This chapter discusses comprehensive school crisis interventions, identifies the characteristics that define a crisis, finds ways to assess for the level of traumatic impact, and determines what interventions can be provided to help with response and recovery. It highlights the PREPaRE Model of crisis prevention and intervention. There are six general categories of crises: acts of war and/or terrorism; violent and/or unexpected deaths; threatened death and/or injury; human-caused disasters; natural disasters; and severe illness or injury. Children are a vulnerable population and in the absence of quality crisis interventions, there can be negative short- and long-term implications on learning, cognitive development, and mental health. Evidence-based interventions focusing on physical and psychological safety may be implemented to prevent a crisis from occurring or mitigate the traumatic impact of a crisis event by building resiliency in students. Crisis risk factors are variables that predict whether a person becomes a psychological trauma victim.

Depression is a chronic, recurring disorder that impacts children’s academic, interpersonal, and family functioning. The heritability of major depressive disorder (MDD) is likely to be in the range of 31% to 42%. This chapter begins with a brief overview of the etiology of depression. It presents a description of a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) intervention designed to be delivered in a group format, an individual interpersonal intervention, and an individual behavioral activation (BA) intervention that includes a great deal of parental involvement. The ACTION program is a manualized program that is based on a cognitive behavioral model of depression. There are four primary treatment components to ACTION: affective education, coping skills training (BA), problem-solving training, and cognitive restructuring. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of universal therapeutic techniques to be incorporated into work with depressed youth regardless of the therapeutic orientation or treatment strategy.

Divorce is a lengthy developmental process and, in the case of children and adolescents, one that can encompass most of their young lives. This chapter explores the experience of divorce from the perspective of the children, reviews the evidence base and empirical support for interventions. It provides examples of three evidence-based intervention programs, namely, Children in Between, Children of Divorce Intervention Program (CODIP), and New Beginnings, appropriate for use with children, adolescents, and their parents. Promoting protective factors and limiting risk factors during childhood and adolescence can prevent many mental, emotional, and behavioral problems and disorders during those years and into adulthood. The Children in Between program is listed on the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices. The CODIP and the New Beginnings program are also listed on the SAMHSA National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices.

Children and youth with serious emotional, behavioral, and social difficulties present challenges for teachers, parents, and peers. Youth who are at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) are particularly vulnerable in the areas of peer and adult social relationships. The emphasis on meeting academic standards and outcomes for children and youth in schools has unfortunately pushed the topic of social-emotional development to the proverbial back burner. This chapter emphasizes that social skills might be considered academic enablers because these positive social behaviors predict short-term and long-term academic achievement. Evidence-based practices are employed with the goal of preventing or ameliorating the effects of disruptive behavior disorders (DBD) in children and youth. An important distinction in designing and delivering social skills interventions (SSI) is differentiating between different types of social skills deficits. Social skills deficits may be either acquisition deficits or performance deficits.

Eating disorders (EDs) are a complex and comparatively dangerous set of mental disorders that deeply affect the quality of life and well-being of the child or adolescent who is struggling with this problem as well as those who love and care for him or her. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) outlines specific criteria for the diagnosis of anorexia nervosa (AN), bulimia nervosa (BN), binge eating disorder (BED), and other specified feeding or ED. Treatment of eating disordered behavior typically involves a three-facet approach: medical assessment and monitoring, nutritional counseling, and psychological and behavioral treatment. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT) are also evidence-based approaches to treatment for AN. The treatment of EDs should be viewed as a team effort that integrates medical, nutritional, and mental health service providers.

Asthma, a pulmonary condition, is a chronic respiratory disorder typified by persistent underlying inflammation of tissues, airway obstruction, congestion, hyperresponsive airways, and the narrowing of smooth airway muscle. Asthma is one of the most common chronic medical conditions in children and is the leading cause of school absenteeism. This chapter describes childhood asthma, including its causes and triggers. It elucidates the extant research supporting treatment of the disorder and provides step-by-step empirically based interventions to ameliorate asthmatic symptomatology in children. The psychological underpinnings of asthma have been investigated in the field of psycho-neuroimmunology (PNI), which examines the interplay of the central nervous system, neuroendocrine, and immune system with psychological variables and their relation to physical health. Researchers have shown that relaxation and guided imagery (RGI), written emotional expression, yoga, and mindfulness therapy improve pulmonary lung functioning, decrease rates of absenteeism, and improve overall quality of life.

This chapter reviews the empirical support for such a multifaceted approach by considering selected neurodevelopmental concerns and medical variables that present as obstacles to healthy neurodevelopment. It discusses select neuro-developmental prenatal complications that can be prevented or ameliorated through behavioral interventions with the pregnant mother. The chapter addresses the deleterious effects of legal substances on the developing fetus, but professionals should be vigilant about preventing or reducing intrauterine exposure to illicit substances as well. Tobacco is a legal substance that, when used during pregnancy, has the potential to harm both the mother and fetus. Of particular concern with tobacco use are the detrimental health risks, such as hypertension and diabetes, which adversely affect the cerebrovascular functioning of pregnant women. The process of neurodevelopment is complex and represents a dynamic interplay among genetics, behavior, demographics, the environment, psychosocial factors, and myriad physiological factors.

This chapter explores how practicum training may be enhanced through effective collaboration between trainers and field supervisors. Successful practicum training requires strong collaboration between the trainee’s university or institution and the supervising field psychologist. Successful collaboration between the university and field site includes consideration of site development and maintenance, effective communication, and training and support across settings. Field placement and coordination play a critical role in the training of school psychologists. The individual fulfilling this role may be recognized with a variety of formal titles, such as field placement coordinator, clinical professor, or director of clinical training (DCT). One of the primary responsibilities of the DCT is the coordination and supervision of practica-related activities, including the placement of candidates in appropriate training sites. The chapter focuses on how supervisors can address trainee problems of professional competence, develop and use remediation plans successfully, and help trainees balance fieldwork with coursework.

This chapter includes information related to the clinical evaluation of a concussion that a child might receive in a medical setting. It discusses guidelines for appropriate use of smartphone concussion evaluation apps. This chapter examines a brief section on the future of concussion assessment. The Acute Concussion Evaluation (ACE) can help the school concussion team obtain information regarding the injury, including the cause, severity, any amnesia, loss of consciousness (LOC), and any early signs. The computerized neurocognitive assessment typically measures player symptoms, verbal/visual memory, attention span, working memory, processing speed, response variability, nonverbal problem solving, and reaction time. Neurocognitive tests, sideline assessments, and smartphone apps can help district staff and parents determine the severity of a student’s symptoms. A neuropsychological assessment to assess cognitive functioning, memory, speed, and processing time may also be administered.

One of the most important findings from the original battered woman syndrome (BWS) research was the existence of a three-phase cycle of violence that could be described and measured through careful questioning of the battered woman. This chapter describes the cycle, updates it by adding information from the courtship period, and divides the third phase into several different sections where appropriate so that there may not be any loving contrition or even respites from the abuse at times during the relationship. Teaching the woman how her perception of tension and danger rises to an acute battering incident after which she experiences feelings of relief and then gets seduced back into the relationship by the batterer’s loving behavior, often similar to what she experienced during the courtship period, has been found to be helpful in breaking the cycle of violence that keeps the woman in the relationship.

This chapter provides guidelines for psychologists on the assessment of oral language proficiency (OLP) of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) children and adolescents who study in their second language (L2). It discusses the issues that should be considered in the assessment of OLP, including the aspects of oral language that should be assessed in L1 or L2, the factors that should be considered in interpreting assessment data, and the advantages and challenges of assessing children in their L1. The chapter then describes specific methods for assessing OLP. It discusses issues involved in interpretation of data from OLP assessments, including a discussion of the diagnosis of a language disorder. The chapter also explains specific tasks and observational schedules that psychologists might find helpful when conducting assessments of OLP.

The most challenging and arguably most important part of any assessment is the diagnostic formulation and recommendations for intervention. This chapter explains clinical decision making and diagnostic formulation using a developmental systems approach (DSA) that is based on developmental bioecological theory. It provides suggestions for organizing assessment data and methods for thinking about the data in order to formulate the case systemically. The chapter discusses key issues involved in linking assessment with academic and psychosocial intervention. It reviews the knowledge, strategies, skills, and attitudes that are essential competencies for psychologists who conduct assessments with culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) children and adolescents. Assessments and intervention with CLD children and adolescents are both challenging and rewarding. Psychologists who work with these children and families effectively have a set of attitudes that stimulate them to find information and research, as well as develop effective strategies.

