BASIC FAMILY THERAPY SKILLS,II: STRUCTURAL FAMILY THERAPY1

The Basic Family Therapy Skills Project has yielded empirically derived skills important for beginning family therapists. This article reports the results of ratings from the 103-member panel of experts who practice and teach Structural Family Therapy. A total of 100 competencies of Structural Family Therapy were rated in terms of importance on a 5-point Likert scale by the panel. Panelists were also given alternative responses such as “appropriate as a generic skill,”“inappropriate for beginning therapists,” and “don't understand what this means.” Rationale for the approach and results are discussed in terms of the importance of empirically based competencies for the practice of Structural Family Therapy.     

Ageism: Prejudice Against Our Feared Future Self

For decades, researchers have discovered much about how humans automatically categorize others in social perception. Some categorizations—race, gender, and age—are so automatic that they are termed "primitive categories." As we categorize, we often develop stereotypes about the categories. Researchers know much about racism and sexism, but comparatively little about prejudicing and stereotyping based on age. The articles in this issue highlight the current empirical and theoretical work by researchers in gerontology, psychology, communication, and related fields on understanding the origins and consequences of stereotyping and prejudicing against older adults. With the aging baby boomer demographic, it is especially timely for researchers to work to understand how society can shed its institutionalized ageism and promote respect for elders.     

Are corrupt acts contagious?: Evidence from the United States

This paper adds to the literature by shedding new light on the causes of corruption. Specifically, we provide evidence on the extent to which corruption might be contagious. In other words, what is the extent to which a demonstration effect is at play at inducing corrupt acts? Using state-level U.S. data over the 1995–2004 period, the results show that the effect of neighboring corruption is positive and statistically significant in all cases, implying that corruption does appear to be contagious. Specifically, a 10% increase in corruption in neighboring states appears to increase corruption in a state by about 4–11%. Of the different types of government activity, the size of defense and non-defense federal sectors in a state seem to have opposite effects on corruption, with the former contributing to corruption and the latter serving as a deterrent. The size of the state and local governments does not seem to be relevant. Of the variables controlling for detection and punishment of corrupt individuals, greater corrections employment reduces corruption, while greater judicial employment seems to increase corruption. Changes in the police force do not seem to have a statistically significant impact. These findings generally hold when we control for the disproportionate effects of the Washington, DC area and when a pooled data set is estimated. Contagion effects are also found for other crimes. Policy implications are discussed.     

From Manitoba to the Memel: Max Sering,inner colonization and the German East

Whereas most of the debate surrounding the ‘colonial roots' of the Holocaust has centred around the German genocidal campaign against the Herero in south-western Africa, a much more direct and continuous story emerges when one traces the flow of ideas from the North American western frontier to the German East. In the 1880s, the agrarian economist Max Sering travelled throughout America and Canada, and came to formulate a settlement programme modelled upon what he saw there as the answer to Germany's ‘Polish problem', and indeed to virtually all the ills of modernity. From 1886 to 1914 Sering provided the intellectual ammunition for the Prussian programme of inner colonization, the purchase of land from Poles and the settlement of German ‘colonists' in the provinces of Posen and West Prussia. During the First World War, Sering's views, along with Germany's, would radicalize, as he drew up plans for the settlement of two million Germans in Latvia. Although the Nazi biological racist Darré would reject Sering's assimilationist thinking, the ‘spatial planner' Meyer would see to it that the legacy of a German way of seeing the East as a colonial empire would find its final and most radical application during the Second World War.     

THE BASIC SKILLS EVALUATION DEVICE

The Commission on Accreditation for Marriage and Family Therapy Education (COAMFTE) requires that accredited programs evaluate trainees' clinical skills at various times during trainees' programs. The Commission does not attempt, however, to describe for programs eigher the nature of the skills nor how they are to be evaluated, leaving this to the programs to create. This paper describes the development and uses of the Basic Skills Evaluation Device (BSED). Using a published list of skills (Figley & Nelson, 1989), data from the literature, and data collected from COAMFTE accredited and candidacy programs, the authors and their colleagues developed a device for supervisors to use in evaluating beginning family therapists. Data regarding the reliability of the device presented, along with limitations and suggestions for various ways of using the device.     

Six‐Month‐Olds' Detection of Clauses Embedded in Continuous Speech: Effects of Prosodic Well‐Formedness

Three experiments investigated the role of prosodic structure for infants' recognition of embedded word sequences. Six‐month‐olds were familiarized with 2 versions of the same sequence, 1 corresponding to a well‐formed prosodic unit and the other to a prosodically ill‐formed sequence (although a successive word series). Next, infants heard 2 test passages. One included the well‐formed unit, and the other included the ill‐formed sequence. In Experiment 1, infants listened longer to the passage containing the well‐formed unit, suggesting that such units, even when they are embedded, are better recognized. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that this better recognition does not depend on an acoustic match between the familiarized sequences and their later embeddings. This suggests that the advantage of the well‐formed unit is at least partially due to infants' use of prosody to parse continuous speech.     

Cigarette Smoking Among Korean International College Students in the United States

Abstract

Objective and Participants: This study explored (1) the prevalence of cigarette smoking among South Korean international college students in the United States, (2) differences in smoking between on- and off-campus living arrangements, and (3) predictors of an increase in smoking over time in the United States Methods: An online survey was completed by 1,201 students at 52 4-year US universities (34% response rate). Results: The overall smoking prevalence was 43.5%. The smoking rate (29.0%) of female students was higher than that (4%) of female college students in South Korea. Sex, living place, living situation, length of stay as a student in the United States, home smoking rules, campus-wide tobacco-free policies, and levels of acculturative stress, anxiety, and depression were significantly associated with an increase in smoking (p < .05). Conclusions: Given the high smoking prevalence among the South Korean students on US college campuses, targeted prevention efforts for these students may be warranted.