Individual Differences in Race Schematicity as Predictors of African American and White Children's Race-Relevant Memories and Peer Preferences

Race schematicity, memories for racially stereotyped portrayals, and race-based peer preferences of 70 young children (32 African American, 38 White) were assessed. Consistent with schema-based models of stereotyping, race schematicity was positively and significantly associated with memory distortions of racial stereotype-inconsistent drawings into stereotype-consistent ones. Conversely, race schematicity was negatively and significantly associated with accurate memories for racial stereotype-inconsistent content, and with memory distortions of racial stereotype-consistent portrayals into stereotype-inconsistent ones. As predicted, race schematicity was positively and significantly associated with same-race peer preference bias, as was children's age in months. Results support application of the schematicity construct and relevant social psychological research with adults to the study of young African American and White children's racial stereotyping and processing of race-relevant information.     

Effects of Racial Discrimination,Childhood Trauma,and Trauma Symptoms on Juvenile Delinquency in African American Incarcerated Youth

To understand racial disproportionality in juvenile delinquency, we studied relationships between 2 possible contributors: effects of manifestations of a structural factor (racism) and psychological consequences of trauma. Informed by Carter’s (2007) theory of race-based trauma, we explored the role of experiences of racial discrimination, childhood trauma, and trauma symptoms in juvenile delinquency through self-reported experiences of incarcerated African American youth. We found that childhood trauma, trauma symptoms, and racial discrimination experiences all significantly contributed to juvenile delinquency, but participants who experienced greater racial discrimination had higher posttraumatic stress symptoms and elevated delinquency rates. Considering the well-documented effects of trauma symptoms on juvenile delinquency, race-based trauma experiences might help us understand one aspect of racial disproportionality in juvenile delinquency.     

Asian American Intermarriage

SUMMARY

This paper describes the therapeutic process of an interracial couple: an Asian American woman and a White American man. The intent of this therapy was to broaden the conversational space and encourage the couple to explore the effects of cultural beliefs and practices on their relationship. The therapist introduced two approaches for evoking the couple's interest in sharing narratives about their individual and couple racial identity. One approach was to have the couple interview their partner's “internalized other.” The other approach used two research studies to stimulate conversation about outmarriage with Asian Americans. This case study offers an account of two different ways individual narratives and shared conversational space can be expanded.     

Christian Perspectives on Spiritual Needs of a Human Being

SUMMARY

Each human being, independent of culture, time, and age has three fundamental needs. A need for biophysical exchanges, a need for psychosocial exchanges, and a need for spiritual-integrated exchanges. Spiritual needs are not separated from biological, social, psychological, and material aspects of life. Christian spirituality today is oriented toward responding to life, to its beauty and injustices, to the universe, and is responsive and responsible to the poor. Some specific tasks for older people today are commitment to the great causes of justice, peace, and environmental protection, and a deeper bond of love for God and fellow man.     

The bad taste of social ostracism: The effects of exclusion on the eating behaviors of African-American women

African-American women experience disproportionately higher rates of obesity than do Caucasian women. The stress African-American women encounter from experiences of discrimination may influence their eating behaviours, which could contribute to weight gain. Emotional eating theory suggests some people increase their intake of high-calorie foods to cope with stressful experiences. We investigated the effects of social exclusion by other African-American women or by Caucasian women for African-American women’s distress and food consumption using a laboratory paradigm. As hypothesised, there were main effects of ostracism and interactions between ostracism and race, although not all of the interactions took the expected form. As hypothesised, African-American women ate more potato crisps after being excluded by Caucasians than by African-Americans. Unexpectedly, African-American women who were excluded by other African-American women self-reported more emotional distress than did African-American women excluded by Caucasian women. These findings suggest that ostracism by both in-group and out-group members are disturbing, although people may respond to in-group and out-group exclusion in different ways. Directions for future research are suggested that could elucidate the circumstances under which different emotional and behavioural coping responses are employed.     

Differentiation of self and racial identity

This study explored the relationship between personal identity development and in-group/out-group identities within the sociopsychological context of the USA. Specifically, the study examined the relationship between Bowen’s construct of differentiation of self and Helms’ construct of racial identity for an American sample of 309 undergraduate and graduate students. Insofar as both models refer to a progression from an externally defined sense of self to an internally defined sense of self, it was hypothesized that higher levels of more sophisticated racial identity statuses would be positively associated with higher levels of self-differentiation for both white participants and participants of color. Overall, the findings suggest that for white students, attitudes associated with a more differentiated sense of self are also associated with a more sophisticated racial identity statuses, increased awareness of how white privilege and racism operate, and less internal conflict about one’s own racial identity. The results of this study also indicated that, in general, participants of color who have a more differentiated sense of self endorse attitudes associated with higher statuses of racial identity development, more awareness of societal racism, and less ambivalence about their racial identity. Implications of the findings for the practice of counseling and the training of counseling psychologists are considered.     

