Using Creative Techniques With Children Who Have Experienced Trauma

Verbal and emotional forms of expression can be difficult for young children who have experienced trauma. Creative methods and approaches such as puppets, sandtray, letter writing, and art are therapeutic mediums that provide an outlet for a young client’s story of trauma to be told. Children can use puppets to depersonalize and share feelings with a counselor that would provide insight into their coping strategies. Similarly, sandtray is another nonverbal approach that gives children the opportunity to externalize their feelings safely and can be easily used with extroverted and introverted clients. Letter writing and art can empower children and give them hope for the future. In summary, creative techniques can allow counselors to help explore stories of trauma with young clients.     

Responses to Lucretia B. Yaghjian's “Pedagogical challenges in teaching ESOL/multilingual writers in theological education”

This article consists of four brief responses to Lucretia B. Yaghjian's “Pedagogical challenges in teaching ESOL/Multilingual writers in theological education,” published in this issue of the journal.     

The role of inhibition and speed of processing in mathematics

The current study highlights the importance of inhibitory ability in facilitating performance in mathematics. To understand the role of inhibition in mathematical knowledge, this study tested 102 college students on a series of standardized complex math exercises. Inhibition tasks varied by task and stimuli (letters, numbers, and arrows). The result showed stronger associations between math abilities and strength of inhibition with more inhibition found for the flanker task (involving inhibition of peripheral stimuli) than for the Navon task (requiring inhibition of a potential response). The results supported the view that Inhibition in general (which is not unique to numerical stimuli) is associated with math abilities. General, rather than specific inhibition was associated with math abilities and finally, speed of processing masked the relationship between math and inhibition. These results confirm the assumption that the relation between inhibition and math performance is modulated by the task that measures the inhibition, and by additional predictors such as processing speed.     

What you see is what you want to get: Perceived abilities outperform objective test performance in predicting mate appeal in speed dating

Are intelligent, creative, and emotionally competent people more desirable? Evolution-based theories and studies on the ideal partner suggest that they are. We aimed to assess whether verbal, numerical, and spatial intelligence, creativity, and intra- and interpersonal emotional competence are associated with higher real-life mate appeal. In speed dates, 87 women and 88 men met up to 14 members of the opposite sex (2188 observations). While only one measured ability—women’s creativity—was significantly associated with mate appeal, ability perceptions by speed-dating partners could broadly predict mate appeal. Effects of perceived and measured abilities were substantially reduced after controlling for physical attractiveness. These results suggest that the investigated abilities play a lesser role in initial attraction than proposed in the past.     

Experimental manipulations of perspective taking and perspective switching in expressive writing

Previous studies suggest that those who naturally vary their pronoun use over the course of expressive writing subsequently report the greatest improvements in physical and mental health. To explore possible perspective taking or perspective switching effects, two studies manipulated writing perspectives about emotional events from either a first-person, second-person, or third-person perspective. In Study 1, 55 students were randomly assigned to one of the three writing perspectives and were asked to write from the same perspective for three 5-minute writing sessions. In Study 2, 129 students wrote for three 5-minute sessions, one from each perspective in a counterbalanced order. The results showed that writing from a first-person perspective conferred more perceived benefits and was associated with using more cognitive mechanism words, whether engaged in perspective taking or perspective switching.     

Effectiveness of parent counselling in eating disorders

ABSTRACT

Eating Disorders (ED) are often severe illnesses entailing a heavy burden for families. Family therapy is recommended for young patients, but only a few studies have investigated therapeutic interventions with families tailored also to adult and longstanding patients. We recruited 87 families with daughters affected by an ED, aiming to assess the effectiveness of eight sessions of parent counselling. The primary outcome was the improvement of parents' coping abilities to achieve more effective support skills. Before treatment, 54% of parents showed poor coping resources whereas 43.7% of the sample improved after parent counselling. Parents with good coping resources responded significantly better to this treatment. Although future research is warranted, these preliminary findings support the effectiveness of parent counselling in ED.