Developmental language disorders and adolescent risk: a public-health advocacy role for speech pathologists?

Within the multi-disciplinary team concerned with child and adolescent development, speech pathologists are uniquely positioned to understand the nature and overall developmental significance of language acquisition in childhood and adolescence. Other disciplines contribute valuable insights about psychosocial development during the childhood and adolescent years. The field of developmental psychology, for example provides a large and convincing body of evidence about the role of academic success as a protective factor against a range of psychosocial harms, in particular substance misuse, truancy, early school leaving, and juvenile offending. In this paper, we argue that juvenile offending embodies the notion of "adolescent risk", but in Australia in particular, has been under-investigated with respect to possible associations with developmental language disorders and subsequent academic failure. We present findings pertaining to a sample of 30 male juvenile offenders completing community based orders. Performance on a range of oral language processing and production skills was poorer than that of a demographically similar comparison group. Our results confirm the need to conceptualize language within a broader risk and protective framework. We therefore emphasize the public health importance of early language competence, by virtue of the psychosocial protection it confers on young people with respect to the development of prosocial skills, transition to literacy and overall academic achievement. We argue that speech pathologists are best positioned to advocate at a policy level about the broader public health importance of oral language competence.

The animation of psychology

This thesis investigates 'Frankenstein', in the light of Cultural Poetic practices and modern psychological theories, illustrating the pivotal role it played in the transition of developmental psychology from philosophy to science. Drawing on Locke, Rousseau and Godwin, Shelley presents the monster as an exaggerated case study of the danger of ineffective nurturing.

Working with family to promote health adolescent development

In recent years a sea change has occurred in thinking about interventions for families with adolescent children. A range of intervention strategies has been proposed, including parent education, adolescent education, family therapy, and community change. These associations arise, in part, from a higher likelihood sole-parent families will experience traumatic conflict around family breakdown, lack of supervision due to the parent's work pressures, and limited family income resulting in higher exposure to community risk factors, which demonstrated reduced parental drug use and improved family management, and the Strengthening Families Program, which demonstrated increased children's protective factors, reduced substance use in both adolescents and parents, and improved parenting behaviours are currently investigating the impact of an integrated multi-level secondary school intervention, resilient families, which incorporates communication training for students, an information night for parents, sequenced parent education groups, and brief family therapy.

The prevalence and recognition of major depression among low-level aged care residents with and without cognitive impairment

Previous research has demonstrated a high level of depression in nursing homes. The current study was designed to determine the prevalence of depression, using a structured diagnostic interview, among older people with and without mild-moderate cognitive impairment residing in low-level care facilities. The results demonstrated that, consistent with previous research in nursing homes, 16.9% of older people were diagnosed with major depressive disorder. Less than half of these cases had been detected or treated. Individuals with moderate cognitive impairment were more likely to be depressed, but cognitive impairment did not appear to act as a strong impediment to the detection of depression by general practitioners. A low awareness of their use of antidepressant medications was demonstrated among older people prescribed this treatment, including those with normal cognitive function. Reasons for the poor recognition of depression among older people are discussed.

Effectiveness of staff training programs for behavioral problems among older people with dementia

This paper reviewed studies on staff training programs to address the behavioral problems associated with dementia among older people in residential care. The papers were classified according to whether or not the studies included a control group in the research design. The results of the review demonstrate that there has been a wide range of psychosocial and educational interventions to reduce behavioral problems among older people with dementia, with inconsistent results being obtained. However, many of these studies suffer from problems in their research design that make it difficult to evaluate their effectiveness. Problems in conducting research in the nursing home setting are highlighted, and suggestions for future research in this area are discussed.

An insight into implementing person-centred active support

This paper provides reflections on the implementation of an active support staff training programme for staff working in community residential facilities for adults with an intellectual disability. Outcomes for the people with an intellectual disability were consistent with recent research findings indicating that active support can lead to improved opportunities for participation in everyday activities within the home. We propose that the success of the training programme was largely influenced by three key elements: ensuring that there is expertise in, and support for, this approach to service provision among key service managers, provision of in vivo one-to-one practical staff training in addition to classroom-based theoretical input, and inclusion of elements of person-centred planning approaches in combination with active support. Future research should focus on how best to maximise the effectiveness of active support staff training.

