Psychology

Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment Online Table of Contents Alert '); document.write(''); } //--> = 11) document.write('');//--> //--> = 11) OAS_RICH(pos); else OAS_NORMAL(pos); } //--> HOME | ONLINEFIRST | ALL ISSUES | SUBSCRIBE | RSS | EMAIL ALERTS | FEEDBACK Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment Online Table of Contents Alert A new issue of Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment is available online: June 2013; Vol. 31, No. 3 The below Table of Contents is available online at: http://jpa.sagepub.com/content/vol31/issue3/?etoc Articles The Development of a School-Based Measure of Child Mental Health Jessica Deighton, Peter Tymms, Panos Vostanis, Jay Belsky, Peter Fonagy, Anna Brown, Amelia Martin, Praveetha Patalay, and Miranda Wolpert Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment 2013;31 247-257http://jpa.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/31/3/247 Concurrent Validity of the Classroom Strategies Scale for Elementary School—Observer Form Linda A. Reddy, Gregory A. Fabiano, and Christopher M. Dudek Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment 2013;31 258-270http://jpa.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/31/3/258 The Structural Consistency of a Six-Factor Model of Academic Self-Concept Among Culturally Diverse Preadolescents in the United States Gary J. Ockey and Sara Abercrombie Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment 2013;31 271-283http://jpa.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/31/3/271 Achievement Goal Validation Among African American High School Students: CFA and Rasch Results Caroline O. Hart, Christian E. Mueller, Kenneth D. Royal, and Martin H. Jones Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment 2013;31 284-299http://jpa.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/31/3/284 A Psychometric Evaluation of the STAI-Y, BDI-II, and PAI Using Single and Multifactorial Models in Young Adults Seeking Psychoeducational Evaluation Benjamin D. Hill, Mandi Musso, Glenn N. Jones, Russell D. Pella, and Wm. Drew Gouvier Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment 2013;31 300-312http://jpa.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/31/3/300 A Comprehensive Evaluation of the Supreme Court's Forest Grove Decision? Perry A. Zirkel Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment 2013;31 313-317http://jpa.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/31/3/313 Forest Grove v. T.A. Rejoinder to Zirkel: An Attempt to Profit From Malfeasance? Peter W. D. Wright, James B. Hale, Erica M. Backenson, Eleazar C. Eusebio, and Shauna G. Dixon Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment 2013;31 318-325http://jpa.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/31/3/318 Effects of Extended Time Allotments on Reading Comprehension Performance of College Students With and Without Learning Disabilities Lawrence Lewandowski, Justin Cohen, and Benjamin J. Lovett Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment 2013;31 326-336http://jpa.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/31/3/326 Test Review Review of the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence, Second Edition (WASI-II) Adam W. McCrimmon and Amanda D. Smith Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment 2013;31 337-341http://jpa.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/31/3/337 Book Review Book Review: LINKing Authentic Assessment & Early Childhood Intervention: Best Measures for Best Practices Suzanne M. Winter Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment 2013;31 342-345http://jpa.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/31/3/342 HOME | ONLINEFIRST | ALL ISSUES | SUBSCRIBE | RSS | EMAIL ALERTS | FEEDBACK

Suzette Bray, MFT - In practicing dialectical behavior therapy, a therapist should employ validation strategies to legitimize the client's emotions and behaviors, thereby promoting self-acceptance and clearing the way for change....