Visual working memory retains movement information within an allocentric reference frame

What frame of reference do we use to remember observed movements? One possibility is that visual working memory (VWM) retains movement information using a retinotopic frame of reference: A coordinate system with respect to the retina that retains view-dependent information. Alternatively, VWM might retain movement information using an allocentric frame of reference: A coordinate system with respect to the scene that retains view-invariant information. To address this question, I examined whether VWM retains view-dependent or view-invariant movement information. Results show that (1) observers have considerable difficulty remembering from which viewpoints they observed movements after a few seconds' delay, and (2) the same number of movements can be retained in VWM whether the movements are encoded and tested from the same viewpoint or from different viewpoints. Thus, movement representations contain little to no view-dependent information, which suggests that VWM uses an allocentric reference frame to retain movement information.     

Taking counselling and psychotherapy outside: Destruction or enrichment of the therapeutic frame?

This paper will explore emerging issues in the practice of counselling and psychotherapy in the outdoors, which the authors encountered when they took their clients outside of the traditional therapy room. The outdoors is defined as natural areas and spaces, such as woods and parks which have been termed ‘nearby nature’ (Kaplan &; Kaplan, 1989 Kaplan, R. Kaplan, S. (1989). The experience of nature a psychological perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press [Google Scholar]) and also more remote areas such as mountains and moors which are more isolated from civilisation, what some have termed wilderness (Mcfarlane, 2007). Particular emphasis will be given to the ‘frame’ of psychotherapy and how aspects of this are affected by moving outdoors, in particular contracting in relation to confidentiality and timing. The relationship in psychotherapy will be explored in relation to issues of mutuality and asymmetry alongside the role of nature in the therapeutic process. Lastly the challenges and therapeutic potential of psychotherapy in nature will be explored.     

Oedipus matters

Abstract

Using experience of working clinically in South Africa, a powerfully racialized society, this paper argues that the Oedipal period, associated in psychoanalytic theory with the formation of gender identity and the shaping of sexual desire, is also a period during which perception of racial identity affects entry into the social world. During this pivotal developmental period, marked by awareness of encounters with gender difference and experiences of erotic exclusion and inclusion, children also become aware of racial differences and their effects on class, privilege and custom. The paper suggests that the anxieties, competitive energy, hope, hate and dread that accompany the child's Oedipal strivings are frequently compounded by encounters with forms of social difference both in and beyond the family. Assumption of a gendered identity, in many contexts, is inseparable from the conscious and unconscious habitation of a racialized identity, which emerges during exactly the same period. Just as our gender identity is both simple and infinitely variable and complex, our awareness of our race is also on one level simple – ‘black/white’ – and on another extremely complex. The paper argues that the working through of Oedipal anxieties will cast light and shadow on every intimate relationship, and will also determine whether other kinds of difference, including racial difference, are met with fear or competitiveness, idealization or denigration, joyful curiosity or withdrawal. The argument draws on post-Freudian, relational and self-psychoanalytic theory, and emphasizes the variability of developmental paths and their construction in powerful social, economic and political contexts, all of which have fundamental effects on biology and bodies. Major influences on the argument are psychoanalytic gender theorists, specifically Jessica Benjamin and Jody Messler Davies, and the work of Franz Fanon.     

The transformation of consequential functions in accordance with the relational frames of same and opposite

Although the literature on reinforcement in behavioral psychology is extensive, few studies have examined the derived transformation of reinforcing functions in accordance with equivalence classes, and no published research has yet examined the derived transformation of consequential functions in accordance with nonequivalence relations. In the present study, which consisted of four experiments, the basic preparation was as follows. First, an arbitrary stimulus, B2, was established as a conditioned punisher, using direct stimulus pairing. Following nonarbitrary relational training, designed to establish SAME and OPPOSITE contextual cues, subjects were exposed to arbitrary relational training using these contextual cues to establish A1 as the same as B1 and C1, and as opposite to B2 and C2. Subsequently, C2 (based on its Same relation with B2) functioned as a punisher and C1 (based on its Opposite relation with B2) functioned as a reinforcer in a simultaneous discrimination task. Critically, the C1 stimulus acquired reinforcing functions, based on the derived relation of Opposite, although no such function had actually been established for any member of the network. Furthermore, these effects were observed across ABA reversals in the baseline contingencies.