A Multifactorial Approach to Predicting Death Anxiety: Assessing the Role of Religiosity,Susceptibility to Mortality Cues,and Individual Differences

Death anxiety is not only experienced by individuals receiving end-of-life care, but also by family members, social workers, and other service providers who support these individuals. Thus, identifying predictors of individual differences in experienced death anxiety levels may have both theoretical and clinical ramifications. The present study assessed the relative influence of religiosity, susceptibility to mortality cues, state and trait anxiety, and demographic factors in the experience of death anxiety through an online survey distributed to members of two online communities related to end-of-life care. Results indicated that cognitive and emotional susceptibility to mortality cues, as well as gender, predicted differences in death anxiety. Conversely, religiosity and age did not increase the predictive power of the model. Thus, death anxiety may be a function of emotional, cognitive, and sociocultural factors that interact in complex, but predictable, ways to modulate the response to mortality cues that occur in one’s life.     

Mobile connections: an exploration of the place of mobile phones in friendship relations

This paper explores the place and meaning of mobile phones within friendship relations amongst young Pakistani-British women and men. In particular it focuses on the ways in which friendship relations are transformed and reconfigured through new mobile phone technologies; and how 'doing' friendship on the mobile uncovers significant insight into contemporary youth cultures of masculinity and femininity. Although the majority of young people of the 'multimedia generation' have fully engaged with the mobile telephony revolution, there is no work which grounds mobile phone use within theoretical perspectives on friendship, in particular in different peer group cultures. We draw upon new empirical data from research in the North East of England to explore young people's perceptions and uses of mobile phones. The resulting narratives reveal interesting gendered practices of connectivity and sociability amongst the sample group and important dimensions of developing peer group identities, including diverse performance of femininities and masculinities. Building on these ideas, this paper aims to make a theoretical contribution to debates on friendship and mobile phone use. In particular, we argue for the need to ground the empirical study of young people and mobile phones more firmly within social theory: a development that contributes towards a sharpening of theoretical perspectives on mobile technologies.     

Client Psychological Distress: An Important Factor in Career Counseling

The authors explored client psychological distress as a variable in career counseling. Forty‐two clients in a naturalistic setting were seen for a total of 290 sessions by 21 counselors‐in‐training. The results indicated that (a) 60% of the clients were psychologically distressed, (b) clients' scores decreased significantly from pretest to posttest on psychological distress variables, (c) significant linear growth occurred in the clients' perception of the working alliance across sessions, and (d) the psychological distress outcome variables were significantly related to both the first session level of the working alliance and its linear growth.     

Elevated chloride and consumer presence independently influence processing of stream detritus

Headwater streams are in close contact with the landscape and known to mediate disturbances to downstream waterways through important ecological interactions. We studied how elevated chloride from road deicer, a pollutant of rising concern in urban ecosystems, influenced the leaf-microbial matrix in streams, and subsequent processing of C and N. In a multi-factorial laboratory experiment, we determined if elevated chloride interacts with nitrogen loading and invertebrate consumer feeding to alter rates of leaf litter breakdown and N immobilization. Naturally colonized leaf litter, the dominant C source in small streams, was collected from five Piedmont streams (Maryland, USA) and subjected to a gradient of NaCl (0, 1,000, 5,000?mg Cl l^?1) and dissolved nitrogen (ambient, elevated), and an invertebrate treatment (presence, absence) in a total of 60 microcosms. Loss rate and C:N content were determined from remaining leaf litter after 16 d of incubation. Chloride loading significantly (P?<?0.05) reduced loss rate regardless of N loading, and C:N content significantly (P?<?0.05) increased with Cl concentration, interacting marginally (P?<?0.10) with N loading. Invertebrate feeding had a marginally-significant (P?<?0.10), negative effect on loss rate, but not C:N content. Overall, elevated chloride significantly influenced organic matter loss rate and N immobilization, despite N loading and the presence of invertebrates. We conclude that there is the potential for chloride loading as road deicer runoff to negatively influence microbial processing of C and N by stream-dwelling microbial communities.     

The Lived Experience of the Adolescent Sex Offender: A Phenomenological Case Study

Treatment for adolescents with sexually maladaptive behaviors is a continuing intervention that is changing and developing as greater understanding about this population of adolescents is obtained. The majority of treatment programs for adolescent sexually maladaptive behavior contain programming components that include cognitive distortions/thinking errors. Interviews including a conceptual mapping exercise were conducted with four adolescents adjudicated to a secure care program for sexual behaviors. All four boys completed an interview and a conceptual map of their perceived experiences as an adolescent with sexual maladaptive behaviors. All interviews were audio recorded. Analysis of the interviews and conceptual mappings yielded five themes present in the boys’ experience as well as a consideration of the role early trauma may have in the establishment of cognitive distortion development. Contributing environmental and familial factors also play an important part in sustaining cognitive distortion. Main themes include: loss of responsible father or father figure, inability to regulate emotion, lack of personal and parental boundaries, and early exposure to pornography. The contributing influence of responsible male father figures may play an even greater role in the lives of young males than originally thought. How the adolescent inaccurately perceives his environment—in essence what he tells himself and continues to tell himself to make sense of his world—are building blocks in the development and continuation of thinking errors/cognitive distortions used to commit and justify sexual offending behaviors.     

The Influence of Rural and Urban Substance Abuse Treatment Counselor Characteristics on Client Outcomes

Focus group data was collected from 28 substance abuse treatment counselors employed in rural and urban areas to examine their perceptions of factors influencing treatment outcomes. The influence of the counselor characteristics (i.e., education, experience, and recovery status) on client outcomes and geographic differences are explored. Focus group data was analyzed by three raters using line-by-line coding, focused coding, and memoing. This analytic approach revealed geographic differences in the counselors' perceptions of the effect of counselor education, experience, and recovery status on client outcomes. Recommendations for treatment planning and future research are provided.     

Rule-Governed Behavior: Teaching a Preliminary Repertoire of Rule-Following to Children With Autism

Rule-governed behavior is generally considered an integral component of complex verbal repertoires but has rarely been the subject of empirical research. In particular, little or no previous research has attempted to establish rule-governed behavior in individuals who do not already display the repertoire. This study consists of two experiments that evaluated multiple exemplar training procedures for teaching a simple component skill, which may be necessary for developing a repertoire of rule-governed behavior. In both experiments, children with autism were taught to respond to simple rules that specified antecedents and the behaviors that should occur in their presence. In the first study, participants were taught to respond to rules containing "if/then" statements, where the antecedent was specified before the behavior. The second experiment was a replication and extension of the first. It involved a variation on the manner in which rules were presented. Both experiments eventually demonstrated generalization to novel rules for all participants; however variations to the standard procedure were required for several participants. Results suggest that rule-following can be analyzed and taught as generalized operant behavior and implications for future research are discussed.