As everyone knows, true creativity comes from simple formulas and the memorization of data. This chapter focuses on divergent thinking tests, which are still the most common way that creativity is measured. Guilford derived the core ideas behind divergent thinking as well as many popular measures. The people who score the Torrance Tests are specifically trained to distinguish responses that are truly original from those that are just bizarre. There are other tests that measure creativity, but most are either a variation on divergent thinking or use some type of raters. For example, the Evaluation of Potential Creativity (EPOC) has begun to be used in some studies and may be promising, but is still largely rooted in a mix of divergent thinking scoring and raters. Another test is the Finke Creative Invention Task, which is clever but also requires raters for scoring.

The Big Five, which this chapter discusses in more detail, are extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience. Each of these five factors represents a continuum of behavior, traits, and inclinations. There are some popular personality measures that use different theories, such as Eysenck’s Personality Questionnaire, which looks at extraversion and neuroticism as well as psychoticism. The personality factor most associated with creativity is openness to experience. Indeed, one way that researchers study creativity is by giving creative personality tests. Being open to new experiences may also help creative people be more productive. King found that people who were creative and high on openness to experience were more likely to report creative accomplishments. DeYoung and S. B. Kaufman, of course, are not the only people to blend or split different factors of personality to present new models. Fürst, Ghisletta, and Lubart suggest three factors: plasticity, divergence, and convergence.

This chapter explores three ’classic’ studies of creativity and mental illness. The first is Jamison whose focus is on the connection between bipolar disorder and creativity. The second is Andreasen, who used structured interviews to analyze 30 creative writers, 30 matched controls, and first-degree relatives of each group. The writers had a higher rate of mental illness, with a particular tendency toward bipolar and other affective disorders. The third major work is Ludwig, who utilized the historiometric technique. All three studies have come under serious criticism. Many of the studies of Big-C creators are historiometric, akin to Ludwig’s work. Some such studies claim that eminent creators show higher rates of mental illness. A much more common approach is to look at everyday people and give them measures of creativity and mental health. Typically, researchers look at what are called subclinical disorders—in other words, they’re not clinically significant.

One school admissions area that already uses creativity is gifted admissions—which students are chosen to enter gifted classes, programs, or after-school activities. Both education and business play great lip service to creativity. Puccio and Cabra review the literature on creativity and organizations and do a nice job of highlighting how every couple of years, a new report from industry emphasizes the importance of creativity. It is important to note that there is a large inconsistency between gender differences on creativity tests and actual creative accomplishment. Although gender differences on creativity tests are minor or nonexistent, differences in real-world creative accomplishment are large and significant. This chapter shows how creativity can play a role in admissions and hiring. Hiring measures tend to have better validity, even the general mental ability (GMA) measures; even if minorities score lower, the accuracy of prediction is consistent by ethnicity.

Creative people are also often seen as being outsiders and eccentric. Sen and Sharma’s examination of creativity beliefs in India tested beliefs about the Four P’s and found that creativity was more likely to be described as a holistic essence of an individual, and less likely to be focused on the product or process. Romo and Alfonso studied Spanish painters and found that one of the implicit theories that the painters held about creativity involved the role of psychological disorders. Plucker and Dana found that past histories of alcohol, marijuana, and tobacco usage were not correlated with creative achievements; familial drug and alcohol use also was not significantly associated with creative accomplishments or creative personality attributes. Humphrey, McKay, Primi, and Kaufman did find that illegal drug use predicted self-reported creative behaviors even when openness to experience was controlled.

One of the best known psychologists of the 20th century was Jean Piaget. The memory he described was from when he was about 2 years old, a kidnapping attempt in which his nurse tried to protect him. According to the storehouse metaphor, memory is kind of a warehouse. When one remembers an event from one’s life, one looks through this warehouse. Remembering a past event is also a kind of simulation, a simulation of what happened in the past, rather than a veridical reproduction of the past. In fact, our best understanding is that brains are massively parallel simulation devices. Constructive theories deal with filling in gaps at encoding as the event transpires, whereas reconstructive theories deal with filling in gaps at retrieval as one tries to remember the event. When thinking about memory illusions it is important to make a similar distinction.

Concurrent with the release of Education and Identity in 1969, the United States was at the nexus of social unrest and expanding funding and support for educational initiatives. The decades of the 1950s and 1960s saw a great increase in research and practice focused on developmental theorists working in the area of higher education. At the forefront of this work was theorist Arthur Chickering. The primary construct of Chickering’s (1969) work is the Seven Vectors of Development. The vectors are: (a) developing competence, (b) managing emotions, (c) moving through autonomy toward interdependence, (d) developing mature interpersonal relationships, (e) establishing identity, (f) developing purpose, and (g) developing integrity. This vector addresses competence across three domains: intellectual, physical and manual, and interpersonal. This chapter briefly outlines Chickering’s life work, and ways in which practitioners can apply his theory to their daily interactions with college students.

This chapter describes many of the theories that involve taxonomies. Most taxonomies of love begin in the same place: The language of love is examined, whether through an examination of film, literature, music, or firsthand accounts of people about their love life. The three primary love styles are eros, storge, and ludus. Eros is a passionate kind of love that is characterized by strong emotions and intense physical longing for the loved one. With storge, should the lovers break up, there is a greater chance than with other love styles that they remain friends. Ludus commonly is displayed by people who prefer to remain single and who see love as a game of conquest and numbers. A pragmatic lover hesitates to commit to a relationship until he or she feels confident of finding the right partner. The different love styles also correlate with some other personality traits.

This chapter focuses on an area that has been at the center of the debate between the approaches: processing ambiguous words and sentences. Interestingly, an important factor for ambiguity resolution appears to be the frequency of the different meanings of the ambiguous words. Subordinate- bias effect is as follows: in a neutral, nonbiasing context, words that are balanced cause longer reading times than words that are either unbalanced or unambiguous. Different languages impose different rules about how grammatical categories may be combined. In the garden path model, sentence processing happens in two stages: an initial structure building stage in which the only information that is used is syntactic, and then a second stage in which the structure is checked against semantic and pragmatic information. Constraint-based models take a very different approach to how sentences are initially parsed and how mistakes are sometimes made.

This chapter shows the importance, for older persons, of support groups. In spite of the changes that have occurred in the American family, and all the negative things that fill the popular press concerning family relationships, the family is still the backbone of support for most older people. To some extent, the type of family support older people obtain depends on whether they are living in the community or in an institutional setting such as a group home, retirement village, or nursing facility. Whether a person is married, has great impact on that person’s support within a family setting including emotional, financial, and physical support, particularly in times of illness or infirmity. The success of a second marriage depends to a considerable extent on the reaction of the adult children of the elderly couple. Older grandparents, no matter how motivated, can find caring for grandchildren to be very tiring.

Traditionally, there has been a division of labor in higher education between academics and student affairs. This chapter is designed to focus on the plausibility of using theory to facilitate communication across the many departments and divisions of higher education. It is important to remember that the student affairs profession “grew from the campus up, not from theory down”. Early institutions of higher education followed the Oxbridge model with historically based residential living systems in which educators resided in residence halls with the students. This concept of faculty–student integration remains a valuable component in student success today, and is discussed in greater detail in this chapter. One useful “language” for student affairs practitioners is found in Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development. Erik Erikson pioneered a theoretical framework and proposes an eight-staged life-span model through which developing individuals permeate starting at birth and eventually ending with death.

This chapter shows how the United States and the world are experiencing an aging evolution we are growing older. America is going through a revolution. As a whole, Americans are becoming older, and there are many more older people among people than ever before in our history. Obviously all cohorts of the population youth, young adults, middle-aged, young-old, oldest-old are heterogeneous. When some people think about the elderly as a whole, they picture frail, weak, dependent persons, some in nursing homes and many confined to their homes. The chapter demonstrates the differences the various age categories have in relation to selected chronic health conditions that cause limitations of activity. Widowhood is much more common for elderly American women than for older men. The aging of Baby Boomers will solidify the shift America is experiencing with the aging of its population. Centenarians make up a small percentage of the total U.S. population.