A psychological bias that illuminates how we negotiate, predict our emotions, agree a price and much more... To illustrate the anchoring effect, let's say I ask you how old Mahatma Gandhi was when he died. For half of you I'll preface the question by saying: "Did he die before or after the age of 9?" For the other half I'll say: "Did he die before or after the age of 140?" Obviously these are not very helpful statements. Anyone who has any clue who Gandhi was will know that he was definitely older than 9; while the oldest person who ever lived was 122. So why bother making these apparently stupid statements? Because, according to the results of a study conducted by Strack and Mussweiler (1999), these initial statements, despite being unhelpful, affect the estimates people make. In their experiment, the first group guessed an average age of 50 and the second, 67. Neither was that close, he was actually assassinated at 87; but you can still see the effect of the initial number. The anchor state These might seem like silly little experiments that psychologists do to try and suggest that people are idiots, but actually it's showing us something fundamental about the way we think. It's so basic to how we experience the world that we often don't notice it. We have a tendency to use anchors or reference points to make decisions and evaluations, and sometimes these lead us astray. This sort of things is going on in loads of different areas of our lives. Take the emotions for starters. Psychologists have found it can be difficult to predict our future emotions and one reason is that we are anchored in how we feel right now. That's why people who have just had lunch feel like they'll never be hungry again; compared with those who haven't, who don't display the same short-sightedness (I have described the relevant study in the context of the projection bias). Real estate agents, car sellers or negotiators will be nodding their heads. That's because anchors are vital in all these lines of work, and many more. The initial price you set for the car, house or, more abstractly, for a deal of some kind, tends to have ramifications right through the process of coming to an agreement. Whether we like it or not, our minds keep referring back to that initial number. That doesn't mean you just set the highest possible price you can get away with (although in reality that's often what is done). In real life things are more complicated than the Gandhi experiment. People usually have a choice about which house or car to buy or which deal to take and they can always walk away. Still, there's a good reason sticker prices on car forecourts are mostly so high. You can see the same effect in salary negotiations. There's some evidence that when the initial anchor figure is set high, the final negotiated amount will usually be higher (Thorsteinson, 2011). Incidentally, the anchoring effect is another reason that you should open negotiations rather than waiting for the employer to tell you the range: because then you can set the anchor higher (more on this in: Ten Powerful Steps to Negotiating a Higher Salary). Looking for confirmation Since the anchoring effect occurs in so many situations, no one theory has satisfactorily explained it. There is, though, a modern favourite for explaining the anchoring effect in decision-making. It is thought to stem from our tendency to look for confirmation of things we are unsure of. So, if I'm told the price of a particular diamond ring is £5,000, I'll tend to search around looking for evidence that confirms this. In this case it's easy: plenty of diamond rings cost about that, no matter the value of this particular ring. For all I know about diamond rings it could be worth £500 or £50,000. The problem is that this explanation is less satisfying when the anchor is so manifestly unhelpful, like when you tell people that Gandhi was older than nine when he died. Perhaps, then, it's all down to our fundamental laziness. When

I love raging scientific controversies. I am not talking about vaccines and autism, global warming, evolution, or homeopathy – these are not actual scientific controversies. They are political controversies intruding onto science. I prefer nerdy scientific debates that have insignificant political implications. I like to see two groups of scientists arguing about the evidence over some narrow scientific question.  That way you get pure science without all the distortion and nonsense of politics and ideology. That is when you see how science really works. Take for example the Younger Dryas. The last glacial maximum ended about 20,000 years ago. That glacial period was followed by interstadial (warm) periods and stadial (cold) periods. The term Dryas refers to the indicator genus (Dryas octopetali) which is a tundra flower that was much more widely distributed during cold periods. Its pollen in core samples is therefore a good indicator of an stadial period. Following the last glacial period there were three Dryas mini-cold periods, the Oldest Dryas from 18,000-15,000 bp, the Older Dryas from 14,000 to 13,700 bp, and the Younger Dryas from 12,800 to 11,500 bp. The Younger Dryas is of particular interest because it coincides with not only a cold period but a major drought, and with it the extinction of much of the North American megafauna (like the mammoths) and the Clovis culture. The Clovis, named after Clovis, New Mexico, are a paleoindian culture defined by their distinctive stone spear points. They were big game hunters, so it’s not surprising that the Clovis industry went away with the big game (it’s not clear if the people went away, or just their hunting culture, which had to be replaced with a small game culture). There are lots of interesting questions about the Dryas and the Clovis, but the raging controversy I have been building up to is this – what triggered the Younger Dryas? There are two main theories. The first is that the melting of the North American ice sheet at one point opened a river of fresh water into the north Atlantic ocean. The sudden dumping of massive amounts of fresh water into the Atlantic reduced its salinity and shut down the ocean currents that bring warm tropical waters north, warming the continent. This lasted until the ice sheets melted and the fresh water river stopped. A more recent rival theory, however, has been making headway. A recent study, in fact (and the trigger for today’s post), adds additional support to the theory that a meteor impact triggered the Younger Dryas. For completeness I will mention that there is also a theory that a massive eruption of the Laacher See volcano in Germany threw up enough ash which spread over North America to cause the sudden cooling. This is a minority theory, however – the main dispute is over glacial melting vs meteor or comet  impact. Much of the controversy surrounds the presence of microspherules and other markers of a large impact. Several research teams claimed to find such spherules in the Younger Dryas boundary layer, while two teams did not, disputing the original results. Yet another team therefore independently and blindly examined the relevant samples and did find microspherules. The evidence seemed to be heading in the direction of an impact. Now a research team lead by James Kennett, who is part of the team who proposed the impact theory, recently published a thorough analysis of the Younger Dryas boundary layer: Now, in one of the most comprehensive related investigations ever, the group has documented a wide distribution of microspherules widely distributed in a layer over 50 million square kilometers on four continents, including North America, including Arlington Canyon on Santa Rosa Island in the Channel Islands. This layer –– the Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB) layer –– also contains peak abundances of other exotic materials, including nanodiamonds and other unusual forms of carbon such as fullere

