Empathy and the Development of Affective Skills

Empathy, the most important human attribute that matters in every aspect of life, is essential in health care. Provision of patient-centered care requires empathic health care practitioners. The correlation between empathy of health care providers and improved patient adherence, satisfaction, and treatment outcomes is well-established. Scholarly evidence shows positive correlations between empathy and affective domains and confirms that soft skills are grounded in empathy. Empathic students have stronger affective skills and are capable to acquire, develop, reinforce, and display strong affective behaviors, abilities, and attitudes. As an innate quality, empathy is malleable. The level of empathy can be influenced by educational interventions inculcated into students during the entire curriculum, including both didactic and experiential training. The effectiveness of educational methods may be strengthened by activities that help students enhance empathy and achieve required affective skills. Empathy and the empathy-based affective skills essential in patient-centered care should be routinely and deliberately taught, modelled, and assessed across the continuum of health care curricula

Mother-child interaction within the Zone of Proximal Development. Impact of adult educational level and socio-affective proximity on the effectiveness of tutoring.

Abstract de póster presentado a VI International Conference “Early Childhood Care and Education”, Lomonosov Moscow State University –MSU (Moscow, Russia), Mayo 2017.Research problem. Adult-child interaction within the zone of proximal development plays a central role in child cognitive development. The effectiveness of teaching to promote learner competence during a joint problem solving session depends on the accuracy of the zone of proximal development perceived in the mind of the tutor. Therefore, it is related to such variables as the tutor’s educational level (formal education promotes more abstract and flexible mental representations of the cognitive demands of the task) and the socio-affective proximity between interlocutors (shared experiences enable the tutor to determine the zone of sensitivity to instruction and to form a more accurate hypothesis of the child’s level of competence and their need for assistance). Aims and methods. This study aims to estimate the effects of adult educational levels and socio-affective proximity between interlocutors on the effectiveness of informal tutoring. The participants comprised 66 boys and girls aged 3-5 years and 66 women with different educational levels and varying degrees of socio-affective proximity with the child with whom they interacted (mothers who lived with their children, mothers who visited their children at residential care centers, and women previously unknown to the children). Dyadic interaction in a classification task was assessed with microgenetic analysis using a codification system following sociogenetic principles. Results. Educational level does not predict tutoring effectiveness; socio-affective proximity does. Mothers with low educational levels are effective tutors when they maintain a high degree of socio-affective proximity with their children. The principal keys to effective tutoring associated with socio-affective proximity are: a) encouraging the autonomy of the child: avoiding both initial aid when placing each new piece and highest level aid which solves completely the operation; and b) adjusting the assistance provided according to the competence demonstrated by the child: following the contingency rule (especially in the provision of proactive aids), and temporarily tolerating errors, providing the opportunity for the child to become aware of their own mistakes. Conclusion and findings. These findings are noteworthy to design future social intervention programs focused to instruct parents with low educational level on the importance of frequent and appropriate interactions with their children.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Educating programmers: A reflection on barriers to deliberate practice

Copyright @ 2013 HEAProgramming is a craft which often demands that learners engage in a significantly high level of individual practice and experimentation in order to acquire basic competencies. However, practice behaviors can be undermined during the early stages of instruction. This is often the result of seemingly trivial misconceptions that, when left unchecked, create cognitive-affective barriers. These interact with learners' self-beliefs, potentially inducing affective states that inhibit practice. This paper questions how to design a learning environment that can address this issue. It is proposed that analytic and adaptable approaches, which could include soft scaffolding, ongoing detailed formative feedback and a focus on self-enhancement alongside skill development, can help overcome such barriers

AFFECTIVE DOMAIN DEVELOPMENT: REALITY AND EXPECTATION

Pengembangan Ranah Afektif: Kenyataan dan Harapan. Pendidik masa kini mendambakan perhatian yang seimbang terhadap pengembangan ranah kognitif, psikomotorik dan afektif dalam mendidik generasi muda. Namun, di dalam pelaksanaannya sedikit sekali penghargaan yang diberikan kepada anak-anak yang telah menunjukkan perkembangan ranah afektif secara baik. Hal ini terjadi karena tolok ukur keberhasilan pendidikan selalu mengacu kepada prestasi siswa yang terkait dengan ranah kognitif atau psikomotorik. Selain itu, banyak contoh ambivalensi dalam kehidupan nyata di masyarakat yang dapat melemahkan pondasi bagi pengembangan ranah afektif. Apabila generasi muda diharapkan berkembang menjadi manusia seutuhnya, penghargaan yang layak seharusnya diberikan kepada mereka yang berhasil dalam mengembangkan ranah afektifnya, dan harus ada teladan yang dapat mereka acu. Selain itu, pendampingan perlu dilakukan oleh orang tua dan guru. Kata kunci : pengembangan ranah afektif, penghargaan, teladan, pendampinga