The researchers were specifically interested in whether they would get more incorrect responses depending on the type of sentence. From a certain perspective, passive sentences are more complicated than active sentences and so perhaps it is the case that passives are more difficult simply because they are more complicated. It appears that the important difference between subject cleft and actives on one hand, and passives on the other, is that the order of the roles is reversed between them: in active sentences, the agent comes first. Indeed, there is a growing body of evidence that languages allow English speakers to structure their utterances in a way that can flag certain parts of the sentence as particularly important or worthy of special attention. Recently, psycholinguists have been interested, too, in how information structure influences language processing.

This chapter links facets of personality, and other individual differences among people, to aspects of their sense of humor, including the way that they use comedy in their lives and the kinds of jokes they generate and appreciate. The study of personality back in the 1940s had grown quite convoluted. It had started in ancient times, when Hippocrates, of the legendary oath, proposed four temperaments. He thought that personality arose from different proportions of fluids in the body, creating a popular link between personality and physiology. By the late 1800s, Sir Francis Galton, brilliant half-cousin of Charles Darwin and noted polymath, reasoned that any important aspect of personality ought to make it into the language. He fashioned a taxonomy based on a dictionary. Humor and creativity relate to each other in curious ways. But both are also correlated with extraversion and intelligence.

The study of the properties of language can be divided up into roughly five, somewhat overlapping categories: sound system, word structure, sentence structure, meaning, and real-world use. In spoken languages, segments are sounds—each language has a set of sounds that are produced by changing the positions of various parts of the vocal tract. The sound system of language is actually studied in two main parts: phonetics, phonology. Phonemes can be combined to make words, and words themselves have an internal structure and can even be ambiguous based on this structure. Syntax is the study of how sentences are formed. There are two noun phrases (NPs) in the sentence—the artist and a paintbrush. The field of semantics is concerned with meaning in language and can be divided into two major parts: lexical and propositional.

The idea of the mad genius persisted all the way to modern times and was even promulgated in scientific circles. Not only was genius mad, but it was associated with criminality and genetic degeneration. The empirical research relevant to the mad-genius issue uses three major methods: the historiometric, the psychometric and the psychiatric. The historical record is replete with putative exemplars of mad genius. The mental illness adopts a more subtle but still pernicious guise-alcoholism. In fact, it sometimes appears that alcoholism is one of the necessities of literary genius. Psychopathology can be found in other forms of genius besides creative genius. Of the available pathologies, depression seems to be the most frequent, along with its correlates of suicide and alcoholism or drug abuse. Family lineages that have higher than average rates of psychopathology will also feature higher than average rates of genius.

This chapter talks about questions related to how speakers and hearers influence each other. It looks at research on dialogue, and especially how a dialogue context influences speakers. Speakers have an impact on their listeners. The goal of a dialogue is successful communication and so it would make sense that a speaker would pay careful attention to the needs of a listener and do things like avoid ambiguity and package information in a way that flags particular information as important or new to the listener. Ambiguity may be avoided depending on the speaker’s choice of words and so a natural question is whether, and when, speakers appear to avoid ambiguous language. In terms of pronunciation, speakers reduce articulation and intelligibility over the course of a dialogue. There are some constraints and preferences on how to interpret pronouns and other coreferring expressions that appear to be structural or syntactic in nature.

Informal and loosely generated models of White identity development began to emerge in the late 1970s and early 1980s; however, the first formal White identity development model, or typology, was proposed by Helms in 1984. This chapter describes her model, followed by an application of the model to the opening vignette. It identifies strategies for educators and student affairs practitioners to work with students like Craig to begin to more fully understand his Whiteness, the sociopolitical realities of race on campus and, in general, increase his multicultural competence, and engage in healthy interracial interactions. The chapter also discusses the summary of the literature examining the steps educators and student affairs practitioners can take to promote their own cross-cultural interactions and multicultural knowledge in order to more effectively work with students struggling with their own racial identity, followed by the strategies to promote healthy interracial interactions among students.

Unlike laypeople, psychologists believe people can measure personality using reliable scientific tools. Indeed, the whole field of psychometrics is dedicated to measuring differences between people in various psychological concepts, including personality. Personality assessment combines a variety of theories and methods, including common sense, probability theory and statistical testing. Life record data (L-data) deals with a person’s life history or biographical information. The main task of personality psychologists is to demonstrate that the assessment methods they use are, in fact, measuring specific personality traits, and that they are accurately doing so. In recent years, there has been an increased interest in alternative methods for objectively assessing personality. One compelling example is the Implicit Association Test (IAT). An aim of psychophysiological measurement is to elucidate the biological processes underlying factor-analytically derived dimensions of personality. There are several scientific investigations of the reliability and validity of astrology as a tool to assess personality.

Holland theorized six distinct worker personalities (Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional). This is often referred to as RIASEC. The theory includes six work environments that correspond to the same personality types (Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional). Although people possess aspects of each type, the general thesis of the theory is that salient types (work personalities) will emerge in each individual. Holland’s work represents a significant contribution to career development and counseling. Understanding Holland’s focus on interests as expressions of personality aids career counselors and student development specialists in helping students gain critical self-understanding. Exploring the match between personalities and work environments is a fundamental aspect of applying this theory to student development. Helping students to explore and learn about different careers that may be of interest to them is congruent with the goals of higher education institutions and student development theories.

Integral to theories of moral development is the matter of not only what individuals think but also how they think. Across the life span, moral development is shaped by challenging events that prompt individuals to question the frameworks they have created for finding ways to determine what is good and what is bad. College students encounter new ideas and values that differ from those of their families, in the classroom, in the residence hall, in the dining facility, in the student union, and sometimes on the athletic field or court. In order to illustrate how moral development unfolds within a college student population, this chapter introduces a fictitious character who displays each stage of moral development for two theories–Lawrence Kohlberg’s (1963, 1984) and Carol Gilligan’s (1982) models of moral development. The chapter discusses the underpinnings of two specific moral development theories.

Many adults understand the pressures of having multiple responsibilities that require attention in a variety of life circumstances. Whether giving attention to work, friends, school, religious activities, romantic relationships, family, or even recreation, adulthood requires the ongoing ability to multitask a variety of expectations and responsibilities. Before reaching adulthood, each person has experienced influences that affect how we think, feel, and react to life’s circumstances. This chapter offers professionals and educators one model for understanding these influences and their impact on college students who oftentimes are transitioning to a new world of adult responsibilities for the first time. Ecological theory originally developed out of the work of Urie Bronfenbrenner (1977) within the field of developmental psychology. The concepts described in Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory offer a number of important implications for supporting students in a college setting.

This chapter presents the most salient psychological theories of personality. Personality is a core determinant of individual differences in everyday behaviors. The chapter discusses the difference between what psychologists broadly refer to as normal and what they regard as abnormal or clinical/mental illness. If one looks for an Elvis among personality psychologists, Sigmund Freud would be the one. During the mid-20th century, behaviorism emerged as a dominant paradigm for understanding human behavior, including personality. Although the social cognitive theory of personality has its origins in the radical behaviorist tradition, it emerged in clear opposition to it. According to the lexical hypothesis, historically, the most important and socially relevant behaviors that people display will eventually become encoded into language. Indeed, personality disorders are defined as long-standing, pervasive, and inflexible patterns of behavior and inner experience that deviate from the expectations of a person’s culture.

The general racial/ethnic identity theories offer some insight into possible ways to approach diversity education within all aspects of student affairs. Student affairs professionals and faculty could facilitate educational programs, seminars, and workshops that challenge students to confront issues of prejudice and racism as well as to cultivate racial or ethnic pride. These programs should address the external conditions in which students explore their identity and how to make meaning of shifting thoughts as they progress in their racial or ethnic identity development. By looking at diversity through the lens of racial or ethnic orientation, professionals can meet students where they are and help them not only understand other cultures, but also how they fit into their own race/ethnicity. Practitioners might also use these models as a way to gain insight as to where students might be in their racial/ethnic identity development.

This chapter differentiates intelligence and related constructs such as creativity and intellectual giftedness, which helps people to better understand each construct. Sternberg proposed a way to classify the various approaches to studying the intelligence-creativity relationship. Guilford’s Structure of the Intellect (SOI) model is probably the most explicit, with divergent thinking specifically identified as one of his five cognitive operations. The relationship between intelligence and giftedness has also received substantial attention. Every gifted education program has a formal assessment procedure to identify potential participants, and creativity assessments are often included in the battery of measures in these identification systems. The Marland Definition suggests that giftedness and talent are manifest in six areas: general intellectual ability, specific academic aptitude, creative or productive thinking, leadership ability, visual and performing arts, and psychomotor ability. It has been extremely influential and is still used by many school districts in their identification of talented students.