A study published recently in the journal GeroPsych examines the association between coping behavior and their relationship satisfaction in older spousal dyads. Researchers examined N = 132 couples (M age = 68 years) and found that their dyadic coping strategies – a prime indicator of functional adaptation to daily stress in marital context – were significantly linked to relationship satisfaction. The findings suggest that the partner’s subjective perception of their spouse’s supportive behavior was more strongly linked to their relationship satisfaction than to their self-reported support. Furthermore, individual support perception was more important for marital satisfaction than coping congruency. Overall, the dyadic coping of older adults may serve as an effective tool to stabilize relationship satisfaction when facing the challenges of older age and long-term marriage. For the abstract

The benefits of omega-3 fatty acids for cardiovascular health are well-known, as the American Heart Association recommends eating at least two servings of fish a week. However, exactly how fatty fish aids heart health has been largely a mystery. New research suggests one way omega-3s may help is by counteracting the detrimental effects of mental stress on the heart. A new study finds that volunteers who took fish oil supplements for several weeks had a blunted response to mental stress in several measurements of cardiovascular health. Specifically, participants who took the fish oil supplements presented lower heart rates and muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA) — part of the “fight or flight” response — compared to volunteers who took olive oil instead. Researchers believe the results may explain why taking fish oil could be beneficial to the heart and might eventually help doctors prevent heart disease in select populations. In the study, Carter and his colleagues worked with 67 adult volunteers. At the beginning of the study, each volunteer underwent a battery of tests to assess cardiovascular function, including heart rate, blood pressure, MSNA, and blood flow through the forearm and calf. These tests were performed first when the volunteers were at rest, and then again while they were performing a mental arithmetic test while the investigator encouraged them to hurry, a situation designed to induce acute mental stress. The study subjects were then nearly equally assigned to take either 9 grams of fish oil per day or 9 grams of olive oil, a placebo that hasn’t been shown to have the same beneficial cardiovascular effects as fish oil. None of the volunteers were aware of which supplement they were taking. After 8 weeks of this intervention, the study subjects underwent the same tests again. Investigators discovered test results didn’t change between the two groups of study subjects when they were at rest. But results for the volunteers who took fish oil and those who received the placebo differed significantly for some of the tests during the mental stress. Those in the fish oil group showed blunted heart rate reactivity while they were stressed compared to those who took olive oil. Similarly, the total MSNA reactivity to mental stress was also blunted in the fish oil group. Researchers say that future studies might focus on the effects of taking fish oil for longer time periods and examining this effect on older populations or people with cardiovascular disease. “Overall,” the study authors say, “the data support and extend the growing evidence that fish oil may have positive health benefits regarding neural cardiovascular control in humans and suggest important physiological interactions between fish oil and psychological stress that may contribute to disease etiology.” The study appears in the American Journal of Physiology. Source: American Physiological Society

