Faculty Books and Book Chapters
This is a select list of works produced by the faculty of the College of Psychology at Nova Southeastern University
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Incorporating Fat Pedagogy into Health Care Training: Evidence-Informed Recommendations
Alexandria M. Schmidt and Paula M. Brochu
In recognition of the problem of weight bias in health care training and among health care professionals, some researchers are examining the efficacy of interventions to reduce weight bias and improve interactions with fat patients. In a review of 17 studies, Alberga et al. (2016) reported a lack of evidence for efficacious weight-stigma reduction interventions among health care professionals. In this chapter, we comprehensively review the efficacy of existing interventions to reduce weight bias among health care professionals and trainees and critically examine them from the perspective of fat pedagogy (Cameron & Russell, 2016). This is done in an effort to provide evidence-informed recommendations to educators and practitioners that are ethical and weight-inclusive. Fat pedagogy views weight oppression as a serious problem and education as an important intervention (Cameron & Russell, 2016). At its core, fat pedagogy is a radical endeavor to disrupt the status quo: it seeks to increase visibility of interlocking systems of weight oppression and make a positive difference in fat people's lives. Fat pedagogy is built upon basic tenets of size acceptance (Cameron, 2015). In this way, fat pedagogy is distinctly weight-inclusive in recognizing that fatness is not inherently unhealthy and that weight and health are distinct concepts (Tylka et al., 2014).
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From Striving To Thriving: How Facing Adversity across the Lifespan Can Foster Workplace Resilience
Ashley M. Stripling and Jodie E. B. Maccarrone
As women in the workforce age, they face a number of new challenges that intersect with previously experienced hurdles. These challenges are more pronounced in the case of older women, who may already experience discrimination based on other identities such as ethnic background or sexual minority status. This chapter illustrates how challenges for older working women such as ageism, lookism, and caregiving intersect with previously experienced hurdles and how these may be more pronounced for women who already experience discrimination based on race, ethnicity, country of origin, religion, disability, or sexual orientation. It provides key insights into resilience and the mechanisms by which adversity can promote late-life psychological well-being. The chapter then outlines pathways through which these challenges can facilitate growth and proposes a model of resiliency factors to inform gerodiverse women, professionals, and organizations about how to promote psychological well-being among our diverse and flourishing late-life female workforce.
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Art Therapy Interventions with Syrian Refugee Youth and Families
Mercedes Ballbé ter Maat, Soraya Hage Obeid, Natacha Pirotte, and Laurence de Groote Vandenborre
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Action Research
Eric S. Thompson
Action Research (AR) is a “form of collective, self-reflective enquiry undertaken by participants in social situations in order to improve the rationality, coherence, adequacy or justice of their own social or educational practices, as well as the understanding of these practices and the situations in which these practices are carried out”. AR is a rich methodology and is a powerful approach for counselors to consider while improving their personal lives, counseling practice, and work with communities. This chapter introduces counselors to historical influences, key concepts, and essential approaches to AR. It discusses various approaches to inquiry in AR including first, second and third person approaches, participatory AR, and practitioner AR. First-person inquiry is a uniquely reflective process of inquiry. Through first-person inquiry one can develop their personal lives or professional practice through cycles of reflection, action, and evaluation.
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Handedness
Huda Abu-Suwa
Excerpt
Handedness is a poorly understood phenomenon, that can be defined in many ways. Some consider handedness to be the hand that is used for writing. Others define handedness as the hand that is preferred to be used, or the hand that performs better on manual tasks (Markou, Ahtam & Papadatou-Pastou, 2017). Individuals are generally considered to be right-handed or left-handed, however some individuals may be ambidextrous, or able to use both hands. Finally, some consider handedness to be along a continuum, and not summed into these three categories.
