negatively related to it only among women. Extraversion, Neuroticism, and Openness predicted CPI in the same manner among men and women.     

Students’ Anticipated Situational Engagement: The Roles of Teacher Behavior,Personal Engagement,and Gender

Among 9th-grade students (248 girls, 255 boys) from a large multiethnic school, the authors examined 2 aspects of anticipated situational engagement in relation to 3 types of hypothetical teacher behavior: authoritarian, authoritative, permissive. Furthermore, the authors investigated the moderating roles of students’ personal (trait-like) engagement and gender. Multilevel analyses showed differential effects of teacher behavior type. Anticipated situational engagement was generally highest with the authoritative teacher and lowest with the authoritarian teacher. However, students’ personal engagement and gender qualified these effects. The effects of the authoritative and authoritarian teachers versus the permissive teachers on anticipated situational engagement were more positive (or less negative) for students with high versus low personal engagement. Also, the positive effects of the authoritative and permissive teachers versus the authoritarian teacher were stronger for female students than for male students. Results show that anticipated situational engagement should be understood by examining the combined influences of contextual and individual characteristics.     

Reply to Catriona Mackenzie

In her excellent critique of my book Self to Self (2006), Catriona Mackenzie highlights three gaps in my view of the self. First, my effort to distinguish among different applications of the concept ‘self’ is not matched by any attempt to explain the interactions among the selves so distinguished. Second, in analyzing practical reasoning as aimed at self-understanding, I speak sometimes of causal-psychological understanding (e.g. in the paper titled ‘The Centered Self’) and sometimes of narrative self-understanding (e.g. in ‘The Self as Narrator’), but I never explain how these two modes of self-understanding are related. Third, I never explain how my account of autonomous agency can be reconciled with my interpretation of Kant's (e.g., in ‘A Brief Introduction to Kantian Ethics’). In this reply to Mackenzie, I agree with her about all three of these gaps, and I offer some (admittedly incomplete) ideas about how they might be filled.     

The Creation of the Dyad in the Suspension of Singular Personal Reality

ABSTRACT

Through an ongoing, nonconfrontive sharing of subjective realities, this goal can be realized: experiencing the other as a full person rather than an imbedded object in one's own version of life. The chance to experience true intimacy rests in not confusing our image of our partner with the full person. The therapist serves as catalyst and conduit in exchanging the dual realities to reach this goal.     

Post‐Traumatic Growth and Optimism as Outcomes of an Internet‐Based Intervention for Complicated Grief

This explorative study examines the effects of an internet‐based cognitive‐behavioural therapy for complicated grief on post‐traumatic growth and optimism. The study is part of a larger randomized controlled trial described in Wagner, Knaevelsrud, and Maercker (2006) Wagner, B., Knaevelsrud, C. and Maercker, A. 2006. Internet‐based cognitive‐behavioral therapy for complicated grief: a randomized controlled trial.. Death Studies, 30: 429–453. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]. The patients were randomly assigned to either a treatment group (n = 26) or a waiting list control condition (n = 25). The internet‐based intervention consisted of exposure to bereavement cues, cognitive reappraisal exercises, and a module on integration and restoration. A short form of the Post‐traumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI), the Life Orientation Test‐Revised (LOT‐R), and measures of complicated grief and psychopathological outcomes were administered. Results indicate that post‐traumatic growth increased in the treatment group. No treatment effect was found for optimism. These findings contribute to the growing literature on personal growth in psychotherapy.     

Reconstructing the Loss: Bereaved Parents in Personal Commemorative Films

The aim of this study was to find answers to the question of how Israeli parents who have lost their child in battle or in a terror attack reconstruct their life story, as revealed in personal commemorative films. Twenty personal documentary commemorative films were systematically and thematically analyzed. Through exposing the themes of last shared experience, death event, and notification of death, the research sheds light on the self-healing process that enables parents to build a bridge in their narrative. The commemorative films provide a framework for reconstruction work adding to the new body of research in the field of video and cinema therapy.     

Self–Other Relations in Biodiversity Conservation in the Community: Representational Processes and Adjustment to New Actions

This research explores the simultaneous role of two Self–Other relations in the elaboration of representations at the micro‐ and ontogenetic levels, assuming that it can result in acceptance and/or resistance to new laws. Drawing on the Theory of Social Representations, it concretely looks at how individuals elaborate new representations relevant for biodiversity conservation in the context of their relations with their local community (an interactional Other) and with the legal/reified sphere (an institutional Other). This is explored in two studies in Portuguese Natura 2000 sites where a conservation project calls residents to protect an at‐risk species. Study 1 shows that (i) agreement with the institutional Other (the laws) and meta‐representations of the interactional Other (the community) as approving of conservation independently help explain (at the ontogenetic level) internalisation of conservation goals and willingness to act; (ii) the same meta‐representations operating at the micro‐genetic level attenuate the negative relation between ambivalence and willingness to act. Study 2 shows that a meta‐representation of the interactional Other as showing no clear position regarding conservation increases ambivalence. Findings demonstrate the necessarily social nature of representational processes and the importance of considering them at more than one level for understanding responses to new policy/legal proposals. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.