A cross-cultural examination of social and sexual behaviour in High Functioning Autism and Down Syndrome

The focus of this research was to obtain an understanding of the social and sexual behaviour of adolescents with High Functioning Autism (HFA) or Down Syndrome (DS) in comparison to Typically Developing (TD) adolescents across cultures. The findings highlight the importance of cross-cultural research and indicate the need for sex education. The portfolio presents four case studies which support the proposition that insecure attachment is only likely to lead to depression in the presence of socially-related and other psychological difficulties, since not all insecurely attached children develop depressive symptoms.

Parental influences upon their children's body image concerns and behaviours

An examination of the influence of parents revealed that sons' and daughters' perceptions of the direct and indirect pressures exerted by both mothers and fathers were more predictive of their body image concerns and body change strategies than the messages reported by parents. The professional portfolio presents four case studies of children referred to a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service with depressive symptomatology in relation to attachment theory.

An Arakawa and Gins experimental teaching space - a feasibility study

Many researchers and practitioners currently teaching at Universities use the works of Arakawa and Gins within their courses and some go as far as structuring entire courses on their work. This indcates the value of Arakawa and Gins’ insight which offers many opportunities to intensify the relationship of theory to practice, disciplinary inquiry to knowledge and art to life. Having spent time in each of Arakawa and Gins’ built works, I have experienced and evaluated the benefits of constructing relationships among bodily movement, tactically posed surrounds and the discursive sequences that best constrain them. Based on my experience, I advocate going beyond the study of finished products towards the practice of coordinating history, community, person and body that occurs when inventing and assembling architectural procedures. This paper will outline my efforts over the last eighteen months to produce a feasibility study for building an experimental teaching space at my University (Griffith University, Australia). The experimental teaching space that I am proposing would commission and enact the architectural procedures of Arakawa and Gins in a constantly changing built (in-the-process-of-being-built) environment, where the guided construction of the teaching space is the curriculum. This approach would offer an alternative to the design trend in teaching and learning environments toward technologically driven smart spaces. An experimental space based on “perceptual learning”, “sited awareness” and “daily reserach” would address the disconnection between current research from the life sciences, developmental psychology, rehabilitation science and blended learning—and the enrivonments in which learning occurs. My discussions will address two issues: the link between pedagogical concerns of advanced study with the production of commual space (organism-person-surrounds) and how these goals can be implemented within the institutional planning processes while adhering to new federal funding guidelines, new performance indicatiors, and public tender guidelines. Throughout my paper, I argue that an experimental teaching space would accentuate multidisciplinarity and offer budding teachers, life scientists, sociologists, historians, and artists the enactive tools by which to affect change and provide grounded cultural leadership.

Elements of psychological maturity and its influence on antisocial and criminal behavior

Insights from developmental psychology provide a useful perspective from which to understand why young people might engage in higher levels of antisocial behavior than adults. They can also be useful in term of highlighting which aspects of development result in young people making less mature judgments. Yet despite this extensive body of knowledge, there is no psychological or legal definition of maturity that can be applied to legal decision making. Within a criminal context, investigations of adolescent immaturity have emphasized cognitive factors, influenced by the informed consent model which places a premium on factors such as “knowledge” and “competence”, with an emphasis on cognitive functioning (e.g., thinking, reasoning, and understanding). This approach has been criticized for failing to adequately illustrate differences between adolescent and adult decision making. This paper reviews the notion of psychological maturity and comments on the importance of a broader assessment that includes psychosocial factors in the face of a growing trend in many jurisdictions to transfer juvenile offenders to the adult jurisdiction based on the severity of crime committed rather than their level of culpability.

The brain in the jar : troubling the truths of discourses of adolescent brain development

Ideas about adolescent brains and their development increasingly function as powerful truths in making sense of young people. And it is the knowledge practices of the neurosciences and evolutionary and developmental psychology that are deemed capable of producing what we have come to understand as the evidence on which policy, interventions and education should be built. In effect these discourses reduce young people to little more than a brain in a jar. The paper examines how the evidence about adolescent brains - their volume, and the functioning and activity of different regions - from neuroscience and evolutionary and developmental psychology works as truth. What knowledge practices are used to produce this evidence, or are deemed capable of producing this evidence? What truth claims are able to attach to this evidence? What makes it true and why is it imagined as evidence of something that is true in policy, public and other research settings that are often far removed from where it was produced? I argue that the discourses of adolescent brain development disembody, reduce and simplify the complexities of these figures we know as adolescents. In effect they render the adolescent as a brain in a jar.

Measuring harm: governing the effects of child sexual abuse

By analysing published research, and holding focus group discussions with counsellors, my thesis examines how the demands and practice of psychological measurement, understood as a scientific activity, have shaped, produced and constrained professional research and therapy concerning the effects of child sexual abuse.