Color has long been one of the battlegrounds in psycholinguistics — this dates back to 1969 or earlier, when Brent Berlin and Paul Kay’s book Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution was published and struck what appeared to be a deathblow to the idea that the language a person speaks affects how that person thinks (known as linguistic relativity). But over forty years later, color is still a hot topic. Categorical perception is the idea that perception is affected by the categories that are present in a language. When discussing color, this is critical. For example, we have 11 basic color terms in English, and a single word for the color blue. However, in Russian there are 12 basic terms, and two words that bisect the color space that we call ‘blue’. They have siniy, which corresponds to a darker blue, and goluboy, which corresponds to a lighter blue. Greek also has two words for blue. Korean has 15 basic color terms. These are examples of the different categories of color that are embedded in language. It turns out that there are cognitive repercussions of long-term use of these different color categories. By using a timed color discrimination task, researchers showed that Russian speakers do actually think about color differently to English speakers (in short, they were able to distinguish between colors that crossed the siniy / goluboy boundary much more quickly, providing evidence that language has a direct effect on perception – a cognitive process once considered to be totally dissociable from language). Another study suggested that the truth is even more complicated. This study looked at the hemispheric lateralization of categorical color perception and linguistic effects on it. Because language is primarily processed in the left side of the brain, and each visual hemifield is perceived by the contralateral cerebral hemisphere (i.e. the right side of the brain receives information from the left optic nerve), the authors reasoned that color perception in the right visual hemifield might be more affected by language than that in the left visual hemifield. Their results confirmed their hypothesis, showing that the functional organization of the brain plays a role when it comes to linguistic mediation of perception. Several other studies since then have confirmed this idea, proving that perceptual processes are indeed affected by the categories present in one’s language. Exactly how these seemingly disparate cognitive processes are related and to what extent they interact with each other is yet to be determined, but one thing is clear: language plays a very significant role in how the brain works, especially in the left hemisphere. How this affects the rest of the brain remains to be seen. References Drivonikou, G., Kay, P., Regier, T., Ivry, R., Gilbert, A., Franklin, A., & Davies, I. (2007). Further evidence that Whorfian effects are stronger in the right visual field than the left Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104 (3), 1097-1102 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0610132104 Gilbert AL, Regier T, Kay P, & Ivry RB (2006). Whorf hypothesis is supported in the right visual field but not the left. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 103 (2), 489-94 PMID: 16387848 Roberson, D., Hyensou Pak, J., & Hanley, R. (2008). Categorical perception of colour in the left and right visual field is verbally mediated: Evidence from Korean. Cognition, 107, 752–762. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2007.09.001 Winawer J, Witthoft N, Frank MC, Wu L, Wade AR, & Boroditsky L (2007). Russian blues reveal effects of language on color discrimination. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104 (19), 7780-5 PMID: 17470790 Image via PeterPhoto123 / Shutterstock. Related Articles: Understanding How Color Is Perceived in the Brain Expensive Wine Just Tastes Better Poor Memory in Sleep Deprivation Linked to “Not Seeing” Ne

