Subjects: Other Disciplines >> Synthetic discipline submitted time 2023-10-09 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： As an emerging evidence-based counseling and treatment technique, Therapeutic Assessment (TA) is a semi-structured model of assessment and intervention that uses standardized psychological tests to understand the client's psychological functioning and personality traits, and achieves assessment goals while being able to promote change in the client. The main effects are a reduction in symptoms, increases in self-esteem and a sense of hope, and motivation to participate in treatment.Based on a review of the literature, we summarized the strengths and limitations of TA. The advantages of TA are fourfold: First, TA can obtain better therapeutic results in a relatively short period of time. Second, it is suitable for most groups, such as individual clients of all ages and for marital and family therapy settings. Third, it is open-ended, and can be used both in conjunction with other counseling techniques and as a diagnostic tool or antecedent counseling, and can also be a driving force in breaking the counseling impasse. Fourth, it emphasizes evidence-based and the joint application of high-quality psychometric tools, giving specific evidence-based practice approaches across treatment schools and diagnoses. However, there are situations in which TA is not applicable. It is not recommended for clients who come to counseling involuntarily or who are in acute crisis or trauma. In addition, TA is usually not considered when the goals of the assessment can be achieved through traditional, non-collaborative testing. By combing through the existing literature, we believe that the mechanism of action for the effectiveness of TA can be interpreted in two ways: collaborative assessment and understanding of the client. Collaborative is a new application of psychometric tests in TA, which is the central mechanism for the effectiveness of TA. In TA, psychometric tests are not only a source of data, but the instruments themselves become "empathy magnifiers" and have therapeutic effects. We believe that collaborative sessions and feedback are more useful than traditional, non-collaborative assessments, allowing for a more coherent and fluid client narrative and an enhanced counseling alliance. In addition, TA's unique understanding of the client is an important prerequisite for its effectiveness, as it uses multiple concepts to understand the client's inner world in depth: unique narratives and stories, self-validation and curiosity, attachment patterns, and epistemic trust. Due to the recent development of the theoretical basis of TA and the short time of its application, there are still some shortcomings in the current research and many issues to be explored in depth. Examples of issues include small sample size, lack of population diversity, and fewer randomized controlled studies. In the existing studies, there are more studies on adults and fewer studies on children and adolescents. Future research should expand sample sizes and increase sample diversity with more studies on partners, couples, and children and adolescents. Second, research on the applicability of TA in cross-national and cross-cultural contexts is still not abundant. Most of the current empirical research related to TA has been conducted in the United States, and there have been some attempts in other cultures, but there is a lack of research in Asian cultural contexts. In addition, even within the same country, there are still some limitations to the cultural diversity of the subjects of TA research. Factors such as social class, religion, and sexual orientation do not appear much. Therefore, there is a need for research on therapeutic evaluation in more countries and in more diverse cultural contexts. Third, the mechanisms by which TA works are not clear. When does the person undergo the greatest or most significant change? What makes the change? How does each session of TA, as well as written feedback, affect the client? Is it the philosophy or the standardized process of TA that makes a difference compared to other counseling schools? Specific empirical research is needed to answer these questions. On this basis, the similarities and differences between the efficacy of TA and other counseling modalities also need to be more fully investigated.There are also some challenges and opportunities to use TA in a Chinese cultural context. The first is the Chineseization of the test instruments and their normative models, the Chineseization of copyright, and the Chineseization of research. The second is the training of Chinese evaluators to master TA. The third is the need for Chinese TA practice to be combined with empirical research, and the timely correction of parts of TA that are incompatible with Chinese culture based on research findings, along with the addition and improvement of parts of Chinese culture that are unique and useful.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Conceptually, prosocial behavior reduces externalizing problems (e.g., aggression) and internalized problems (e.g., depression) because prosocial behavior promotes positive emotions (e.g., to find delight in helping others). Therefore, understanding the development cascades of prosocial behavior tendency, internalizing and externalizing problems is of great value to the promotion of adolescent mental health. Developmental cascades model describes the above-mentioned process, that is, the function of one domain (level or system) will affect the function of another domain (level or system); as time goes on, multiple interactions in different domains (levels or systems) will produce cumulative effects that can spill over and affect the functions of other domain (level or system). Researchers usually use longitudinal data to test a developmental cascade model. However, previous studies tend to base their conclusions on Cross-Lagged Panel Models, which cannot sufficiently answer the causally reciprocal relationship the developmental cascade model described because CLPM mixed the between- and within-person effects. The results of the within-person analysis, which takes the person himself as the control, is more likely indicating the within-person changes of studied variables and their temporal relationships, and thus are consistent with the theoretical hypothesis of the developmental cascades model. The current study attempts to test the developmental cascades of prosocial behavior