Advances in the Conceptualization of Personality Disorders: Issues Affecting Social Work Practice and Research

This article provides a review of the research that has informed the proposed changes to the DSM-5 conceptualization of personality psychopathology with a focus on implications for social work practice and research. A paradigm shift to a dimensional model is likely to replace the current categorical model of personality disorders and will have profound implications for the profession. While establishing a diagnostic system that is grounded in empirical knowledge is the primary benefit, this tool will also be more consistent with social work’s orienting theories and values. Social workers should gain knowledge about the proposed changes and actively participate in the review process.     

Building a youth-led movement to keep young people out of the adult criminal justice system

Through the lens of the Youth Art & Self-empowerment Project (YASP), this article explores the impact that the adult criminal justice system has on young people and how young men and women in Philadelphia are organizing to challenge that system. YASP has developed an innovative model for supporting and training young people in Philadelphia's adult jails and recently released from the adult jails to build a youth-led movement to repeal adult transfer laws in Pennsylvania. Through stories of personal experience and collective struggle, this chapter illustrates the power of young people taking back control of their city, their state, and their own destinies.     

Social (dys)welfare within a hostile state

Beneath the wide differences between Australian Aborigines and British Gypsies lie similarities in their experiences of the state in general and the 'welfare' state in particular. Both groups' history of oppression includes persecution, assimilation and genocide, all variations on the theme of the destruction of a minority group's existence and culture. Their relationships with land which diverge from the dominant capitalist/colonialist norm are treated as a threat by the majority. Cultural genocide has taken the form of state control of children, leading Aborigines and Gypsies to fear state social work services. These services fail to understand, respect and respond to different cultural values, lifestyles and strengths, and the resulting 'dyswelfare' has had damaging impacts, including the devastation of Aboriginal family structures, and collusion with the failure to provide sites for Gypsies. Social work educators have a responsibility to consider these experiences and their implications. In any attempt by social work to promote rather than undermine these minorities' rights, the voice of the groups must be at the forefront of change, and organisational structures and priorities transformed at local and national levels. Theoretical tools to assist these changes are available from anti-oppressive and cross-cultural practice, and citizenship and human rights perspectives.     

An Examination of Influences on Body Dissatisfaction Among Asian American College Females: Do Family,Media, or Peers Play a Role?

Abstract

Objective: The etiology of body dissatisfaction and its correlates (eg, disordered eating) among ethnic minorities is generally unknown. The purpose of this study was to replicate the tripartite model of influence in an Asian American college female sample in order to examine this relationship. Participants: Participants were 80 undergraduate Asian American females between the ages of 18 and 25. Methods: Participants completed a survey that included the Tripartite Influence Scale, Body Parts Satisfaction Scale, and Sociocultural Attitudes towards Appearance Questionnaire–3. Results: Mediation analyses indicated that thin-ideal internalization fully mediated the relationship between media influence and body dissatisfaction and partially mediated the relationship between peer influence and body dissatisfaction. Family influence did not significantly predict body dissatisfaction. Conclusions: Asian American college females experience body dissatisfaction through mechanisms that have not been examined in detail. These factors must be considered when creating targeted health promotion strategies and developing best practices for eating disorder assessment and treatment protocols at university health centers.     

Infant motor development predicts the dynamics of movement during sleep

The characteristics of infant sleep change over the first year. Generally, infants wake and move less at night as they grow older. However, acquisition of new motor skills leads to temporary increases in night waking and movement at night. Indeed, sleep-dependent movement at night is important for sensorimotor development. Nevertheless, little is known about how movement during sleep changes as infants accrue locomotor experience. The current study investigated whether infant sleep and movement during sleep were predicted by infants' walking experience. Seventy-eight infants wore an actigraph to measure physical activity during sleep. Parents reported when their infants first walked across a room >10 feet without stopping or falling. Infants in the midst of walking skill acquisition had worse sleep than an age-group estimate. Infants with more walk experience had more temporally sporadic movement during sleep and a steeper hourly increase in physical activity over the course of the night. Ongoing motor skill consolidation changes the characteristics of movement during sleep and may alter sleep state-dependent memory consolidation. We propose a model whereby changes in gross motor activity during night sleep reflect movement-dependent consolidation.     

Intimate partner violence and preschool self-regulation: Examining the role of maternal emotion socialization in Black families

The ways that parents respond to children's negative emotions shape the development of self-regulation across early childhood. The objective of this study was to examine child self-regulation in the context of intimate partner violence (IPV) exposure in a sample of Black, economically marginalized mothers and their young children (aged 3–5 years, N = 99). The study investigates the conditional effects of emotion socialization practices that (1) encourage expression of and problem-solving around negative affect (“supportive”), and (2) encourage suppression of affective displays (“suppressive”) on children's self-regulation. We found a significant association between higher child self-regulation and supportive parental reactions in the context of psychological IPV. We also found a significant association between higher child self-regulation and suppressive parental reactions in the context of psychological IPV. Our findings are consistent with prior research suggesting Black parents who teach varied strategies for emotional expression may promote children's adaptation in high-stress family environments. Macrosystem factors such as systemic racism and discrimination as well as the threat of family violence may shape how parents approach emotion socialization and the teaching of affective self-expression and self-regulation.     

Infancy and Childhood in India: A Critical Review

Empirical studies of childhood in India have been rare. Guided by universalistic theories of child development, developmental psychologists have seldom examined cultural variations in child-rearing patterns with Indian samples. Psychoanalytic studies of Hindu childhood have been influenced by therapeutic observations with segmented middle-class populations that are generally Westernized and educated, inviting a lively debate about the transferability of psychoanalytic individualism to non-Western contexts. Anthropological studies, invariably focused on cultural variation, have not searched for consistent cultural patterns in ethnographic materials on Hindu socialization. Based on fieldwork conducted in a village near Delhi, this article presents one of the first systematic quantitative and ethnographic studies of patterns of child care in Hindu extended families during the preschool years. The findings are discussed in terms of achieving a consensus between developmental, psychoanalytic, and anthropological observations of Indian childhood.     

The First Slow Step: Differential Effects of Object and Word-Form Familiarization on Retention of Fast-Mapped Words

Recent research demonstrated that although twenty-four month-old infants do well on the initial pairing of a novel word and novel object in fast-mapping tasks, they are unable to retain the mapping after a five-minute delay. The current study examines the role of familiarity with the objects and words on infants' ability to bridge between the initial fast mapping of a name and object, and later retention in the service of slow mapping. Twenty-four-month-old infants were familiarized with either novel objects or novel names prior to the referent selection portion of a fast-mapping task. When familiarized with the novel objects, infants retained the novel mapping after a delay, but not when familiarized with the novel words. This suggests familiarity with the object versus the word form leads to differential encoding of the name-object link. We discuss the implications of this finding for subsequent slow mapping.