Sometimes some of you get a notice that I’ve posted something, only to find that it’s gone.  You visit and see  nothing new.  That’s because I’ve reread whatever it was and decided it wasn’t ready for prime time, so down it goes. 

I appreciate the visit anyway, you should know, and the communication, the questions. 

It happened this week, so even though I should be making someone a lunch, I put up the Garage Sale post below, cleaned it up a little.  Has anyone ever cleaned a sixty year old garage?  It’s not pretty.

therapydoc

Day-hospital programmes are often recommended for people suffering from eating disorders. They often use group therapy to treat people but there has been little research into which aspects of this are the most important for people’s recovery. One aspect of this that researchers are particularly interested in is group cohesion – the ‘forces acting on the members of the group to remain in the group.’ Group cohesion is, in turn, made up of components such as commitment to the group, compatibility of the group and the extent to which the content of the programme stimulates members. Researchers from Westmead Hospital in New South Wales looked into this issue in a study of 36 women going through an eating disorders day treatment programme. They found that the programme did lead to an improvement in the women’s condition and of the aspects of group cohesion it was compatibility that was associated with attendance and treatment response.

Crino, Natalie and Djokvucic, Ivana – Cohesion to the group and its association with attendance and early treatment response in an adult day-hospital program for eating disorders: a preliminary clinical investigation Clinical Psychologist, July 2010, 14(2), 54-61

While I (Kent) am completely aware many of you following this blog have been back in school for some time, today was our first day of classes at Germantown High. In the infinite wisdom of our state (WI), students cannot legally start before September 1st.

That being the case, my summer hiatus from school has come to a rapid close as well as the break I’ve taken from this blog. I’m looking forward to another school year with my AP Psychology students and the opportunity to dialog with my psychology colleagues from around the world (approximately 20% of our visitors come from outside the US).

Last year at this time I introduced the Midnight Postings. My hope was to present some useful ideas for your classrooms and bring a sense of continuity to the hodgepodge of thoughts and ideas that normally is found in many blogs. As the THSP blog is a year and a half old with a strong base of followers, I would like to return to the free-flowing nature of postings.

The “Stranger Paper” is an assignment I present the first day of every year. Very early in the class period, usually right after I have introduced myself, I ask the students to find someone in the classroom that they don’t know or don’t know very well. At this point many students think we are doing the prep work for some type of “boundary breaking” activity where I will ask them to interview this stranger and then introduce them to the class. Imagine their surprise when I tell them for the next few days I want them to watch this person and eventually write a paper about their personality characteristics. I stress the paper should NOT be a simple listing of what the person wore and did but conclusions about their stranger based on those observations.

The students seems to find the paper interesting and a bit of a challenge. In time, we can discuss the limitations to naturalistic observation and the tentative nature of their conclusions. The paper creates a sense of excitement that separates AP Psychology from the other classes that spent the first day going over the syllabus and classroom rules.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about the Stranger Paper.

Before you think of fleeing the country for the US, have a look at this graph on international variation in mandatory annual leave & paid holidays. Clearly Germany, Austria, Finland are the fun places to be…

With governments all over the world looking to make cuts in expenditure health visitors can often be seen as an easy option for cuts. However, research from the universities of Leicester, Nottingham and Sheffield have found that they can play a role in preventing post-natal depression. The researchers studied more than 2,000 women; 767 received normal care from a health visitor while the rest received support from health visitors trained in assessing mental-health problems and giving psychological support. Six months after childbirth the women who had been seen by the health visitors with additional mental-health training were 30% less likely to develop depression.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the title of this post.

I got to meet Daria Schaffeld, chair of the National Council for the Social Studies Psychology Community, last year at NCSS. She helped run a great meeting for psych. teachers at NCSS, and I mentioned that I could post something about her group here on this blog. Here’s Daria’s message – please join this group!

“NCSS Communities are groups of NCSS members formed around a similar interest, subject, or job area and vehicles for NCSS members to discuss current topics, seek advice, share their knowledge and connect with other members with similar interests. Our goal is very simple – to help Psychology teachers!

Each year at the National Conference, my co-chairs and I present many wonderful sessions filled with lesson ideas and best practices. We also write 3 newsletters a year and send them to our members.

I am very dedicated to showing NCSS that Psychology is a valuable elective within the Social Studies Curriculum. It is vital that we have a voice.

I truly believe that if you are looking for some inspiration, networking, or assistance becoming part of our organization would be a great move. Membership information can be found on our website.

http://communities.socialstudies.org/

Online membership is free. I ask that you take a moment to join us. The higher numbers we show the more support NCSS gives our science.”

posted by Rob McEntarffer

Given the time of year and given that one of my functions here in UCD is to provide the undergrad behavioural economics curriculum forgive me another random post on what we are actually supposed to do in the undergrad domain. Below is the result of scribbling on a piece of paper in an attempt to get motivated for this year’s endeavours. This is close to another issue that we have started debating a lot more – what is the value of “inperson” modules as opposed to downloading modules from the web?

(i) Give students an opportunity to signal their ability to the labour/graduate admissions market. To provide challenging assignments that are known to be challenging.

(ii) Provide access to information that will be intrinsically valuable for the students both now and in the future on reflection. In essence to provide a consumption product at the same time as allowing the student to invest in a stock of knowledge and positive memories.

(iii) Provide access to language that will enable them to communicate with other people who have taken the course.

(iv) Provide a link between the university setting and the outside world through practical examples, case studies etc., In essence, to give students a chance to “practice” being a decision maker before having to make real decisions.

(v) Similar to (iv) to provide students with an opportunity to express innate talents through interaction with others in group situations similar to real-world settings.

(vi) Provide specific marketable skills valued by employers in different sectors.

(vii) Get to know students in the module well enough to be able to provide employment references.

(viii) Awaken consciousness about how real-world institutions operate and their own potential place in this.

(ix) To act as a guarantor that a student has come through a module of study that is a requirement for later education/jobs.

(x) Provide students with an opportunity to form networks through the class both personal and professional. Synching up modules across universities an interesting way to develop this.

(xi) Provide a forum for students to discuss and develop their own ideas. Provide feedback on those ideas including references to wider literaturem, challenging gaps in reasoning and so on.

(xii) Provide students with an independent forum for advanced critical thinking. Provide an atmosphere of irreverance toward current norms facilitating development of original thinking.

Teenagers who smoke to cheer themselves up may actually be more prone to depression. Researchers from the University of Montreal Hospital Research Centre studied 662 teenagers asking them about their smoking habits and their mood. The participants were divided into three groups: those who had never smoked, those who smoked but did not do so to ’self-medicate’ and those who smoked to improve their mood. Those who used cigarettes as mood-enhancers had higher risks of elevated depressive symptoms than those teenagers who had never smoked.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the title of this post.

Below is from the EconTalk podcast website, posted by Russ Roberts. 

“The latest EconTalk is Dan Pink talking about motivation and incentives, the themes of his book, Drive. The book is based on research results from behavioral psychology that often find perverse results or non-results from using money or other rewards to motivate people. In the podcast, I challenge the reliability and applicability of these results. Pink pushes back. We also talk at length about education and family life. Enjoy.”

On September 9th Geary Institute and the UCD School of Medicine and Medical Science will cohost a one-day symposium on social science and medicine. Professor David Meltzer from the University of Chicago will speak at 2.30pm and there will be several UCD talks before and after. We will post details here next week and distribute to our mailing list. Please email geary@ucd.ie if you would like to attend. Professor Meltzer will speak about the economics of hospitalist doctors in the US (paper here ).