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Embryonic Stem Cell Research
Huda Abu-Suwa, Lisa K. Lashley, and Charles J. Golden
Excerpt
Stem cell research is a controversial issue that has received considerable attention over the last three decades. Stem cell research began in the early 1980’s, when stem cells were obtained from mice embryos and utilized to understand the functioning of stem cells (Grivennikov, 2008). In 1998, researchers discovered techniques for obtaining embryonic stem cells from human and growing them in laboratories. Since them, substantial research has been conducted on stem cells and their potential uses, which includes increasing our understanding of diseases and how they occur, treating various diseases, and testing new medications for safety and efficacy (Taylor, 2005).
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Prenatal Development
Huda Abu-Suwa, Lisa K. Lashley, and Charles J. Golden
Excerpt
Prenatal refers to the period of time between conception and birth. As such, prenatal development is the process in which a fetus develops in its mother’s womb. This period typically lasts nine months. Prenatal development can be divided into three stages: the germinal stage, the embryonic stage, and the fetal stage (Lally & Valentine-French, 2019).
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Preoperational Period
Huda Abu-Suwa, Lisa K. Lashley, and Charles J. Golden
Excerpt
The preoperational period is part of Jean Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development (Lally & Valentine-French, 2019). Piaget was a cognitive psychology, who in 1936 created a model to explain how children understand the world and develop cognitively. While other contemporary theorists believed that intelligence was a fixed trait, Piaget believed that cognitive development was a process that occurred in distinct stages, and that maturation brings about changes and growth in development, rather than training (Lally & Valentine-French, 2019). Piaget posited that each stage occurred at a specific time and in a specific sequential order, such every child goes through each stage in the same order. The order of Piaget’s stages of cognitive development are as follows: sensorimotor stage (birth to age 2), preoperational stage (age 2 to 7), concrete operational stage (age 7 to 11), and formal operational stage (11 to early adulthood).
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Rachel Barr
Huda Abu-Suwa, Lisa K. Lashley, and Charles J. Golden
Excerpt
Dr. Rachel Barr is a developmental and clinical psychologist, and a leading expert on early learning and memory. She has published and presented on over 200 articles, encyclopedia entries, book chapters, and poster presentations on subjects related to child development and psychology and continues to do research in these fields (Rachel Barr, 2019).
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Robert Stoller
Huda Abu-Suwa, Lisa K. Lashley, and Charles J. Golden
Excerpt
Robert Stoller was an American psychiatrist who studied gender identity and sexuality. Stoller was born in 1924 and died in 1991 (Green, 1992). He died in a car accident near his home, at the age of 66 (Cook, 1992). Stoller received his bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and received his medical degree in 1948 from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) (Goleman, 1991). Stoller also completed psychoanalytic training at the Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, where he worked under psychoanalyst Hanna Fenichel.
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Divorce, Effect on Development
Vijay Bajnath, Lisa K. Lashley, and Charles J. Golden
Excerpt
Childhood experiences of divorce affect multiple domains of development. Cognitive, emotional and physical areas of a child’s development may be impacted by the separation. Models of development which take into account both biological and environmental influences suggest that problems of divorce impact the parental practices towards the children which lead to difficulties in emotional regulation and insecurity. These arenas impact health in both explicit health risk behaviors as well as biological responses within the body. The combination of these seen and unseen processes contribute to an overall impact on health.
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Newborn Reflexes
Ryan Bennett, Lisa K. Lashley, and Charles J. Golden
Excerpt
Reflexes are characterized as involuntary movements or actions and are a key indicator of a healthy brain and nervous system in newborn babies. There are five primitive reflexes that are common for infants who do not experience central nervous system (CNS) deficits. Furthermore, newborn reflexes are also considered to add adaptive value by increasing their chances of survival.
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Newborn Senses
Ryan Bennett, Lisa K. Lashley, and Charles J. Golden
Excerpt
When babies are born, they possess all five senses-taste, hearing, sight, touch and smell; however, some senses are more developed than others. Newborns had previously been an enigma to scientists and little was known about their intelligence, motives, and capabilities. Neuroscientists are now able to map out a timeline of when senses are developed during and after gestation; this has given the scientific community and parents everywhere a better understanding of newborns and their ability to process their environment.