At its core, Kolb’s construct of experiential learning is more than simply a theory. Experiential learning theory (ELT) holds that learning is “the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience”. Although ELT is often used in formal classroom settings, there are many out-of-classroom environments in student affairs that use and benefit from it as well. One way in which colleges and universities use experiential learning is through service-learning courses and projects. Several scholars have reported that using service learning in conjunction with ELT provides students with meaningful ways to engage not only with the community, but also to come to know more about diversity and social justice. Because out-of-classroom learning is such a key component in higher education and in the holistic development of students, using Kolb’s experiential learning model can aid students in meaning making as it facilitates personal growth.

This chapter shows an overview of the techniques that are used to measure language processing. It shows at the things psycholinguists do when designing experiments in order to ensure that their results are valid. Online measures include any measure considered to give information about language processing as it happens. The prototypical off-line measure is the questionnaire—literally asking people for their judgments about what they’ve just encountered. In fact, all kinds of data can be collected from questionnaire studies. The button press task is perhaps the most versatile of all the things that people can do to collect data involving response times. The conscious responses discussed about here are vocal response. Like eye-tracking, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) help to understand the technique if people know a bit about the response measured—in this case, the brain. In many ways, functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) can be considered the complement to ERPs.

This chapter discusses the social psychology of humor, starting with a walk through how the presence of other people can make things seem funnier. It shows how humor can have a positive or a negative tone and it can focus on ourselves or on those around us. Self-enhancing humor makes stress tolerable. It can keep folks from viewing minor annoyances as unbearable disasters. The chapter sketches how humor can function to maintain the status quo. People who report using self-enhancing humor show less anxiety, neuroticism, and depression; better psychological well-being and self-esteem, and more extraversion, optimism, and openness to experience. When it comes to hierarchies, getting a feel for who’s cracking jokes and laughing can communicate who’s top dog. The chapter finally focuses on gender differences, and then sees how humor contributes to developing friendships, finding a date, and maintaining an intimate relationship.

So here the authors are, caught between two worldviews. In one camp, they have educators and academics, attempting to overthrow the “old guard”—those of them who define giftedness through the narrow lens of IQ tests. They are hoping to establish a raison d’etre for gifted education—a field with a wobbly foundation. In the other camp, the authors have parents and the psychologists who specialize in working with the gifted, railing against the externalizing of giftedness. They want the inner world of the gifted to be recognized and appreciated. Controversy has dogged the study of giftedness since its inception, and is likely to continue into the foreseeable future. Multiple views will somehow have to learn to coexist. The psychology of giftedness is a fledgling. An impressive number of people think they know more about the gifted than one does and they are delighted to share their opinions.

This chapter provides some questions and answers so that people can see for themselves. Most theories of love predict that, as time goes on, the passion in a relationship will begin to falter. According to the triangular theory of love, passion is the quickest component of a relationship to develop but also the quickest to die down. If they always need the thrill of the early days of a relationship, they may find themselves flitting from one relationship to the next without ever experiencing any deeper satisfaction. A mismatch of stories is not as obvious as disagreement over political beliefs, the desire to have children, or religious affiliation, but it can be just as challenging to a relationship. When people end serious relationships, they often go through a period in which they are just not ready to enter a new relationship.

Psycholinguist is someone who studies phenomena in the intersection of linguistics and psychology. The whole endeavor of psycholinguistics often finds a home in the broader research field of cognitive science—an interdisciplinary field that addresses the difficult question of how animals, people, and even computers think. The centrality of language in the daily lives means that any disruption to the ability to use it may be keenly felt—the worse the disruption, the more devastating the impact. From the beginning of psychology, there has been an interest in language. In psychology, behaviorism was a movement in which the study of mental states was more or less rejected, and the idea that one could account for human behavior in terms of mental states or representation was discounted. This book covers a number of topics that are very much relevant in current psycholinguistics, including child language acquisition, sign language, language perception, and grammatical structure.

To truly understand how important and central memory is to us, it is important to understand what life is like for people who experience memory loss, or amnesia. This chapter examines the amnestic syndrome, which has been widely studied and the knowledge of which has significantly influenced theories of memory. The abilities and nonabilities of those with amnestic syndrome demonstrate that there are multiple independent systems of memory. The chapter also examines two controversial diagnoses, the main feature of which is memory loss dissociative identity disorder (DID) and psychogenic or dissociative amnesia. It discusses a form of memory loss that does not fit the technical definition of amnesia because it eventually affects not just memory but all cognition: Alzheimer’s disease (AD). AD is common among older adults and demonstrates how a worsening loss of memory and cognition can lead to a complete disruption of everyday life.

In our success-oriented culture, optimal development of giftedness often is construed as fulfilling one’s potential for greatness. In humanistic psychology, optimal development has been conceptualized differently. Self-realization can be understood in terms of Maslow’s self-actualization, Dabrowski’s secondary integration, Jung’s individuation, or other theoretical perspectives of human development. The goals of inner development involve deepening the personality, overcoming conflicts, and actualizing one’s potential for becoming one’s best self. Many parents of the gifted complain that their children are the ones exerting the pressure. Their speed of learning and quest for knowledge often exceed their parents’ comfort level. The purpose of parent guidance is to foster “optimal development” through early intervention and prevention of social and emotional problems. Assessment can act as a prelude to family therapy. Family therapy usually involves a commitment to several successive sessions to deal with family interactions.

This chapter explores how a love researcher goes from having a conception or even a theory of love to actually constructing a love scale. A love scale provides a way to test the validity of a theory. A love scale enables couples to assess one aspect of their compatibility. A love scale provides individuals and couples an opportunity to enhance their love relationships. The one important thing to remember is that as measuring instruments love scales are far from perfect. Love scales are no different from scales for measuring intelligence or personality. An investigator might simultaneously measure intimacy with the intimacy subscale of the Triangular Love Scale and observe a couple in interaction, looking for behaviors signifying trust, caring, compassion, and communication. No scientist today believes that it is possible to capture the entire phenomenon of love through scientific study or through scales that are geared to measure love.

The Myers–Briggs type indicator (MBTI) was designed to help people understand themselves and others by helping them appreciate the diverse strengths of different personality types. It has been widely used in counseling as well as business to work on team building and relationships. There is, therefore, room for using this assessment within the field of student affairs to help build teams and groups both for professionals in the field and for students. This chapter discusses the basic information about the MBTI and implications for student affairs. The instrument is considered as a personality assessment for normal individuals designed to assess personality type. The MBTI offers strength-based guidance in every realm of living concerning individual growth to interpersonal relationships, in academic matters to spiritual terrains. From the office of the president to the chaplain, the MBTI is a useful and effective tool on a college campus.

The study of human development, broad in scope and diverse in nature, has been the focus of research by psychologists, sociologists, educators, human ecologists, and many others since the early to mid-20th century. This chapter provides an overview of identity development in young adults. Initial theories across multiple domains of development (e.g., cognitive, psychological) have focused primarily on child and adolescent changes based on the assumption that most development slowed considerably or crystallized and stopped completely after late adolescence. As a result, developmental issues in young adulthood (approximately ages 18–24 years) received greater scrutiny, and theoretical frameworks for understanding these aspects emerged. The chapter examines some of the issues and theories that impact identity development during this period in life. Psychosocial developmental theories offer frameworks for conceptualizing the issues individuals encounter at various points across the life span and have provided structure for more recent research as well.

Identity development operates on two simultaneous continuums, level of exploration and level of commitment. High levels of exploration and high levels of commitment suggest identity achievement, denoting the active process of developing an identity. With social identity groups, identity encompasses several unique facets because of the influence of the sociopolitical context (i.e., privilege and oppression) associated with social identity. Understanding oneself as a gay person is not simply understanding one’s attractions and sexual/affectional orientation, but also understanding that identity within a context, in which one might face marginalization from the larger community, institutional discrimination, and internalized homonegativity. In the same way, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, gender nonconforming, and queer identities also experience stigmatization. For lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) individuals, emergence of identity development begins with an initial questioning of one’s heterosexuality or gender conformity.

