Attachment and the Repetition of Trauma: A Case Study of Attachment‐Based Crisis Intervention

This article explores the difficult case of a 16‐year‐old who was causing a great deal of anxiety by presenting with dramatic behaviour, such as leaping off buildings, swallowing needles and poisons, and jumping in front of cars. The case study explores a six‐month period of crisis intervention, which focused on the unique kind of attachment relationship that existed between the teenager and his mother. The mother had experienced recurrent traumatisation prior to his birth, and it was found that the aftereffects of this traumatisation must have influenced the teenager's early attachment experiences and subsequent development. The attachment‐based therapy treated the crises as primarily ‘relational crises’. The therapy involved investigating and sharing formulations about their attachment history, cultivating an insight into the relational or dynamic determinants of the teenager's crises. Broader suggestions are made concerning the application of attachment theory to different approaches in family therapy, as well as to our understanding of phenomena such as transgenerational traumatisation.     

The Recovered Memory Controversy: A Representative Case Study

The recovered memory controversy has been an ongoing debate within the mental health profession for the past two decades. Disagreement remains in the field over the veracity of “forgotten” memories of childhood sexual abuse that are recalled or recovered during therapy. At the heart of the controversy are the concepts of repression and dissociation as well as the impact traumatizing events have on the encoding of memory. This article provides an overview of the central factors in the longstanding debate and presents a detailed clinical case study involving independent corroboration of memories of childhood sexual abuse recovered during treatment, which the author believes provides additional support for the potential veracity of recovered memories.     

Effects of an Assisted Living Facility Specifically Designed for Individuals with Memory Disorders: A Pilot Study

Despite evidence suggesting the physical environment can enhance mood and quality of life (QoL) of dementia patients, this issue has not been examined extensively within the setting of an assisted living (AL) facility. This study investigated cognition, QoL, and neuropsychiatric symptoms in 39 individuals with a memory disorder during their initial 6 months at an AL facility designed specifically for this population. Despite continued decline in cognition, participants reported lessening of several negative emotions. No significant changes in QoL or neuropsychiatric symptoms were reported. Findings suggest that moving from home to an AL facility designed specifically for individuals with memory disorders has potential positive implications.     

The Desire to Gamble: The Influence of Outcomes on the Priming Effects of a Gambling Episode

The influence of gambling outcomes on the efficacy of a short gambling episode to prime motivation to continue gambling was determined in two experiments in which desire to gamble was evaluated while participants played a slot machine located in a virtual reality casino. In experiment 1, 38 high-risk [>3 Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI)] [Ferris and Wynne (The Canadian problem gambling index: final report, 2001)] and 36 non-problem gamblers (0 PGSI) either won or lost a modest amount. Among high-risk gamblers, winning resulted in a greater increase in the desire to continue gambling than did losing. In experiment 2, 39 high-risk, 33 low-risk (0 < PGSI < 3), and 31 non-problem gamblers experienced either a single large win or a series of small wins (equivalent monetary gain). Participants were permitted to continue playing as long as they wanted (all subsequent spins being losses) thus permitting evaluation of persistence (resistance to extinction). Throughout, desire to gamble was assessed using a single item measure. High-risk gamblers who experienced a large win reported significantly greater desire to gamble upon voluntary cessation than those who experienced a series of small wins. It seems that the priming effects of a short gambling episode are contingent on the pattern of outcomes experienced by the gambler. The data were related to motivational factors associated with gambling, gambling persistence, and chasing losses.     

Transformative Events and Generational Memory: A Case Study Over Time in Lithuania

Research on the distribution of collective memories in national populations has often been conducted in relatively stable societies, where most individuals have experienced a limited range of event types. We examine collective memories in Lithuania, a society that has seen substantial change, using three surveys conducted during the two decades since Lithuanian protests against Soviet rule began in the late 1980s. We identify two types of events that individuals may recall, drawing on Sewell's ( 2005 ) distinction between structure‐transforming events and other events that are significant but less momentous, and we find that the two types of events exhibit different patterns of change over time: in particular, transformative events may absorb other events through assimiliation and are likely to be the focus of commemoration. Recall of transformative events also shows a distinctive relation to birth cohort. Our results support the need to take into account the nature of events in order to understand which events are remembered as important and by whom.     

