Child psychotherapy with looked after and adopted children: a UK national survey of the profession

Relatively little empirical data is available about the range of work undertaken by child psychotherapists in the UK; however, previous surveys have shown high levels of complexity amongst children referred to child psychotherapists and an increasing proportion of work with children in foster or adoptive placements. Aims: We sought to examine child psychotherapists’ working practices with looked after and adopted children (LAAC), including the types of activities undertaken and their views on this work. Method: An online survey was designed to elicit this information from the members of the Association of Child Psychotherapists (ACP), the regulatory body for child psychotherapists in the UK. The survey included a number of categorical and open-ended questions, which were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. Findings: 215 responses were received (24.5% of the eligible ACP membership). The vast majority of the sample were working with LAAC in some context (87.9%). Respondents were conducting a range of work: the most frequently conducted activities were assessment (83.7%), direct psychotherapy (82.3%), work with foster carers and adoptive parents (80.9%) and consultation with the professional network (76.7%). Thematic analysis of qualitative data suggested the complexity of problems amongst the children attending psychotherapy, as well as the perceived need for long-term work with these children. Many respondents placed emphasis on the importance of working with the professional network around the child, including foster carers and adoptive parents, despite feeling that this was often an under-resourced area of child and adolescent mental health services. The implications of the survey for practice and future research are discussed.     

Sense of Community, Neighboring, and Social Capital as Predictors of Local Political Participation in China

This study examines the state of sense of community, neighboring behavior, and social capital in the People’s Republic of China, and explores their ability to predict local political participation, in the form of voting in elections for Urban Resident/Rural Villager Committees. Using a nationally representative survey, rural, older and married residents and those with a primary or high school education and higher perceived socio-economic status are more likely to participate. In rural areas, men are more likely than women to vote. For urban residents, knowing one’s neighbors is more important whereas in rural areas, neighboring behavior is more important, but both predict voting. Social capital does not generally predict Chinese people’s local political participation. Western definitions of social capital derived from theories about networking, bonding and bridging ties may be too culturally individualistic for China, whose collectivist society and agrarian kinship networks predate Communism. Simply knowing and helping one’s neighbors, rather than more abstract notions of trust, reciprocity or membership, may lead to the development of local democracy.     

Psychological Correlates of Support for Compromise: A Polling Study of Jewish-Israeli Attitudes toward Solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

A representative national sampling of Israeli Jewish adults (n = 550) reported attitudes toward solutions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that were salient in Israeli public discourse in 2002. Negative attitudes toward compromise were associated with zero-sum threat perceptions of the conflict with Palestinians, such that improvement for the Palestinian side can only come at the expense of the Israeli side. Positive attitudes toward compromise were associated with feelings of sympathy toward Palestinians, but, surprisingly, attitudes toward compromise were not associated with feelings of fear toward Palestinians. The possibility is advanced that it is fear of harm to the group, not fear of harm to self and family, that is related to willingness to compromise. Zero-sum perceptions of collective threat were not strongly related to affective reactions, and, contrary to a realist analysis of intergroup conflict, sympathy for Palestinians predicted support for compromise beyond what zero-sum perceptions of threat could predict.     

Public Support for Political Compromise on a Volatile Racial Issue: Insight from the Survey Experiment

In 2000, South Carolina officials, after years of political wrangling over the flying of the Confederate flag over the state capitol, finally removed it, placing it at a Confederate monument on the statehouse grounds. Here, via iterative survey experimentation, I look at the public response to the political compromise required to bring down the flag. I show that the public did respond positively to the multifaceted compromise and that black flag opponents were much more likely than white flag proponents to support the compromise. I also show that more white flag proponents can be swayed to support the compromise if they understand that it is supported by a majority of South Carolinians, thus breaking their misperception of the issue. Flag proponents, however, do not respond more positively to compromise simply because it is the by‐product of white and black negotiations. The political process necessarily evokes competitive intergroup attitudes. Can we think about process in a way that redirects these attitudes and makes political compromise more acceptable?     