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Prosocial Reasoning
Ryan Bennett, Lisa K. Lashley, and Charles J. Golden
Excerpt
Prosocial behavior is best described as a general range of actions that are intended to benefit individuals other than one’s self. Some of these prosocial actions include helping, comforting, and sharing with others (Batson & Powell, 2003). More specifically, prosocial behavior is better understood as one’s voluntary action that is solely meant to benefit others. Prosocial reasoning is the motivating influences for an individual to engage in a prosocial behavior. Some research suggests that reasoning behind prosocial behavior is a motivation toward altruism, a principle in which one individual is selfless and engages in behaviors that help others, despite personal gain. Therefore, a potential reason for someone to engage in prosocial behavior may be to become more altruistic.
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Reasons for Divorce
Ryan Bennett, Lisa K. Lashley, and Charles J. Golden
Excerpt
Today, divorce is a common result for many couples regarding marital conflict and discord. The impacts of divorce have been linked to increased psychological distress, increased risk of substance abuse, depression, and poorer overall health when compared to non-divorced individuals (Amato, 2000; Hughes and Waite, 2009). Per Shelby Scott and colleagues, there are ten likely reasons for a couple to get divorced (Scott et al., 2013). By understanding these ten reasons, one may better conceptualize the overall factors that contribute to divorce.
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Divorce, Effects on Relationships
Nicholas Boston, Lisa K. Lashley, and Charles J. Golden
Excerpt
Divorce has been seen to have significant impacts on relationships both within and outside of families. In terms of friendships, the divorced couple is often seen to withdraw from other couples prior to the divorce in order to avoid sharing uncomfortable details. With more attention instead focused on friendships with individuals, divorced couples lose some, if not all, of their couple friends, whom may take sides either individually or as a couple. As well, fellow couples may not wish to be pulled into conflict. However, individual friendships tend to strengthen as the divorcees turn their freed-up time for attention towards friends.
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Bio-Physiological Development During Adulthood
Maria Boix Braga, Charles J. Golden, and Lisa K. Lashley
Excerpt
Defining adulthood, and what the criteria truly is to be able to consider oneself an adult, varies from culture to culture. Biologically, adulthood can also be defined as the period in which full physical and intellectual maturity has been attained. It is a period that is defined slightly differently depending on the source, but it is agreed that it tends to be considered the life period between ages 18 and 60. However, the definition of adulthood can have varying legal and sociocultural factors as well. For example, the legal definition of an adult is a person who has reached the age at which they are considered responsible for their own actions, and therefore legally accountable for them. This is referred to as the age of majority, which is 18 for most cultures, although they can vary from the age of 16 to 21. Sociocultural definitions are based on what a culture normatively views as the criteria for adulthood, which may or may not coincide with the legal definition.
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Gifted Children
Justn Burgess, Lisa K. Lashley, and Charles J. Golden
Excerpt
Children can be gifted in a variety of different areas, including musical talent, athleticism, and artistic ability among others. The focus of this entry will be solely on those children who are gifted in intellectual ability and academic achievement. Identification of intellectual giftedness usually requires an individually administered intelligence test, achieving a Full-Scale Intelligence Quotient (FSIQ) of 130 or higher, which is a threshold that dates back to Lewis Terman’s research at Stanford in the early to mid 20th century. Although this seems like an arbitrary score, an IQ score of 130 and above is where an individual scores two standard deviations above the population average score, thus falling in the upper 2% of the population. This level of cognitive ability is correlated with many positive life outcomes such as increased level of education, higher income, and longer life expectancy, although results may vary widely across this high intelligence group.
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Parental Influence
Justn Burgess, Lisa K. Lashley, and Charles J. Golden
Excerpt
An adequate level of parenting—providing enough nutrition, shelter, exposure to language and peers, or not harshly punishing children (punching, kicking, striking with a weapon)—seems to not have a long-term effect on cognitive development in children. Twin and adoption studies have found that intelligence is accounted for almost entirely by genes and nonshared environment, which includes peers, teachers, and unique experiences. However, there are parenting styles and types of home environments that are correlated with better school performance, stronger school engagement, and more words spoken at certain ages.