This chapter focuses on the whole life span of a relationship. It reviews some of the kinds of love and discusses how researchers understand the temporal course of those kinds of love. The chapter considers the effects of cohabitation on couples and what happens as these couples move on to marriage. It also discusses mechanisms that help or hinder couples in the maintenance of their relationships. The chapter examines the usual means of ending relationships: breakup and sometimes divorce. Compassionate love has been called “pure love”, “selfless love”, and “altruistic love”, as well as many other things. It features prominently in religion as well as in literature about love, and often can be found in caregiving relationships. A negative relationship also existed between cohabitation and marital quality. Edenfield and colleagues conducted a study that relates these relationship maintenance strategies to adult attachment styles.

This chapter focuses on the racial identity development of Black or African American college students and of students who identity as biracial or multiracial. Although racial identity development theories do not support biological distinction between racial groups in the United States, they recognize how different conditions of domination or oppression of various groups have influenced their construction of self. In this chapter Black is used to refer to the racial identity of U.S.-born persons of African descent who may categorize themselves as Black, Black American, African American, or Afro Caribbean. The term biracial is used to describe persons with two parents of differing monoracial or multiracial descents. It is worth noting that some individuals may claim Black racial identity although neither of their parents identify as Black, such as the case of civil rights activist Rachel Dolezal. This chapter goes in depth into such alternative experiences of Black identity development.

Sociocultural theories situate learning and development as embedded within cultural, institutional, and historical contexts. Within these contexts, the focus is on how individual learning and development is mediated by social interactions and culturally organized activities. The goal within a sociocultural approach is to understand the relationship among cultural, institutional, and historical situations and their influences on human cognition. This chapter provides an overview of the history and development of sociocultural theories. It discusses two specific sociocultural theories: Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) and communities of practice. Communities of practice, the central component of another sociocultural theory, developed out of the work of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger on situated learning that focused on the role of participation in a community and social learning. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the application of sociocultural theories and closing vignettes.

Transition is a process that takes place over time rather than at one point in time, and every transition begins with an ending. Schlossberg (2008) explained that each phase of the transition allows for a way of viewing and navigating the transition. Building student programming efforts around Schlossberg’s Transition Model adds an important foundation to any transitional program. Taking stock is a process by which transitioners examine their situation and coping resources for the situation. Taking stock consists of analyzing four domains: (1) Situation - the situation at the time of the transition; (2) Support - the people and assets that strengthen and encourage the student; (3) Self - who the student is (identity), his or her optimism level, and dealing with ambiguity; (4) Strategies - ways and functions of coping. Incorporating the Four Ss as standard components ensures a holistic approach in bolstering student success and retention.

This chapter discusses the implications of using personality inventories in the context of identifying bad or problematic traits, such as narcissism, machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Evolutionary theory states that behaviors, traits, and genetic materials survive only if they are adaptive to the environment the organism finds itself in. As evidence has revealed, conduct disorder in children is a good marker for predicting psychopathy and antisocial outcomes in later years. Although personality tests are rarely used for the purpose of educational selection, scores on these tests correlate with several educational performance outcomes. The chapter examines current trends in online personality profiling in the context of consumer behavior. The market for online dating is huge and growing and an increasing number of single individuals subscribe to these services in order to find their ideal partners. Faking is an important criticism as many organizations will ask new applicants to undergo a personality assessment.

Intelligence is a hypothesized quality whose ontology, etiology, and scale must be inferred through indirect means. Personal definitions of intelligence are not the same as constructs of intelligence. Psychological constructs are highly technical, painstakingly crafted, and subjected to rigorous theoretical examination and empirical testing. Intellectual abilities are organized at a general level into two general intelligences, viz., fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence. Intelligence is the sum total of all cognitive processes. It entails planning, coding of information and attention, as well as arousal. Given his personal history and society’s attitudes toward heredity, that Galton concluded that the development of genius, must be understood in terms of hereditary processes. The chapter concludes with two tables presenting definitions of intelligence provided by several prominent historical and living intelligence theorists. They convince readers that human intelligence is a fascinating and complex subject, and to provide a foreshadowing of many of the essential issues.

As diverse student populations gain visibility in colleges and universities across the United States, higher education counselors and student affairs professionals aim to effectively serve and meet the needs of these students. Individuals with disabilities (IWDs) represent one of these previously segregated diverse voices and perspectives that have recently experienced positive developments from inclusive college experiences. College students with disabilities represent an important segment of the growing student population. In 1997, Gill proposed a Disability Identity Integration Model (DIIM) for people with disabilities at the individual and group levels. The DIIM model aims to understand the integration process for people with disabilities into society in a process that involves identity development as part of the disabled minority group. The DIIM offers four types of integration: (a) coming to feel we belong, (b) coming home, (c) coming together, and (d) coming out. This integration process promotes personal empowerment and disability rights.

Perry’s theory of development has had a significant impact on the field of psychology and is essential to understanding the cognitive development of college students. This chapter provides an overview of Perry’s theory and describes the ways in which it still applies to college students on a diverse, pluralistic college campus. The chapter discusses how Perry’s theory continues to apply to the diversified college student population common in modern American institutions of higher education. It outlines the ways in which Perry’s scheme applies to Fatima, the contextual and pluralistic challenges faced at each position, and future development, should Fatima continue to courageously accept responsibility for her moral development and overcome the ambiguities of relativism. The chapter describes utilizing Perry’s scheme as a lens through which to view Fatima’s development, anticipate deflections from growth, and identify strategies and campus and community resources to foster inclusivity, personal exploration, and continued development.

This chapter suggests some new directions that personality research is, or should be, taking as well as the future agenda of this research. In contrast, personality psychology provides us with a solid evidence base that people can lean on when searching for answers about human nature. Personality refers to the stable and consistent patterns we observe in how people behave, feel, and think. Associations between personality and intelligence have been found on the measurement level and hypothesized at a conceptual level. It is supposedly human nature not to trust humankind to provide the unselfish responses in questionnaires, or to possess an adequate level of self-awareness. Admittedly, this trend has been changing. An increasing number of organizations are using self-report personality measures and even laypeople seem to accept the notion of questionnaires more kindly than before.

In theory, the construction of an autobiographical memory begins with a retrieval model being generated in the brain. This retrieval model activates general knowledge about the self, which is used to retrieve episodic memory details consistent with the desired memory. Autobiographical memory is a complicated skill that results from the union of episodic memory and an abstract concept of self laid out over time. This transformation of episodic into autobiographical memories results in forgetting of some incidents, and mashups the details from two or more separate incidents into a single memory that feels like it happened to the self at a particular point in time. Autobiographical memory is said to serve at least three important functions: identity, directive, and social. Autobiographical memories also serve as guides for future behavior. A function of autobiographical memory is to create and strengthen bonds between people.

Student developmental models that can be used to understand various students in groups and their development include identity models, such as Chickering and Reisser’s model, as well as Levinson’s model; psychosocial models, such as Erikson’s model; intellectual and ethical developmental models, such as Perry’s model; moral developmental models, such as Kohlberg’s model; cognitive models, such as Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s models; and experiential models, such as Kolb’s model. For a broad and universal understanding, these and other student developmental theories are integrated into the group theory. This chapter provides a discussion of group theory in relation to various salient student development theories. It addresses a brief introduction about the need for inclusion and multicultural awareness for students and student groups. The chapter discusses aspects for understanding successful student group development regarding group types, group leader guidelines, group processes, and learning reflection of student groups through a multicultural lens.

The ideas of Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato all contribute to the foundation of our understanding of the nature of human intelligence. Their ideas on topics as diverse as the origin of ability, the mind-body relationship, and general inquiry methods continued to inspire thinkers centuries later and influenced those who shaped modern psychology and intelligence theory. This chapter provides an overview of recent research on how people’s beliefs about intelligence impact their behaviors, a body of research that has significant implications for education. The emergence of reliable genetic and neurological research methodologies is creating a new area of study in which environmental, biological, and psychological facets of intelligence are studied simultaneously. Structure of Intellect (SOI) model represents a very different approach to theories of intelligence. Recent technological advances have encouraged explorations into the relationship between brain function and specific types of cognitive functioning.