扬弃与超越——医学人文教育的重新审视与思考

目前,医学人文教育依然存在诸多问题。通过对医学人文教育现状的审视,追根溯源,重新认识人文教育的内涵,并就认识取向、课程体系、教学模式、评价方法、专业教育与人文教育的关系等方面的障碍或弊端提出扬弃与改革措施。     

初中生数学焦虑的调查及其调控研究

数学焦虑既是心理科学研究的对象,又与教育、教学,特别是学科教学密切相关。本文调查发现:部分初中生存在过度的数学焦虑,并且在年级、性别等维度上具有明显差异;教师的评价方式、课堂气氛、数学考试是形成数学焦虑的主要原因。运用三条教学策略的实验研究表明,数学焦虑是可以调控的,而且数学焦虑的缓解对学生数学成绩的提高有一定的促进作用。     

Strategic value-directed learning and memory in Alzheimer's disease and behavioural-variant frontotemporal dementia

In healthy adults, the ability to prioritize learning of highly valued information is supported by executive functions and enhances subsequent memory retrieval for this information. In Alzheimer's disease (AD) and behavioural-variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), marked deficits are evident in learning and memory, presenting in the context of executive dysfunction. It is unclear whether these patients show a typical memory bias for higher valued stimuli. We administered a value-directed word-list learning task to AD (n = 10) and bvFTD (n = 21) patients and age-matched healthy controls (n = 22). Each word was assigned a low, medium or high point value, and participants were instructed to maximize the number of points earned across three learning trials. Participants’ memory for the words was assessed on a delayed recall trial, followed by a recognition test for the words and corresponding point values. Relative to controls, both patient groups showed poorer overall learning, delayed recall and recognition. Despite these impairments, patients with AD preferentially recalled high-value words on learning trials and showed significant value-directed enhancement of recognition memory for the words and points. Conversely, bvFTD patients did not prioritize recall of high-value words during learning trials, and this reduced selectivity was related to inhibitory dysfunction. Nonetheless, bvFTD patients showed value-directed enhancement of recognition memory for the point values, suggesting a mismatch between memory of high-value information and the ability to apply this in a motivationally salient context. Our findings demonstrate that value-directed enhancement of memory may persist to some degree in patients with dementia, despite pronounced deficits in learning and memory.     

知情同意对危重病患者心理影响的现状研究

探讨知情同意对危重病患者的心理影响。根据知情同意实施现状,将患者分为患者知情组、家属知情组,采用问卷调查和访谈相结合的方法对两组知情同意前、后的心理状况进行评估和比较。采取自愿方式及适宜的告知方法由患者本人知情同意,患者的心理状况与选择家属知情同意的患者无明显区别。     

焦虑情绪对奖赏学习的影响

焦虑是在我们日常生活中占据重要地位的一种情绪, 对人类的决策行为能够产生显著影响。探讨决策研究的重要领域--奖赏学习, 可以帮助我们更深入地认识焦虑情绪在决策过程中扮演的角色。过往研究者较少关注焦虑对奖赏学习的潜在影响, 而且已有研究在实验技术和任务范式方面存在一定的局限性。考虑到奖赏学习概念的复杂性, 为了全面地考察个体焦虑水平与奖赏学习的关系, 本文作者建议设置不同类型的奖赏学习情境, 例如概率学习、联结学习、逆向学习和社会学习等。在上述各类不同任务中, 个体焦虑水平对奖赏学习能力的影响模式可能并不一致, 有待研究者们进行深入探讨。     

Pedestrian behaviors at and perceptions towards various pedestrian facilities: an examination based on observation and survey data

This paper presents findings from an observational study of pedestrian behaviors at various urban crosswalks and a pedestrian user survey which sought pedestrian perceptions toward various pedestrian facilities in a divided urban boulevard located next to a large university campus, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA. Such facilities included signalized and unsignalized intersection crosswalks, unsignalized marked and non-striped midblock crosswalks, physical barriers (vegetation and two-foot high concrete wall), midblock crosswalk shelters, colored paving (red brick pavement) at medians and curbs, and pedestrian warning signs at midblock crossing locations, messaging “cross only when traffic clears.” Pedestrian behavior data were obtained from the reduction of video images of pedestrian movements recorded throughout the study site. Pedestrian perceptions information was obtained through a user survey completed by pedestrians using the study site. It was found that unsignalized midblock crosswalks were the treatment of preference to pedestrians (83% reported a preference to cross) and also showed high crossing compliance rate of pedestrians (71.2%). It was also evident that the crosswalk location, relative to the origin and destination of the pedestrian, was the most influential decision factor for pedestrians deciding to cross at a designated location (90% said so). Proper traffic control can further encourage pedestrian crossings at designated locations since the effect of the availability of pedestrian signal to influence pedestrians’ decisions to cross at a specific location was quite high (74% said so). Moreover, vegetation and concrete barriers influenced the decision to cross of a significant number of pedestrians surveyed (65%). It is expected that the findings from this study will help traffic engineers, urban planners and policy makers understand pedestrian behaviors and attitudes at/towards pedestrian crosswalks.