Analyse me

The poem Analyse Me evolved from my desire to understand where and how the creative fitted into the scheme of military veteran mental health treatments in Australia. In 2016, as an Australian Army veteran and a creative writer, I undertook to conduct craft of writing workshops for veterans. However, I found creative arts, in all modes, were not as widely incorporated into treatments and research as I thought. The poem is a creative response to my frustration and disbelief of the results of my research and is a representation of my findings conceptualised to be the clinical and externally measurable treatment modes at one extreme, contrasted against the less definable use of the imagination or the creative at the other. The poem highlights the broad expanse between these extremes. It underlines a view on the difference of gender in treatment and the divide between the detached, clinical analysis and the more personal, intuitive creative response. Analyse Me does not deny the use of one modality over, or to the exclusion, of the other but rather indicates they both have purpose and can be mutually supportive and beneficial.     

Doing things with words: toward evocative ethnography

The concept of evocative ethnography is described and contrasted with realist representation. Two examples of evocative ethnography are provided: the plight of women as they age and the impact of digital immersion on cultural life. Discussion focuses on the benefits of expanding the repertoire of writing in the social sciences.     

Creative writing for life design: Reflexivity,metaphor and change processes through narrative

To survive and thrive on the labor market of the 21st century, individuals must construct their identities in a process of meaning making, where identity is co-constructed in the form of a narrative. In order to better understand the nature and elements involved in this career-identity change process the Interpersonal Process Recall interview (IPR) method was used to examine the results of a two-day Career Writing (Lengelle, 2014) intervention. The exploration regarding what prompted changes and how reflexivity was developed, was done by having each of two participants bring in pieces written during the course and having the interviewer ask what thoughts and feelings were remembered at the time of writing. The IPR process revealed that Career Writing enables participants to first enter into feelings, then make sense of those by finding the ‘right’ words to describe them, and experience (by thinking and feeling) that their ‘new story’ makes sense on a gut level and provides meaning. This process is made possible by an internal and an external dialogue where various I-positions (voices within the self) speak and where metaphors and analogies concretely facilitate meaning making.     

Use of an explicit rule decreases procrastination in university students

The procrastination behavior of students from a small rural university was decreased by presenting them with a rule indicating that a sooner final due date for a writing assignment would be contingent on procrastination during earlier phases of the paper. A counterbalanced AB BA design was used to measure the effects of the rule‐based treatment across 2 introductory psychology classes (N = 33). Overall, participants engaged in less procrastination, missed fewer deadlines, and produced higher quality writing in the treatment condition.     

The relationship between cognitive abilities and maternal ratings of externalizing behaviors in preschool children

The association between child cognitive abilities and maternal ratings of child externalizing behaviors was investigated in a randomly selected sample of 290 preschool children. Child cognitive abilities were assessed by the WPPSI-R, whereas mothers completed the Yale Children's Inventory for the assessment of child externalizing behaviors. Maternal education, and maternal child-rearing style, as defined by scores on the Child Rearing Practices Report, was significantly related to perceived externalizing child behavior. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that for girls, low child IQ remained a significant predictor of perceived externalizing behavior when effects of maternal education and child-rearing style were controlled for (p < 0.01). Maternal child-rearing style made independent contributions to explaining variance in girls' and boys' behavior score. The results are discussed in terms of differential gender socialization practices and gender stereotypes.     

小学四年级学生写作构思技能培养的实验研究

本研究运用心理模拟法创立了写作构思活动模式,并根据心智技能按阶段形成的理论对构思技能进行了分阶段培养。结果表明：①写作构思活动的实践模式可以有效地提高学生的写作构思技能水平,并能进而促进其写作水平的整体提高;②小学四年级学生在写作构思水平上不存在明显的性别差异,男女学生可以同等程度地接受构思技能的培训;③学生原有的写作技能水平和智力水平对于当前的写作活动有明显影响。     

Metalinguistic Awareness and Reading Performance: A Cross Language Comparison

The study examined two questions: (1) do the greater phonological awareness skills of billinguals affect reading performance; (2) to what extent do the orthographic characteristics of a language influence reading performance and how does this interact with the effects of phonological awareness. We estimated phonological metalinguistic abilities and reading measures in three groups of first graders: monolingual Hebrew speakers, bilingual Russian–Hebrew speakers, and Arabic-speaking children. We found that language experience affects phonological awareness, as both Russian–Hebrew bilinguals and the Arabic speakers achieved higher scores on metalinguistic tests than Hebrew speakers. Orthography affected reading measures and their correlation with phonological abilitites. Children reading Hebrew showed better text reading ability and significant correlations between phonological awareness and reading scores. Children reading Arabic showed a slight advantage in single word and nonword reading over the two Hebrew reading groups, and very weak relationships between phonological abilities and reading performance. We conclude that native Arabic speakers have more difficulty in processing Arabic orthography than Hebrew monolinguals and bilinguals have in processing Hebrew orthography, and suggest that this is due to the additional visual complexity of Arabic orthography.