Putting a Human Face on Crimes: A Qualitative Study on Restorative Justice Processes for Youths

Restorative justice conferences including Victim Offender Mediation (VOM) are rapidly increasing. Due to a lack of participants’ accounts on their experiences, gaining knowledge on how restorative justice works from their perspective is critical, especially to further development of justice policy and practice. In this exploratory qualitative study we interviewed 37 participants in a VOM operating in a mid-sized Midwestern city in the United States. In this article, we examine some youths’ experiences in their VOM to deepen our understanding of how and why restorative discourses work. Findings suggest that meeting their victims through VOM helped the youths realize the extent of the consequences of their actions by being able to personalize their victims and their victimized experiences. In conclusion we highlight the importance of appreciating the unseen effects of the crimes. Lastly, we make some recommendations for practitioners to assist their developing better programs in dealing with youths in restorative justice contexts.     

Age-of-Arrival Effects on the Education of Immigrant Children: A Sibling Study

We analysed the effects of late entry on the human capital of immigrant children, and investigated the channels via which age-at-migration affects the native-immigrant education gap. Ordinary-least-squares estimates could have been biased if parents factored the age of children into their migration decision. Using a sample of siblings from the 2000 US Census, we employed a family fixed-effects estimation strategy and found a negative and convex relationship between human capital and age-of-arrival. Teenage entrants’ outcomes were worst affected compared to younger entrants. Language was found to be an important mediating factor via which age-of-arrival influenced education. The critical age for English proficiency was 8–10. Age-of-arrival affected education not only through language but also via heterogeneous origin country conditions. The additional privileges of birth-right citizenship, if any, were disentangled from the benefits of zero age-of-arrival for natives. Citizenship by birth provided few advantages, except for college enrollment. Results were robust to sample selection changes.     

Coupling Processes and Experiences of Never Married Heterosexual Black Men and Women: A Phenomenological Study

Over the past decades, the decline in Black marriages and the upsurge of never‐married Blacks have stimulated much theoretical focus, but researchers conducted few studies on never‐married heterosexual Black adults' coupling unions. Guided by an integrated framework of Africana womanism and symbolic interactionism, this qualitative hermeneutic phenomenological study used comprehensive individual interviews to explore the experiences of 26 never‐married heterosexual Black men and women between the ages 25 and 35 about their attempts to cultivate and maintain intimate romantic relationships as well as their desire for marriage. Findings revealed mixed emotions from participants' lived experiences in developing and sustaining romantic relationships. Clinical implications highlighted the need to effectively attend to Black romantic relationships and experiences in their sociohistorical and sociocultural contexts.     

Enhancing VNR Impact: The Effects of Captioning on Memory and Understanding of TV News

Video news release (VNR) producers limit references in VNRs to the sponsor of the VNR to avoid rejection by news directors on the grounds that the story is merely a commercial message for the sponsor. We posited in this study that when reference is made to the sponsor, optimal effect may be garnered by judicious use of captions in the VNR. An information-processing experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of limited captions on memory and understanding of TV news. Success with VNRs has been notable in two genres: scientific/medical/technical topics and event coverage. News items in this study tapped these two genres, categorized as abstract/word stories and concrete/picture stories, respectively. Captions improved memory for abstract/word stories but not for concrete/picture stories. Captioning had no significant effect on either understanding or visual recognition of the stories. We conclude that VNR producers might best use captions to the sponsor's advantage in scientific/medical/technical stories but should expect only enhanced recall of information, not understanding or visual recognition.     

