Borderline personality disorder in an intermediate psychological therapies service

The intermediate psychological therapies service is provided for individuals referred with common mental health problems within the primary care psychological therapies service, but whose difficulties are longstanding and/or complex. The prevalence of borderline personality disorder (BPD) in intermediate psychological therapy services has not been researched to-date. The current study aimed to measure the prevalence of BPD amongst patients attending intermediate psychological therapies (n?=?63). The prevalence of BPD was established by identifying the number of patients who met DSM-IV criteria. BPD prevalence amongst patients attending an intermediate psychological therapy service was 37%. The high proportion of patients presenting with BPD indicates the potential need for staff training and supervision in how to manage such high levels of need at this service level. This is the first study to report prevalence rates of BPD specifically in an intermediate care psychological therapy service.     

An investigation into the counselling-type work of Roman Catholic priests: a survey of one diocese in Northern Ireland

Professional counselling has been criticised as being the preserve of the elite, and neither available nor affordable for the vast majority of society. However, there are other sources of help which people avail themselves of in times of need. One such source has been the local clergyman. This study looked at the helping service provided by Catholic priests working in pastoral situations in a Northern Irish diocese. Based on a questionnaire survey of 32 Catholic priests (25% of the diocese) the study looked first at the types of problems being presented to clergy, and how they responded to them. It examined their training for this work, as well as their attitudes to it, support for Catholic priests in this aspect of their work and also at their referral practices. Findings in respect of problems presented and training were in line with previous research. A wide variety of problems was encountered by Catholic priests where the most common were bereavement, alcohol or substance abuse, marital disharmony, relationship problems and terminal illness. Despite very positive attitudes towards counselling-type work and its importance in their ministry, Catholic priests' initial training in this area was reported as largely irrelevant to their current needs and there was a prevailing view of dissatisfaction. A level of self-confidence was displayed that seemed incongruent with the training in this field. Responses in respect of support and referral were contrary to previous studies. Priests seemed to be engaging in referral and reported high levels of personal but mainly informal support for this work.The findings are discussed in relation to priests continuing to undertake counselling-type work.     

Is there a bilingual advantage on interference-control tasks? A multiverse meta-analysis of global reaction time and interference cost

A contentious issue in contemporary psycholinguistics is whether bilingualism enhances executive functions. Here, we report a meta-analysis of 80 studies (253 effect sizes) comparing performance of monolinguals and bilinguals on non-verbal interference-control tasks, while examining potential moderators of effects on two dependent variables (DVs): global reaction time (RT) and interference cost. We used a multiverse approach to determine how robust conclusions were to several dataset construction and analysis decisions. In our “preferred” analysis, using a broad definition of bilinguals and standard versions of interference-control tasks, there was a very small but significant bilingual advantage for global RT (g =.13), which became non-significant once corrected for publication bias. For interference cost, there was a very small but significant bilingual advantage (g =.11). Effects were not significantly moderated by task or participant age, but were moderated by an interaction between age of second language acquisition (AoA) and the DV. Unexpectedly, larger effect sizes for interference cost were observed for studies involving bilinguals with late as opposed to early AoA. The multiverse analysis produced results largely consistent with the preferred analysis, confirming our conclusion that evidence for a bilingual advantage on interference-control tasks is weak.

     

Cultivating Ethos through the Body

The paper lays the groundwork for understanding Heidegger's original ethics in the context of embodiment. I draw upon Merleau-Ponty's account of the flesh to develop a new ontology of embodiment as the basis for ethics. This ontology is formulated by integrating three unique accounts of the embodiment, namely, Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology, Yuasa Yasuo's Eastern-based phenomenology of the body, and the emerging science of Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI). In each of these accounts of embodiment, the flesh is revealed as simultaneously consisting of presence and absence, incarnation and transcendence, being and consciousness. As a result, the Heideggerian approach to ethics, which is based upon the relationship we have with being, can be realized on many levels of embodiment. This makes the cultivation of a holistic ethos more feasible. Such an ethos overcomes the shortcomings in Heidegger's ethics and, in particular, those revealed by Levinas, Levin, Krell, and Caputo.     

Onset Neighborhood Density Slows Lexical Access in High Vocabulary 30-Month Olds

There is consensus that the adult lexicon exhibits lexical competition. In particular, substantial evidence demonstrates that words with more phonologically similar neighbors are recognized less efficiently than words with fewer neighbors. How and when these effects emerge in the child's lexicon is less clear. In the current paper, we build on previous research by testing whether phonological onset density slows lexical access in a large sample of 100 English-acquiring 30-month-olds. The children participated in a visual world looking-while-listening task, in which their attention was directed to one of two objects on a computer screen while their eye movements were recorded. We found moderate evidence of inhibitory effects of onset neighborhood density on lexical access and clear evidence for an interaction between onset neighborhood density and vocabulary, with larger effects of onset neighborhood density for children with larger vocabularies. Results suggest the lexicons of 30-month-olds exhibit lexical-level competition, with competition increasing with vocabulary size.