Students may enter higher education with a strong set of ideals, firm models of career options, and certain confidence in their ultimate direction; however, it is not uncommon for students to begin college unprepared for life after graduation, let alone housing assignments and first semester coursework. This chapter focuses on the difficulties surrounding the major choice, the factors that influence decision making, career theories in student affairs, and campus and community resources available to assist students in gathering important data about their major and career choices. Selecting a college major and making career decisions are not easy, and require self-knowledge, self-examination, and research on what is available in the world of work. Essential to student success is the ability of student affairs professionals to accurately recognize when students are struggling and make an appropriate referral for career counseling, academic support services, or personal counseling.

One of the more comprehensive and enduring theories of psychosocial development was created by Erik Erikson (Erikson, 1968). He developed a map of human psychosocial development that covered the crises and touch points humans experience from birth to death. This chapter provides brief descriptions of each stage of Erikson’s chronologically organized model. Erikson’s model of sequential development implies that incomplete resolution of one developmental crisis may hinder future developmental progress regardless of an individual’s chronological age. Thus, “arrested development” may lead to a variety of concerns, behavioral problems, or adverse events for students, regardless of their ages. Awareness of the role that psychosocial development can play in a student’s maturity level or his or her adherence to rules and expectations can help student affairs professionals recognize and respond to student issues. The chapter outlines the ways in which obstructed development may create challenges for students on campus.

This chapter talks about the representation of language in the brain— including what parts of the brain are known to be involved in language. It talks about how multiple languages are represented and interact in bilingual speakers. The most important lobes for language are the temporal lobe and the frontal lobe. In terms of language, in right-handed people it is the left hemisphere that supports the majority of language function. There are two areas in particular that appear to be especially important for language: an area toward the front of the brain in the frontal lobe that includes Broca’s area and an area more or less beneath and behind the ear toward the back of the temporal lobe called Wernicke’s area. Broca’s aphasia is characterized by difficulty with language production—with effortful, slow speech, and the striking absence of function words like prepositions, determiners, conjunctions, and grammatical inflections.

Research on both sign language and how it is processed has been growing quickly over the last decade, with researchers from a number of different fields increasingly interested in it. This chapter addresses two common misconceptions about sign language to understand exactly what sign language is. French sign language is just a version of spoken French, British Sign Language (BSL) is just a version of English, and so on. Variations in hand shape and other differences can differentiate dialects of sign language. Sound symbolism shows that there are cases in spoken language when sounds are linked in a nonarbitrary way to meaning. Further, there are phonotactic rules that differ from language to language about how signs may be formed. Speech errors are mistakes that speakers make when they intend to say one thing but something else comes out instead.

The term genius is peculiar. It can be applied to a diversity of phenomena or confined to just one or two. The tremendous range in usage reflects the fact that genius is both a humanistic concept with a long history and a scientific concept with a much shorter history. The word genius goes way, way back to the time of the ancient Romans. Roman mythology included the idea of a guardian spirit or tutelary deity. This spiritual entity was assigned to a particular person or place. Expressed differently, geniuses exert influence over others. They have an impact on both contemporaries and posterity. The exemplars of intelligence have a feature in common: They are called as exceptional creators. The favored definition is that creativity satisfies few separate requirements. First, to be creative is to be original. In main, genius in the leadership domain of achievement appears to fall into several groups.

This chapter presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the linguistic and cultural issues to consider when assessing children and adolescents from diverse backgrounds, with a major focus on immigrants and refugees. It addresses research on the typical developmental trajectory of language and literacy of children and adolescents who must learn in a language that is not the language of their home, and the implications of that research for distinguishing whether their learning difficulties are due to inadequate proficiency in the societal language or due to a learning disability. The book describes the methods for assessing children and adolescents’ oral language proficiency (OLP) in their first and second languages. It then discusses the issues involved and methods for assessing intelligence, academic achievement, and behavioral, social, and emotional functioning.

This chapter explains how to determine whether learning difficulties of second-language (L2) learners are a result of inadequate proficiency in the societal language, or due to a learning disability (LD). It begins with a model that helps to organize information about the development of literacy and language skills of typically and atypically developing L2 children and adolescents, and that provides a backdrop for understanding the challenges faced by L2 learners who, in addition to having to develop language and literacy skills in the L2, may also have a LD. The chapter provides an overview of research on typical and atypical language and literacy development of L2 learners and the implications for assessment of LD in L2. It concludes with a table that provides a summary of key research findings, and a table that lists fundamental questions that school and clinical child psychologists should consider in their work with L2 learners.

Assessment of intelligence and diagnosis of intellectual disability in culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) children and adolescents are controversial and challenging. This chapter discusses some of these controversial and challenging issues, and describes methods of assessing intelligence in CLD children and adolescents, that is, individuals whose language and cultural backgrounds are significantly different from the normative group of most standardized Intelligence quotient (IQ) tests. It addresses several issues that psychologists need to consider when evaluating intelligence, including developing rapport; fluid and crystallized intelligence; adaptive behavior; using IQ tests to establish IQ/achievement discrepancies to diagnose learning disabilities; and determining when to use formal IQ tests. The chapter then turns to a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of assessment techniques, including several types of intelligence tests, and offers alternative approaches for evaluating intelligence that can help to overcome some of the difficulties, including modifying test administration, dynamic assessment, and ecological assessment.

Assessment of academic achievement in reading, writing, and mathematics is a crucial part of most assessments of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) children and adolescents. This chapter discusses general issues that psychologists and other practitioners need to consider, including timing of the assessment in the second language (L2), cultural knowledge and bias, impact of oral language proficiency (OLP) on performance, and previous experience with the types of achievement testing done in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) immigrant-receiving countries. It explains specific academic assessment strategies, and interprets assessment results. The chapter provides a discussion of the diagnosis of learning disabilities (LDs). It analyses the strengths and problems associated with using discrepancy definitions, response to intervention (RTI), and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and shows how the research on typical development and differentiating L2 and LD can be applied.

This chapter provides guidelines for psychologists to use when assessing behavioral, social, and emotional functioning of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) children and adolescents. It begins by describing the typical methods psychologists use to assess these areas, and analyzing them in terms of their effectiveness and validity with CLD children and teens. The chapter then proposes that psychologists use an adaptation of Mash and Hunsley’s developmental systems approach (DSA) to assess CLD children and adolescents. It then discusses specific issues involved in assessment of CLD children and adolescents who display inattentive and hyperactive–impulsive behaviors, externalizing behaviors, internalizing behaviors, and severe social problems. The chapter specifically addresses questions involving the use of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders with CLD children and adolescents to diagnose specific disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), oppositional defiant disorder, anxiety and mood disorders, and autism spectrum disorders (ASDs).

This chapter provides an overview of the demographic, socioeconomic, policy- related, and educational contexts of cultural and linguistic diversity that pertain to equity in education, and the academic achievement of children of immigrants and refugees. It begins with an analysis of immigration trends and academic achievement in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) immigrant-receiving countries. The chapter discusses several policy issues and controversies that are associated with academic achievement and psychological well-being of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) children and adolescents. It then examines the issue of marginalized peoples who are not typically immigrants or refugees and briefly addresses the context of aboriginal/indigenous peoples and of the Roma, who are an important and vulnerable part of the cultural mix in several OECD countries. The chapter concludes with a discussion of definitional issues and special needs education policies that may impact CLD children and adolescents with special educational needs.

This chapter explores positive psychology’s attempt to identify significant human virtues. Early in the positive psychology movement it was recognized that in order to advance research on human excellence, there was a need to develop a classification system complete with measurable strengths that would be meaningful to the good life. The chapter describes and defines the six core virtues, and also explores some of the more specific human strengths thought to be clustered with each virtue. The author believe that the most significant achievement of the Values in Action (VIA) project was to identify virtues and strengths that appear to transcend time and culture. Finally the chapter emphasizes and recommends two other attempts to identify transcendent virtues that come from outside of psychology. To emphasize one virtue without the others is bound to result in an imbalanced life.

Student learning in college and university settings has changed over the years as more and more emphasis has been placed on learning competencies and learning outcomes. The student learning agenda, sometimes called a learning contract, is the universal tool that all social work students use to integrate the competencies within their field placement. A learning agenda’s main purpose is to provide a framework for student identification of needed learning, and for the evaluation of the demonstrable competencies and behaviors shown by the student at the field site. The learning agenda is a tool to identify what learning experiences the agency has to offer and what skills and abilities the student brings. The CSWE requires field instructors who have degrees from accredited social work programs for at least part of field instruction and supervision because of the unique perspective and educational model of social work education.