Contextual Effects on Surprise Expressions: A Developmental Study

Although research succeeds in eliciting spontaneous feelings of surprise with participants, these participants rarely show a prototypical expression of raising eyebrows, opening mouth, and widening eyes. In other words, there seems to be a discrepancy between the display and feeling of surprise. To get a better understanding of this discrepancy, we assessed what factors influence the display of surprise in children (study 1) and adults (study 2). In both studies, we conducted a quiz-like experiment, in which we manipulated the social context (participants either competed or collaborated), and various quiz questions to extract reactions of surprise (either caused by unexpectedly correct or unexpectedly incorrect answers). Results show that cause and social context did not affect the appearance of specific features in participants’ surprise display. However, we did find these factors to interact with regards to the intensity of perceived surprise displays of adults. For children, these relations were less complex. Overall, we can conclude that the expression of surprise is indeed moderated by contextual factors, namely cause of the surprise, social context, and age.     

The Effects of Diversity on Small Work Group Processes and Performance

Diversity is an increasingly important factor inorganizational life as organizations worldwide becomemore diverse in terms of the gender, race, ethnicity,age, national origin, and other personal characteristics of their members. The exact impact ofwithin-group diversity on small group processes andperformance is unclear. Sometimes the effect ofdiversity seems positive, at other times negative, andin other situations, there seems to be no effect at all.In this article, we suggest that these types of findingsmight be explained by using agroup-development model to examine theimpact of diversity on group processes and performance. Our modeluses concepts from Jackson et al.'s (1995), Milliken andMartins' (1996), and other models, as well as our ownconcepts, to show how diversity affects group development and performance. Among the conceptsincluded in the model are readily detectable personalattributes, underlying personal attributes, cognitiveparadigm dissimilarity, cognitive costs and rewards, diversity management skills, group behavioralintegration, and cognitive performance resources. In thepages that follow, we will explain each of thecomponents of the model and suggest specific hypotheses generated from the model.     

How Women Socially Construct Leadership in Organizations: A Study Using Memory Work

In this study, a group of Australian female leaders (including the author), collaboratively explored their early memories of leadership using the memory work method (Haug 1987, 1992; Crawford et al. 1992). From this exploration, they developed theories about how they socially construct leadership in organizations. They explored their early memories of leadership, and from these, identified how their social constructions are located within the dominant construction of white male Australian leadership. They also examined how their constructions are based in the family, and are dominated by notions of services and sacrifice, and the absence of men. They also identified the ways they resist these constructions, such as holding strong values and remaining connected to themselves and to others. The costs of this resistance include self-doubt and a reluctance to describe themselves as leaders. Research like this threatens traditional models and theories of leadership (Burrell and Morgan 1987) and opens up the possibility that research, of itself, can change the ways leadership is experienced, acted out and talked about.     

Connecting Complex Processes: A Decade of Research on Immigrant Families

This review examines research on immigrant families in the United States from the past decade from multiple disciplinary perspectives. This work has used variations on assimilation and acculturation perspectives. In the case of the assimilation perspectives, the focus has largely been on family formation, whereas research using acculturation perspectives has focused more on intrafamily relationships. But, over the course of the decade, an interesting integrative model has emerged to address interactions of attitudes and values with structural conditions in the receiving and sending communities. Some of this effort to integrate perspectives can be found in studies of transnational families. The review concludes with some suggestions for continuing this integration and expanding studies to include dynamics of migration and family processes simultaneously.     

Aging and the Effects of Facial and Prosodic Cues on Emotional Intensity Ratings and Memory Reconstructions

Young (M = 23 years) and older (M = 77 years) adults' interpretation and memory for the emotional content of spoken discourse was examined in an experiment using short, videotaped scenes of two young actresses talking to each other about emotionally-laden events. Emotional nonverbal information (prosody or facial expressions) was conveyed at the end of each scene at low, medium, and high intensities. Nonverbal information indicating anger, happiness, or fear, conflicted with the verbal information. Older adults' ability to differentiate levels of emotional intensity was not as strong (for happiness and anger) compared to younger adults. An incidental memory task revealed that older adults, more often than younger adults, reconstruct what people state verbally to coincide with the meaning of the nonverbal content, if the nonverbal content is conveyed through facial expressions. A second experiment with older participants showed that the high level of memory reconstructions favoring the nonverbal interpretation was maintained when the ages of the participants and actresses were matched, and when the nonverbal content was conveyed both through prosody and facial expressions.