Treatment failures in private practice: How do psychologists proceed?

Very little is known about how psychotherapists proceed when patients fail to progress. Psychologists in independent practice (N = 591) were surveyed regarding their approach to treatment failures in an updated partial replication of P. C. Kendall, D. Kipnis, and L. Otto-Salaj (1992). Overall, practitioners reported seeing patients a median of 12 sessions before concluding no progress was being made and relying on colleague consultation and clinical experience to formulate their next steps. Practitioners of different orientations varied on treatment duration and ensuing strategies. Specifically, psychodynamic practitioners treated patients significantly longer than cognitive-behavioral and eclectic practitioners before concluding treatment failure. Cognitive-behavioral and eclectic practitioners were more likely than psychodynamic practitioners to utilize treatment materials informed by psychotherapy outcome research and to refer patients to other clinicians. The ethical and practical implications of handling treatment failures in private practice are considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Color‐person‐environment relationships

Although the nature of color and the person environment relationship are both well‐documented, it is posited that both domains need to be integrated to understand the active role that color plays in the relationship between a person and the surrounding environment. The color person environment relationship (COL‐PE) introduced in this article is an important theoretical concept for designers, and as a consequence, for environmental‐color researchers to investigate. The potential of color to be an active agent in the relationship between people and environments is introduced by drawing upon what is known about color and the person environment relationship from other sources. The nature of transition spaces is used to emphasize how color affects the emotional connection and disconnection between people and spaces. As an example of COL‐PE, transition spaces highlight the nature of the person who is also psychologically in‐transition and color as a potentially important aspect of the transitory experience. In addition, the connections between color and the constructs that we hold of the people who visit, work, or live in particular environments will be discussed briefly. Designers often focus on the object or artifact which is being colored (whether a building or a chair) as an end in itself, without considering in any depth how the designed objects or places can influence how people experience their daily activities and each other. COL‐PE is introduced as a means to address this omission and broaden designers' understandings of the potential impact of their work. The discussion of the aspects of environmental design (with particular reference to architecture and interior design), introduces the foundation of the COL‐PE as a particular way of addressing color in the built environment. The principles of COL‐PE are relevant for a range of disciplines involved in environmental design including urban design, landscape architecture, interior design, industrial design, and architecture. The COL‐PE aims to make explicit what is often an unrecognized or tacit understanding of the role of environmental color, and thereby, the article highlights the need for research to understand the relationship more fully. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 33, 312–319, 2008.     

Assessing an Engineering Day Camp for Middle-School Girls

Many engineering outreach activities are conducted for young people on university campuses. Many of these programs have some assessment in place, but few have reported results of multiple evaluation and assessment tools. The Future Engineers’ Summer Camp, an engineering day camp for middle-school girls, is a week-long day camp containing hands-on, minds-on activities spanning a range of engineering disciplines. Evaluation and assessment tools including a retrospective survey, evaluation cards, and focus groups are used to evaluate the camp’s activities and determine effectiveness in increasing girls’ knowledge of and attitudes and aspirations toward engineering. Analysis of retrospective surveys demonstrates that the girls learn about engineering while participating in the camp. Evaluation cards, used to evaluate individual activities, indicate that fun is positively correlated with the overall rating of an activity. Additionally, while the girls in the camp already have positive attitudes and high aspirations related to math and science, the camp reinforces these attributes. Recordings and scribe notes of focus-group discussions support retrospective survey results.     

Status of Quality Management practices in manufacturing SMEs: a comparative study between Australia and the UK

This study is aimed to assess and compare the status of quality management (QM) practices in the manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Australia and the UK, and to develop better insights into the use of and benefits from such QM practices. Furthermore, the intention was to identify the trends for adoption of advanced QM practices such as Lean and Six Sigma. A similar survey instrument was designed and tested in the two countries and data were analysed using SPSS and excel worksheet. The findings confirm that the adoption of Six Sigma is quite slow in Australian and the UK SMEs. ISO 9000 is the most popular QM initiatives in SMEs followed by the recent trend to implement Lean for streamlining business processes. Leadership is critical to the success of any QM practices such as Lean and Six Sigma. Networking with government bodies and academic institutions, and fact-based decision-making emerged as the two new critical success factors for implementing QM in SMEs. Significant improvement in performance metrics was observed in the UK SMEs after implementation of quality initiatives, though similar result was not replicated in the Australian sample.     