tendency, internalizing and externalizing problems in a sample of Chinese adolescents, and to show how the within-person analysis and the analysis based on traditional CLPM influence the conclusions. The demographic questionnaire together with Prosocial Behavior Tendency, Depression-Anxiety-Stress Scale and Buss Warren Aggression Questionnaire were administered in two junior schools for three years. Totally 894 students completed the three-wave investigation. Among them, the age ranged from 11 to 15 years old (12.7 ± 0.60), including 517 boys (57.8%) at the beginning of the investigation. In terms of parents' education level, 94.6% of fathers completed nine-year compulsory education, and 56.9% of them completed high school or above level education; 91.5% of mothers completed nine-year compulsory education, and 52.2% of them completed high school or above level education. Two models of within-person analysis (RI-CLPM and GCLM) were used to analyze the data, compared with the traditional CLPM. The data fitting indexes of the three models are all acceptable, but the results are different leading to very different conclusions. Particularly, GCLM can separate within- and between-person effects; (2) GCLM do not assume continuous development in comparison with RI-CLPM. These advantages of GCLM make GCLM have accurate estimates than other two models. Based on the results of GCLM, the research showed that: (1) at the within-person level, prosocial behavior tendency has a moderate or weak co-movements with internalizing and externalizing problems. The prosocial behavior tendency measured at T1 can predict the internalizing problems measured at T2, and the prosocial behavior tendency measured at T2 can predict the externalizing problems measured at T3; (2) For the girl group, the internalizing problems measured at T2 can predict the externalizing problems measured at T3, while in the boy group, the results did not support the reciprocal relationship between internalizing and externalizing problems; (3) The public, submissive, emotional and altruistic factors of prosocial behavior tendency can negatively predict the next-year internalizing problems, and these four factors can negatively predict the externalizing problems measured at T2. These results suggest the value of prosocial behavior as the potential way to promote adolescent’s mental health, within-person analysis in the developmental cascades research, and also indicate that mental health promotion programs should take the gender difference into account.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Trauma-related flashback (also called intrusive imagery) is one of the most typical re-experience symptoms of acute stress disorder (ASD) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and has important impacts on the development of PTSD. The cognitive model of PTSD and the dual representation theory of PTSD both emphasize the effects of abnormal peritraumatic cognitive processing (i.e., data-driven processing or sensational representation being strengthened while conceptual processing or contextual representation being weakened). Some vulnerable personality traits of PTSD and working memory abilities are also focused in studies of analogue and real trauma, and are considered as risk factors and protective factors respectively. This study aimed to examine the effects of vulnerable personality traits of PTSD, working memory abilities and peritraumatic cognitive processing on flashbacks in different periods after analogue trauma. A total of 159 healthy college students (38 males; age = 17~26 ys, M = 20.44 ± 1.80) participated in the study, who were screened by a self-designed health status questionnaire (e.g., “Did you receive psychotherapy or psychopharmaceutical treatment in recent two years?”), Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II), and Self-report Anxiety Scale (SAS). In the laboratory, they were asked to watch a 14’34’’ long Road Traffic Accidents (RTAs) film alone. Trait anxiety, trait dissociation, neuroticism and attentional control were measured before watching the film respectively by State-trait Anxiety Inventory-Trait version (STAI-T), Dissociative Experiences Scale-II (DES-II), the revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Short Scale for Chinese (EPQ-RSC), and Attentional Control Scale (ACS), while working memory capacity was tested by a revised Operation Span Task (OSPAN) seven days later. Immediately after the film, data-driven processing and conceptual processing were measured by Thoughts and Feelings Questionnaire-Chinese Revised (TFQ-CR). Five minutes after the film, participants firstly read a standardized description about the film-related flashback until they fully understood it with the help of the experimenter, and then reported immediate flashback (number, vividness and distress level). In the following week after the laboratory portion, participants independently reported flashback at three regular time points every day through WeChat or QQ. Upon coming back to the laboratory, they reported the frequency of posttraumatic symptoms through the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R) and triggered flashback after finishing a single-blind fake task assessing the degree in which they liked (10 relevant to the film). Structural equation model (SEM) and Bootstrap method were mainly adopted in the statistical analyses. Results showed that data-driven processing positively predicted the number, vividness and distress level of all three kinds of flashbacks (i.e., immediate, one-week and triggered) and one-week frequency of intrusion; higher neuroticism predicted higher distress level of triggered flashback; attentional control and working memory capacity both negatively predicted one-week frequency of intrusion. Conceptual processing played a mediating role between attentional control and distress level of immediate flashback. Furthermore, attentional control was positively associated with conceptual processing, whereas conceptual processing negatively predicted distress level of immediate flashback. These findings suggest that data-driven processing is the main factor influencing flashbacks in different periods after trauma; conceptual processing mainly affects the early acute stress response, while attentional control functions as a protective factor; neuroticism and working memory ability have long-term effects on flashback, and working memory ability serves as a protective factor.
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