According to the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), the field practicum is the signature pedagogy of the student’s social work education. Students are evaluated on their performance in the field practicum. This chapter focuses on the use of field evaluation measures to characterize the student’s readiness for social work practice, and focuses on the literature review, the purpose of evaluation, the timeline for the practicum and the tasks that students perform at the field agency which serves as evidence of the student’s mastery on the content of the field placement. Studies have named the merits of the fieldwork experience in social work education. Reflective practice is an important skill for any social worker. At all points of all levels of social work practicum experiences, field instructors should ask themselves and their students whether the learning that is happening is appropriate for the specific stage of professional development.

Field education is an integral aspect of every social work student’s training. Whether a student is obtaining a bachelor’s degree in social work (BSW) in the hope of pursuing a career in generalist practice or working toward a master’s degree in social work (MSW) to prepare for advanced or independent work, learning skills and practice techniques in community settings is essential. The work that is performed by students in the field is supervised by social workers in many different organizational and practice settings. The relationship between the field instructor and the social work student provides fertile ground for socialization as a member of a profession and the acquisition of practice skills. Whether we are working in health care, child protection, mental health services, corrections, education, gerontology, or another area of social work practice, we have much important knowledge to share with a student.

Serving as a field instructor is usually a delightful and rewarding experience. Most of our students are bright, motivated, and eager to develop into skilled professionals. However, there are times when a practicum student may be ill-suited to the internship. Field supervision is both a process and a relationship. Several frameworks have been discussed in the social work literature about the nature of the field instructor-student relationship. These include the developmental model, attachment-based approaches to supervision, and the relational approach. Program faculty can also work with you to help in the process of integrating classroom knowledge and theory with interventions in the practicum setting. Some areas where students may particularly struggle are the following: emotional self-care, professionalism, setting appropriate professional boundaries, integrating classroom knowledge with fieldwork, professional writing skills, accepting constructive feedback, and asking for help.

Nearly all social work professionals remember their field instructors. Field instructors clearly play a critical role in social work education. This chapter is for those field instructors who would like to broaden their repertoire of tools for helping students become more adept at integrating theory, models, and skills in a coherent manner. It briefly reviews the literature, then identifies barriers, and makes recommendations about strategies for theory and practice integration. The literature suggests that students have appreciated the systematic integration of theory and practice by field instructors. The literature about how to foster integration in field education has a different focus when comparing academic field faculty and agency-based field instructors. For more experienced field instructors, the literature recommended training centered on topics such as enhancing students’ critical thinking, group work, and communication skills, as well as conflict resolution skills.

This chapter explores the circumstances of happiness. It evaluates whether things such as gender, age, income, work, and leisure have an impact on happiness. It shows that the circumstances of our gender, where we live, our age, and our income don’t contribute much to our subjective well-being (SWB). The first circumstance is whether one’s gender has any impact on one’s happiness. The chapter examines whether geography is related to happiness. It looks at the relationship between income and happiness, there is one important interpretation to consider: It is possible that happiness actually creates more income. The natural interpretation of the positive relationship between wealth and well-being is to assume that prosperity produces SWB, but it is important to consider the reverse direction of causation. The chapter focuses on the circumstances of work that predict job satisfaction but there are factors within the person that are at least as important.

One of the most important areas of practice that field instructors discuss with their students is teaching and reinforcing the ethics and values of the social work profession. Students are introduced to the Code of Ethics of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) early in their social work education, but it is up to academic faculty and also field instructors to ensure that social work students can make connections between the content of the ethical code and real-life practice situations. There are a number of topics that frequently arise as ethical challenges in the practicum. These include mandated reporter responsibilities, mental health treatment and involuntary commitment, worker-client boundaries, specific boundary concerns related to self-disclosure, and disclosure of student status. There are a number of other approaches to resolving ethical dilemmas. These include the use of principle-based ethics and virtue ethics.

Relationships are important to our happiness but, as it turns out, things are not quite as straightforward as this proposition would seem to imply. The first important observation that we can make of this association is that the perception of social support appears to be more significant to happiness than objective indicators of social support. Objective indicators of social support such as number of friends and frequency of social activity show small and sometimes nonsignificant relationships with happiness. One possibility is that the correlation between satisfaction with one’s relationships and satisfaction with life is simply a product of method invariance. The chapter focuses on how different types of relationships affect happiness. But this approach has a tendency to ignore the common relationship dynamics that might impact happiness across relationships. It also focuses on three dynamics of happy relationships: capitalization, gratitude, and forgiveness.

This chapter explores the connection between cognition and happiness and describes the cognitive characteristics of happy people. It examines each of three stages of cognition such as attention, interpretation, and memory in turn, and discusses how they relate to happiness. It follows this discussion with research on affective forecasting, and how inaccurately forecasting our emotional future might inhibit our happiness. Research also suggests that happiness might help us get out of the shackles of self-preoccupation so that we can see beyond ourselves. Moreover, the relationship between negative emotion and self-preoccupation appears to be reciprocal: When we are in a negative mood we tend to be more self-preoccupied; but when we are focused on yourself this tends to promote negative moods. Finally, the chapter explores how affective forecasting errors can impact our happiness.

This chapter explores whether it is possible to improve the happiness. If boosting people’s happiness is achievable, this begs the question of how: how can people change their happiness. The chapter explains some of the most effective techniques found by psychological science to increase happiness. But before that it examines successful treatments for happiness. Religious traditions from both the East and the West have emphasized meditation and contemplation as paths to spiritual well-being. One meditation practice has shown great promise, however, for enhancing happiness: Loving-kindness meditation. Happy people deal with the unpleasant circumstances in their lives in a healthy way, and one effective way to deal with the bad stuff in people’s life appears to be grateful reappraisal. The chapter considers comprehensive treatment packages, also referred to as “shotgun” treatments, designed to improve one’s happiness.

This chapter helps the reader to learn happiness matters. Happiness is not simply a nice consequence of a successful life. Indeed, happiness itself is consequential. Research has shown that there are a number of beneficial by-products to experiencing positive emotions frequently: better relationships, better health, and better occupational success. Lyubomirsky’s theory highlights the importance of the intentionality of positive activities and this brings up an important point about happy people’s pursuits. As positive psychology and the study of happiness come more and more into the public eye, the author increasingly see the need for science to be at the heart of positive psychology. The positive psychology movement has identified six primary virtues that are essential to the good life: wisdom, courage, love, justice, temperance, and transcendence. Although these virtues vary somewhat in their relationships to subjective well-being (SWB), they all may be seen as critical to the life well lived.

This chapter shows that how positive psychology is in fact important to psychology as a whole. It attempts to explain the foundations of positive psychology. It looks at basic conceptions of happiness and subjective well-being (SWB) including all the debates therein, it explores the history of happiness, it debates the criticisms of positive psychology, it examines important theories of SWB and positive emotion, and finally it gives a taste of research in positive psychology. The chapter demonstrates the importance of the study of happiness and SWB. Moreover, as Fredrickson’s theory has shown, positive emotions are crucial, in that they broaden the authors’ momentary thought/action readiness and build essential personal resources for the future. Happiness and joy are consequential, as Helen Keller affirmed, “Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow”.

This chapter provides an overview of ways in which people can work to ensure a positive experience for their and thier social work practicum student. It offers some helpful, practical advice to guide the field instructor-student relationship. The chapter presents a checklist of “dos and don’ts”, and the chapter provides a great deal of practice-based wisdom for the field instructor. Many students choose to or must meet enormous responsibilities, and they balance complex schedules. Knowing about these circumstances from the beginning of the internship can dramatically decrease conflicts, stress, and unmet goals. Establishing open lines of communication so students will be proactive in seeking our input, guidance, or permission to meet changes and challenges can decrease anxiety, which will help ensure their maximum learning, growth, and performance in the practicum.

When social work practitioners agree to take on interns from a social work degree program, they are agreeing to work hand in hand with the students to ensure that the students meet the learning requirements, often expressed as competencies, of the social work program. An important element of ensuring a good experience for the practicum student is to engage actively with the student’s social work school or department. Effective communication between the academic institution and the field instructor/agency setting is indispensable to the social work practicum process. One of the biggest responsibilities in the implementation of "signature pedagogy" is ensuring that practicum students can successfully integrate the knowledge they gain in the classroom with the real-world practice of social work. In some social work programs, faculty advisors conduct site visits for their students’ practicum placements.

