A follow-up study of new users of a university counselling service

For many students the demands of a university course, often coupled with financial and relationship difficulties, create circumstances where counselling or specialist psychiatric support are needed. Few published studies exist of these services. A follow-up study of new users of the University of Cambridge Counselling Service during the course of the 1993/94 academic year is reported. The study aimed to describe morbidity levels and to identify the determinants of change in students' mental health status. Data were obtained from two initial questionnaires: one completed by each student at the time of their initial consultation; the second by the counsellor completing an assessment consultation. About one year following their first assessment, students were asked to complete a further questionnaire. The clear demonstration in this study of depression and anxiety symptoms, as dominant features for many students at their assessment consultation, suggests that training to improve counsellor recognition of such symptoms and of their knowledge of the effectiveness of available therapeutic approaches would be valuable. Such training should also provide guidance on when to refer students to other professionals.     

Similarities and differences in visual and spatial perspective-taking processes

Processes for perspective-taking can be differentiated on whether or not they require us to mentally rotate ourselves into the position of the other person (Michelon & Zacks, 2006). Until now, only two perspective-taking tasks have been differentiated in this way, showing that judging whether something is to someone’s left or right does require mental rotation, but judging if someone can see something or not does not. These tasks differ firstly on whether the content of the perspective is visual or spatial and secondly on whether the type of the judgement is early-developing (level-1 type) or later-developing (level-2 type). Across two experiments, we tested which of these factors was likely to be most important by using four different perspective-taking tasks which crossed orthogonally the content of judgement (visual vs. spatial) and the type of judgement (level-1 type vs. level-2 type). We found that the level-2 type judgements, of how something looks to someone else and whether it is to their left or right, required egocentric mental rotation. On the other hand, level-1 type judgements, of whether something was in front of or behind someone and of whether someone could see something or not, did not involve mental rotation. We suggest from this that the initial processing strategies employed for perspective-taking are largely independent of whether judgements are visual or spatial in nature. Furthermore, early developing abilities have features that make mental rotation unnecessary.