Sensitivity of marine microalgae to copper: the effect of biotic factors on copper adsorption and toxicity

Microalgae are sensitive indicators of environmental change and, as the basis of most freshwater and marine ecosystems, are widely used in the assessment of risk and development of environmental regulations for metals. However, interspecies differences in sensitivity to metals are not well understood. The relationship between metal-algal cell binding and copper sensitivity of marine microalgae was investigated using a series of 72-h growth-rate inhibition bioassays and short-term (1-h) uptake studies. A range of marine algae from different taxonomic groups were screened to determine whether copper adsorption to the cell membrane was influenced by biotic factors, such as the ultrastructure of cell walls and cell size. Minutocellus polymorphus was the most sensitive species to copper and Dunaliella tertiolecta the least sensitive, with 72-h IC50 values (concentration to inhibit growth-rate by 50%) of 0.6 and 530 microg Cu/L, respectively. Copper solution-cell partition coefficients at equilibrium (K(d)) were calculated for six species of algae on a per cell and surface area basis. The largest and smallest cells had the lowest and highest K(d) values, respectively (on a surface area basis), with a general (non-linear) trend of decreasing K(d) with increasing cell surface area (p=0.026), however, no relationship was found between K(d) and copper sensitivity, nor cell size and copper sensitivity. Interspecies differences in copper sensitivity were not related to cell size, cell wall type, taxonomic group or K(d) values. The differences in sensitivity may be due to differences in uptake rates across the plasma membrane, in internal binding mechanisms and/or detoxification mechanisms between the different microalgal species.     

The structure of expressed emotion: A three-construct representation.

Confirmatory factor analysis was used to explore a 3-factor model of expressed emotion (Criticism, Emotional Overinvolvement, and Positivity) in a sample of 104 outpatients with agoraphobia or obsessive-compulsive disorder and 104 relatives of these patients. Multiple methods of measurement included the Camberwell Family Interview, observation of verbal and nonverbal behaviors during patient–relative problem-solving interactions, and ratings of relatives' behavior made by patients and by relatives. The convergent validity of the 3 individual constructs was demonstrated through single-factor models fitted to Criticism, Positivity, and Emotional Overinvolvement measures. A 3-factor model was then estimated and determined to provide adequate fit to the data, thus demonstrating the distinctiveness of the constructs. Criticism and Positivity were strongly and negatively correlated, whereas Emotional Overinvolvement bore little relationship to the other 2 factors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Expressed emotion and behavior therapy outcome: A prospective study with obsessive–compulsive and agoraphobic outpatients.

The relationship of expressed emotion (EE) to behavior therapy outcome for obsessive-compulsive disorder (n?=?60) and panic disorder with agoraphobia (n&=?41) was investigated. Relatives' emotional overinvolvement and hostility predicted higher rates of treatment dropout. Higher hostility, as assessed by the Camberwell Family Interview (CFI), was related to poorer outcome for target ratings and for the Social Adjustment Scale; higher perceived criticism was also predictive of worse response on target ratings. In contrast, nonhostile criticism on the CFI was associated with better outcome on the behavioral avoidance test. In general, the relationship of EE to outcome was not moderated by type of relative, diagnosis, amount of contact with the relative, or use of psychotropic medication. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

If you can't join them, beat them: Effects of social exclusion on aggressive behavior.

Social exclusion was manipulated by telling people that they would end up alone later in life or that other participants had rejected them. These manipulations caused participants to behave more aggressively. Excluded people issued a more negative job evaluation against someone who insulted them (Experiments 1 and 2). Excluded people also blasted a target with higher levels of aversive noise both when the target had insulted them (Experiment 4) and when the target was a neutral person and no interaction had occurred (Experiment 5). However, excluded people were not more aggressive toward someone who issued praise (Experiment 3). These responses were specific to social exclusion (as opposed to other misfortunes) and were not mediated by emotion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)