I don’t know if I have an eating disorder or not. Back in July, 2012, I started eating roughly 200-600 calories a day and exercising about 2-4 after my friend said, “If you eat, you lose the starvation contest.” I hate my body, and weight, but I hear people talk about how much they hate themselves all the time, so I’m not sure if this is really an eating disorder. Also, about a few months afterwards, I started binge-eating for a week and gaining roughly ten pounds, and then eating 0-100 calories for a week and losing the ten pounds. I’ve heard these are the symptoms for EDNOS, but since I’ve never gotten an official diagnosis or told anyone in real life, I am not certain on what this really is. Also, I lost seventeen pounds in three weeks, as well as gain thirty pounds in a month. If this really is EDNOS or any type of eating disorder, I don’t know if it’s as severe as some other people’s eating disorders and needs treatment. Please advise? A. I can’t say with certainty whether you have an eating disorder but your behavior is very troubling. Even if it seems normal in your circle of friends, your behavior is far from normal. Starving your body of food is harmful. You are barely eating. Your body is unable to function properly without the proper nutrients and these must be gotten daily. It is a problem. I would highly recommend that you report your behavior to your parents and ask them to take you to treatment. Meet with a mental health professional as soon as possible to deal with these issues. It is abnormal to be so restrictive in your diet and it is a sign that something is wrong. Eating disorders can be deadly and immediate treatment is required. Please speak to your parents as soon as possible and let them know that you want treatment from mental health professionals. Please take care. Dr. Kristina Randle Mental Health & Criminal Justice Blog

My boyfriend is 9 years older than me, he has 2 kids, a 9 year old daughter, and a 10 year old son. I have a 3 year old son also. We’ve been together for over a year now. He left his wife for me, and we’ve been going strong ever since, up until about 2 1/2 months ago. His ex up and skipped town, we got left with his 2 kids permantely. I’m 24, and all this is new to me, I went from being a mom with 3 years of experience to having a 3, 9, & 10 year old. His daughter talks to me any way she pleases, I punish her by sending her to her room, she’ll fight back with kicking, screaming, & moaning for literally hours, telling her dad she hates him for being with me, whereas most days she’s completely fine & loves me. His 10 year old son is mostly good, except he has jealous issues upon my 3 year old son. He is mean to him, takes toys, food, books, etc away from him just so he’ll cry. He has admitted that his problem with my son is that he has his mom in his life. My boyfriend worked at the time when his kids were growing up, so all this is briefly new to him also. We have tried everything since their mom left, family vacation, movies, shopping, even re-did their rooms, nothing seems to be good enough. I’be tried talking with his daughter & she will get up & tell me she is fine. Her grades are begining to slip, she lies about bathing, stopped doing household chores, & plain out doesn’t care. She is the most difficult time we.are having, its been causing us to argue, stress, & panic. I suggested she seen a counceler & she screamed at us we hated her & was trying to.put her in a girls home! I have no clue where she gets these things. I only want better for her. Some nights she’ll cry herself to sleep saying ” I want my moma.” What do we do? A: The most important thing to remember in this situation is that your boyfriend’s kids are grieving. Their mom abandoned them. They lost her and the home they’ve known. From their point of view, they can’t trust you or their dad either. They think that since their own mother could leave them, so could you. These kids aren’t bad. They are in enormous emotional pain. Being kids, they don’t have a way to understand what has happened or to talk about it clearly. They act out instead. Family vacations and movies, though wonderful family outings, are not going to balance out their feelings of anger and sadness. Then need support in dealing with their feelings. You and their father need support in learning how to support the kids. This isn’t easy stuff. But it is essential. You want to stabilize things before they get into adolescence, when kids normally push away from parental influence. You want to lay in trust and love and understanding now that you will be able to draw on later. Your instinct that it would be a good idea to see a therapist was on target. But the whole family needs to go, including your 3-year-old, not just the daughter. You all need to have a place to talk about how difficult the situation is for all of you and to figure out how to live together and, hopefully, how to love and trust each other. A trained family therapist can help you with that project. Please follow through. If you could have handled this on your own, you and your boyfriend would have fixed it already. I can tell you care about these kids and have compassion for them. Now you need some new skills. I wish you well. Dr. Marie

The Laboratory for the Experimental Research of Religion at Masaryk University is looking to recruit a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Cognition and Culture. The successful candidate will be employed to work under the supervision of Dr. Dimitris Xygalatas (Director) on experimental studies of religion. The post involves carrying out behavioural experimental research in the LEVYNA lab facilities and in naturalistic settings.Responsibilities include contributing to the training and mentoring of graduate researchers from the humanities who work in experimental methods, providing help with research design and data analysis, and publishing peer-reviewed articles. (continued blow the fold)