What Happens When Therapists Feel Bored or Anxious? A Qualitative Study of Distracting Self-Awareness and Therapists' Management Strategies

Using a qualitative methodology, we investigated novice and experienced therapists' experiences of and strategies for managing distracting self-awareness. We found that novice therapists were most aware of anxiety and critical self-talk, whereas experienced therapists were most aware of boredom and outside distracters. In addition, although therapists tended to manage distracting self-awareness through self-coaching and refocusing on the client, novice therapists specifically mentioned managing problematic self-awareness through self-disclosure. In contrast, experienced therapists tended to manage problematic self-awareness by using thought stopping techniques. The results provide new avenues for examining therapists' in-session experiences and for investigating the effectiveness of different management strategies.     

Comprehension of the representational mind in infancy

A broad array of infant studies are reviewed that appear to be consistent with the idea that belief understanding specifically, and mental attribution generally, emerge much earlier than previously acknowledged. We first examine existing false-belief research, which, while confirming that children under 4 years perform poorly on standard tests, suggests nevertheless that they have more implicit understanding of beliefs than they can express. After surveying theories that both favor and reject early development of theory of mind (TOM), we address two recent bodies of visual fixation research that provide support for the possibility of knowledge and belief attribution in infancy. The first indicates that infants of 13–15 months are sensitive to others’ false beliefs (and therefore have a representational TOM), the second, that by 12 months or younger infants have two antecedently related psychological understandings: (a) that when agents look they “see” and (b) that seeing plays a presumptive role in producing knowledge. This raises the broader question of whether “mentalism” might be part of core knowledge, which takes us to the earliest manifestation of psychological attribution, the construal of agentive behavior as intentional. Contrary to previous assumptions, recent studies indicate that infants of 3–9 months do not accord intentionality exclusively to humans or to self-propelled objects but rather to any entity that: (1) chooses flexibly among means and ends, (2) responds non-randomly to social overtures, and (3) reacts rationally to changing circumstances (i.e., that is not a mere automaton but is selectively and adaptively responsive to the environment). Other evidence is then examined which suggests that infants begin to construe these and other behaviors in mentalist rather than teleological terms much earlier than expected. Finally, the implications of this empirical record for domain-specific and domain-general theories of TOM are considered.     

Emotions in action through the looking glass1

Abstract: The paper aims at highlighting how our primary understanding of others’ actions is rooted in the mirror mechanism. To this end, the anatomical architecture of the mirror neuron system for action will be outlined as well as its role in grasping goals and intentions in others’ motor behaviour. One further step through the looking glass of social cognition will be referring to the ubiquitous emotional colouring of actions and considering its links with the motor domain. This will allow a clearer perspective on the mechanism underlying our abilities for emotional understanding and on cases in which these abilities are amiss, as in autistic spectrum disorders.     

Theoretical Orientation and Therapists' Attitudes to Important Components of Therapy: A Study Based on the Valuable Elements in Psychotherapy Questionnaire

The authors describe the inception and subsequent testing of a questionnaire on attitudes regarding how psychotherapy ought to be pursued: the Valuable Elements in Psychotherapy Questionnaire (VEP-Q). A sample of 416 Swedish therapists (161 psychodynamic, 93 cognitive, 95 cognitive behavioral, and 67 integrative/eclectic) responded to the 17-item VEP-Q. A factor analysis of these items resulted in three subscales: PDT, CBT, and Common Factor, as validated by analyses of covariance. The internal consistency and test–retest reliability of the scales were excellent. In addition to theoretical orientation, variables such as gender and basic professional training influenced how respondents answered the VEP-Q. The authors conclude that the VEP-Q seems to be an appropriate instrument for describing similarities as well as differences among practitioners of various schools of psychotherapy.     

Cybervictimization and body esteem: Experiences of Swedish children and adolescents

This study investigates the relationship between cybervictimization and body esteem among 1076 pupils, ages 10–15. More specifically we investigated if being the victim of cyberbullying was related to body esteem, and if there were any grade and gender differences in these relationships. Additionally, we examined how often pupils' believed that cyberbullying was directed at the victims' appearance, and if this view was more common when girls were cybervictims compared to when boys were cybervictims. Pupils in fourth grade (10-year-olds), sixth grade (12-year-olds) and ninth grade (15-year-olds), from 21 different schools in Gothenburg were surveyed. The main finding was that victims of cyberbullying reported poorer body esteem than non-cybervictims. The results also showed that pupils believed that cyberbullying was directed at the victims' appearance, especially when girls were victims. This study provides unique data concerning the links between being exposed to cyberbullying and body esteem.     

Next Steps in Validation

No abstract available for this article.     

A Developmental Perspective of Marriage and Family Therapist's Ethical Principles: Support for the Practitioner–Ethics Relationship Model

This study explored therapists' professional ethics by assessing therapist at-risk behaviors as they relate to ethical proficiency in the field of Marriage and Family Therapy. A survey assessing practice behaviors was distributed among marriage and family therapists (MFTs) of varying levels of experience. Data gathered were analyzed using factor analysis, structural equation modeling, and multiple regression. Results indicate a positive relationship between the latent variables of risk and justification, as well as a significant relationship between these variables and years of clinical experience. Findings provide evidence to support the practitioner–ethics relationship model proposed by the authors. Implications of these findings, as well as future directions for research and policy are suggested.     

Primacy of information about means selection over outcome selection in goal attribution by infants

It has been shown that, when observing an action, infants can rely on either outcome selection information (i.e., actions that express a choice between potential outcomes) or means selection information (i.e., actions that are causally efficient toward the outcome) in their goal attribution. However, no research has investigated the relationship between these two types of information when they are present simultaneously. In an experiment that addressed this question directly, we found that when outcome selection information could disambiguate the goal of the action (e.g., the action is directed toward one of two potential targets), but means selection information could not (i.e., the action is not efficiently adjusted to the situational constraints), 7- and 9-month-old infants did not attribute a goal to an observed action. This finding suggests that means selection information takes primacy over outcome selection information. The early presence of this bias sheds light on the nature of the notion of goal in action understanding.