Increases in Arousal are More Long‐Lasting than Decreases in Arousal: On Homeostatic Failures During Emotion Regulation in Infancy

In emotion regulation, negative or undesired emotions are downregulated, but there are also opponent processes to emotion regulation—in which undesired emotions are exacerbated dynamically over time by processes that have an amplifying or upregulating impact. Evidence for such processes has been shown in adults, but little previous work has examined whether infants show similar patterns. To examine this, we measured physiological arousal in 57 typical 12 month olds while presenting a 20‐min mixed viewing battery. Fluctuations in autonomic arousal were measured via heart rate, electrodermal activity, and movement. We reasoned that if transitions in autonomic arousal are random (stochastic), then (1) arousal would be normally distributed across the session, and (2) episodes where arousal exceeded a certain threshold above the mean should be as long‐lived as those where arousal exceeded the same threshold below the mean. In fact we found that (1) heart rate and movement (but not electrodermal activity) were positively skewed, and (2) that increases in arousal have a lower extinction probability than decreases in arousal. Our findings may suggest that increases in arousal are self‐sustaining. These patterns are the opposite of the homeostatic mechanisms predicted by naïve approaches to emotion regulation.     

DEVELOPING AN IDENTITY AS A FEMINIST FAMILY THERAPIST: IMPLICATIONS FOR TRAINING

Although feminists have profoundly influenced the field of family therapy, little has been written about the process by which these women came to identify themselves as feminist family therapists. This article reports the results of a qualitative research study that explored that process and suggests a model of feminist family therapy identity development. Implications for training programs are reveived.     

Risk aversion and physical prowess: Prediction,choice and bias

This paper reports on experiments where individuals are asked to make risky decisions for themselves, and to predict the risky decisions of others. Prior research shows that people predict women to be more risk averse than men, a result we confirm. We investigate whether differences in physical prowess underlie actual and perceived gender differences, a hypothesis suggested by both evolutionary and economic theories. Overall we find that perceptions of others’ risk attitudes reflect stereotypes about gender and strength but tend to exaggerate the underlying relationships. Physically stronger and taller people and those perceived as attractive are predicted to be more risk tolerant, while women are perceived to be more risk averse. The impact of gender and physical prowess measures on actual gamble choices is much weaker. Sources of prediction bias are examined, showing that specific characteristics of the target and predictor lead to systematic over-prediction or under-prediction of risk aversion.     

Challenges to situated morality: Maintaining respectability in a sexual rendezvous

A clandestine motel operation is described, concentrating upon the staff and patrons as they attempt to maintain respectability within a context of situated morality that is shifting, challenging previously negotiated realities. The staff members tend toward a refulgent respectability, using vocabularies of denial to maintain respectability. Patrons, categorized as regular customers, special customers, careful people and problem people, may seek respectability within this narrow context or challenge the background expectancies in several basic ways, most especially by threatening the security or property of the motel. Such challenges are themselves a threat to the respectability of the motel, its staff, and the other patrons, a respectability which depends not upon conformity to conventional preachments, but upon conformity to the special understandings operating within the limited context.     

Regulating child care: from the Children Act 1948 to the present day

This article reflects selectively on the development of the legal regulation of child care practice in England and Wales since the Children Act 1948. Two main themes are identified: the burgeoning burden of the statutory responsibilities of local authorities throughout the period, and the controls more recently imposed on the discretionary exercise of statutory powers. The impact of the latter on particular areas of practice is discussed within the context of the growing influence of international treaty obligations, the concept of children's rights, and the outcomes of research on the legal framework of child care practice.     

Can study tours help promote evidence-based practice in children's services?

Interest in evidence-based programmes and the science underpinning them has mushroomed in the UK and Ireland in recent years as policy-makers and senior managers seek tried-and-tested methods of improving child well-being. This article examines whether study tours, a form of experiential learning, can help to promote evidence-based policy and practice in children's services. Participants on two study tours to the United States in 2005 to visit evidence-based programmes and their developers were interviewed by telephone 30–36 months later. Results are presented in terms of: (1) what participants felt they were exposed to on the study tours; (2) how the tours had changed their thinking; (3) what impact the tours had in terms of actions; (4) the factors that affected the impact of the study tours; and (5) the value added by the study tours over and above other means of learning about evidence and evidence-based services.     

The Rise and Fall of a Regulator: Adventure Sports in the United Kingdom

Following a tragic accident in 1993 involving the deaths of teenagers while kayaking a new regulatory regime was imposed upon some adventure sports providers in the United Kingdom. In particular, a new regulatory body, the Adventure Activities Licensing Authority (AALA), was established to oversee the sector. Yet in 2010, a government‐sponsored review recommended that AALA be abolished and this recommendation has been quickly accepted by government. This article explores the background to these developments through documentation, interviews with those affected by the AALA regime, and court cases. Evidence reported here, perhaps surprising, is that AALA itself is seen in a very positive light by many, even those it regulates. What may have happened is that AALA became caught up in a wider debate about the place and management of risk in life beyond the workplace, which has been simmering in the United Kingdom for a decade or more, and of which it fell foul. It may also be that adventure sports, because they entail voluntary engagement with high consequence hazards, starkly expose serious questions about the application of conventional, factory‐originated risk assessment approaches to life in general.     

Further Thoughts on the Utility of Risk Matrices

Risk matrices are commonly encountered devices for rating hazards in numerous areas of risk management. Part of their popularity is predicated on their apparent simplicity and transparency. Recent research, however, has identified serious mathematical defects and inconsistencies. This article further examines the reliability and utility of risk matrices for ranking hazards, specifically in the context of public leisure activities including travel. We find that (1) different risk assessors may assign vastly different ratings to the same hazard, (2) even following lengthy reflection and learning scatter remains high, and (3) the underlying drivers of disparate ratings relate to fundamentally different worldviews, beliefs, and a panoply of psychosocial factors that are seldom explicitly acknowledged. It appears that risk matrices when used in this context may be creating no more than an artificial and even untrustworthy picture of the relative importance of hazards, which may be of little or no benefit to those trying to manage risk effectively and rationally.