This chapter investigates the genetic makeup of happy people, and draws some conclusions about biological contributions to happiness. It discusses the behavioral characteristics of those who are happy. The chapter delves into an important area of research in positive psychology: looking at the personality traits that predict happiness. It shows that happy people are active in their work and leisure life, and extends this to a more general conclusion: Happy people tend to be active people. Contrary to the stereotype of happiness producing “contented cows”, happy people appear to be actively engaged in life. Religious and spiritual people tend to be happier than those who are not. A healthy humility may have an important role to play in our happiness. Humility helps us accept who we really are, so we can get past ourselves to focus on others and the beauty all around us.

Peer aggression is a pervasive and costly problem in schools. Physical aggression, which consists of hitting or pushing others, and verbal aggression, which includes threatening, name-calling, and teasing, have long been recognized as the most common forms of aggression, especially among boys. All forms of aggressive behavior have been associated with various maladaptive outcomes throughout childhood and adolescence such as increased substance use, academic underachievement, and negative peer relationships. To determine best-practice strategies to prevent and intervene with aggressive behavior, it is crucial to understand the etiology of anger and aggression. Many aggression prevention programs are rooted in the ecological framework of development, with programming occurring across many settings in the school, and include both school staff and parents. Coping power; walk away, ignore, talk, seek help (WITS); and preventing relational aggression in schools everyday (PRAISE) are three evidence-based interventions that focus on aggression and victimization prevention.

This chapter discusses issues associated with specific natural disasters, generalized issues associated with most natural disasters, and evidence-based principles and practices for supporting youth following a natural disaster. La Greca highlighted three phases of recovery following natural disasters and offers evidence-based interventions associated with each phase. These include the postimpact phase, short-term recovery and reconstruction phase, and the long-term recovery phase. The chapter outlines the effects of natural disasters on children and provides an overview of strategies for supporting children and adolescents following traumatic events. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is characterized as an anxiety reaction that emerges after witnessing or experiencing a traumatic event. The chapter summarizes three evidence-based approaches to support children in the aftermath of a potentially traumatic event, such as a natural disaster: trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy (TF-CBT), mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), and the Mourning Child Grief Support Curriculum (MCGC).

Pediatric bipolar disorder (PBD) has been associated with a number of negative behavioral, academic, and interpersonal outcomes for children and adolescents. It initially received a disruptive behavior disorder diagnosis. High rates of comorbid anxiety disorders have also been found in children with PBD. Psychoeducational psychotherapy (PEP) uses a biopsychosocial model and combines family therapy, psychoeducation, and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) techniques with the goal of helping families to better understand and manage the symptoms of PBD and coordinate more effective treatment. This chapter focuses on a description of PEP, including three key interventions of this therapeutic approach: Psychoeducation and Motto, Building a Tool Kit, and Thinking-Feeling-Doing. PEP is a manual-based treatment designed for youth with mood disorders and their caregivers, broken down into separate youth and caregiver sessions. Sessions focus primarily on psychoeducation and skills building and are delivered in individual family (IF-PEP) and multiple family formats (MF-PEP).

The content of the obsessions and compulsions varies among individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD); however, there are five themes that are commonly experienced across both children and adults: contamination, symmetry/ordering, forbidden or taboo thoughts, harm, and hoarding. Notably, OCD becomes more gender balanced into adolescence and adulthood. Comorbid diagnoses are common among youth with OCD. Common comorbid disorders include anxiety disorders, tic disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and major depressive disorder. The etiology of OCD is multidetermined with behavioral, cognitive, genetic, and biological factors being implicated. This chapter describes three successful cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) interventions: CBT with exposure and response prevention (ERP), family-based CBT with ERP, and cognitive therapy interventions that can be used in conjunction with ERP. Treatment guidelines for pediatric OCD suggest the most efficacious treatment is CBT with ERP, either alone or in combination with pharmaco-therapy for the most severe cases.

In 2013, 42% of fourth-grade students and 36% of eighth-grade students in the United States (US) performed at the proficient or advanced level on the mathematics National Assessment Educational Progress (NAEP) assessments, indicating that more than half of students at these grades are performing below proficient levels in math. Prevalence rates of math disabilities (MD) are difficult to estimate. More than 2 million school-aged children in the US are identified as having specific learning disability (SLD). There are three primary models for determination of an SLD in the US: IQ-achievement discrepancy, patterns of strengths and weaknesses (PSW), and Responsiveness-to-Intervention (RTI). Children with a math disability or comorbid math/reading disability are also more likely to meet criteria for a variety of internalizing and externalizing disorders such as oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), conduct disorder (CD), generalized anxiety disorder, and depression. Schema-based strategy instruction is an evidence-based procedure to improve achievement in math.

Treating emotional and behavioral disorders in children and adolescents is a complex issue; that is, practitioners must understand children’s typical patterns of social, emotional, and cognitive development and determine what is responsible for having taken the referred child off that “normal” path. Most children identified as socially maladjusted benefit from treatment and schooling provided in alternative education classes. Social maladjustment has historically also been synonymous with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) diagnoses of conduct disorder, antisocial personality disorder, and oppositional-defiant disorder. The diathesis-stress model is the balance between stressors and coping that accounts for the onset and continuation of mental health and other medical disorders. Three psychosocial intervention approaches are effective for all youth with conduct problems: parent training, contingency management, and cognitive behavioral skill training. As skills develop and stabilize, interpersonal intelligence and intrapersonal intelligence form emotional intelligence.

Depression in children and adolescents is a serious, potentially life-threatening problem. Traditionally, depression has been diagnosed using two primary categories: major depressive disorder (MDD) or dysthymic disorder (DD). When compared with youth diagnosed with MDD, children and adolescents with persistent depressive disorder (PDD) are at increased risk for having a comorbid psychiatric disorder. The most common treatments of depression include various forms of interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT), cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and psychotropic medication. This chapter provides summary of the step-by-step implementation of IPT for depressed adolescents (IPT-A). Many youth struggle with chronic, sometimes debilitating depression for extended periods of time, leading to underachievement, secondary substance abuse, school failure and drop-out, violent or self-harming behavior, and even death by suicide. Clearly, evidence-based psychotherapeutic interventions are needed.

This chapter addresses supervision related to trainee knowledge and skills required for the provision of special education services in the schools, including eligibility determination and service delivery. While school psychologists engage in any number of activities to support regular education, a primary focus is still special education and related services. As such, practicum trainees need to understand the link between case study evaluations and the provision of special education services. Supervisees may best understand district procedures for compliance with federal and state special education rules and regulations by reviewing relevant district resources and participating in staff orientation and other relevant professional development. Supervisors may provide instruction with the following school procedures: the student referral process, evaluation assignment and procedures, the meaning and implementation of obtaining informed consent from parents, requirements and practices for parent involvement, summarizing results, determining eligibility, and individualized education program (IEP) development and implementation.

This chapter reviews the research on expect respect, second step, and the recognize, understand, label, express, and regulate emotions (RULER) program, curricula with outcome data from US schools for step-by-step implementation by mental health professionals in the hopes of ameliorating this serious epidemic and enhancing the academic, behavioral, social, and emotional functioning of children and adolescents. School bullying and peer victimization are pervasive phenomena that affect many youth. Bullying may inflict harm or distress on the targeted youth including physical, psychological, social, or educational harm. Direct bullying is a relatively open aggressive act on the targeted youth, whereas indirect bullying is not directly communicated to the student being targeted. Moreover, physical, verbal, relational, and damage to property have been identified as specific forms or dimensions of bullying. Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is an evidence-based framework for reducing a wide variety of problem behavior in school settings.

Many children experience the death of someone close to them before the age of 18 years. This chapter reviews the effects of bereavement on children’s functioning and the risk and protective factors that exacerbate or mitigate grief-related problems. It provides step-by-step instructions for two evidence-based interventions for school-aged children and adolescents. Childhood traumatic grief refers to a condition in which children develop trauma-related symptoms that interfere with their ability to appropriately mourn a death. The Family Bereavement Program (FBP) is a theory-based intervention for parentally bereaved children and their surviving caregivers. The child component focuses on increasing self-esteem, reducing negative appraisals of stressful events, strengthening youths’ relationships with their caregivers, strengthening coping skills, and increasing adaptive emotional expression. The Grief and Trauma Intervention (GTI) is commonly implemented in schools and community-based settings after children’s exposure to a traumatic, violent, or disastrous event.