Modeling alcohol use disorder severity: An integrative structural equation modeling approach

Background: Alcohol dependence is a complex psychological disorder whose phenomenology changes as the disorder progresses. Neuroscience has provided a variety of theories and evidence for the development, maintenance, and severity of addiction; however, clinically, it has been difficult to evaluate alcohol use disorder (AUD) severity.Objective: This study seeks to evaluate and validate a data-driven approach to capturing alcohol severity in a community sample.Method: Participants were non-treatment seeking problem drinkers (n = 283). A structural equation modeling approach was used to (a) verify the latent factor structure of the indices of AUD severity; and (b) test the relationship between the AUD severity factor and measures of alcohol use, affective symptoms, and motivation to change drinking.Results: The model was found to fit well, with all chosen indices of AUD severity loading significantly and positively onto the severity factor. In addition, the paths from the alcohol use, motivation, and affective factors accounted for 68% of the variance in AUD severity. Greater AUD severity was associated with greater alcohol use, increased affective symptoms, and higher motivation to change.Conclusion: Unlike the categorical diagnostic criteria, the AUD severity factor is comprised of multiple quantitative dimensions of impairment observed across the progression of the disorder. The AUD severity factor was validated by testing it in relation to other outcomes such as alcohol use, affective symptoms, and motivation for change. Clinically, this approach to AUD severity can be used to inform treatment planning and ultimately to improve outcomes. © 2013 Moallem, Courtney, Bacio and Ray

Affective affordances and psychopathology

Self-disorders in depression and schizophrenia have been the focus of much recent work in phenomenological psychopathology. But little has been said about the role the material environment plays in shaping the affective character of these disorders. In this paper, we argue that enjoying reliable (i.e., trustworthy) access to the things and spaces around us — the constituents of our material environment — is crucial for our ability to stabilize and regulate our affective life on a day-today basis. These things and spaces often play an ineliminable role in shaping what we feel and how we feel it; when we interact with them, they contribute ongoing feedback that " scaffolds " the character and temporal development of our affective experiences. However, in some psychopathological conditions, the ability to access to these things and spaces becomes disturbed. Individuals not only lose certain forms of access to the practical significance of the built environment but also to its ​ regulative​ significance, too — and the stability and organization of their affective life is compromised. In developing this view, we discuss core concepts like " affordance spaces " , " scaffolding " , and " incorporation ". We apply these concepts to two case studies, severe depression and schizophrenia, and we show why these cases support our main claim. We conclude by briefly considering implications of this view for developing intervention and treatment strategies

Antecedents and outcomes of personnel perceptions of the effectiveness of career management practices in the New Zealand Defence Force : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University

This research examined antecedents and outcomes of perceptions of the effectiveness of career management practices (PECMP) using a military sample. Past research has shown mixed results regarding the relationship between experiencing career management practices and organisational commitment and turnover intentions; however positive relationships have been found when perceptions of career management are measured. This present study hypothesised that PECMP would be positively related to commitment (affective and continuance) and job satisfaction and negatively related to turnover intentions. Based on the literature a number of variables were hypothesised as antecedents of PECMP. A sample of 436 Regular Force New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) personnel responded to a NZDF attitude survey, which measured commitment, job satisfaction, turnover intentions, PECMP and 13 proposed antecedents of PECMP. Regression analysis showed that PECMP was positively related to affective commitment and job satisfaction but not to continuance commitment. Job satisfaction and affective and continuance commitment were negatively related to turnover intentions, with affective commitment the strongest contributor. PECMP was higher when career management was perceived as fair, sufficient feedback was given, personnel felt satisfied with their past career development, expectations were met, personnel felt they had input into their career development and personnel perceived the NZDF valued their career development. The study also found that one-to-two times per year was perceived as sufficient contact with a career manager and that the frequency of contact influenced attitudes towards the career manager. Personnel who defined their career as the military, opposed to their trade, were more affectively committed to the NZDF but not less likely to intend to leave. Personnel viewed career success differently (laterally and hierarchically), but this did not influence PECMP or career development satisfaction. This study provides empirical support for the benefits of effective career management in the reduction of voluntary turnover in the military via its influence on affective commitment and in turn, intentions to leave. The study also identifies features of best practice career management that should be used when designing and, most importantly, implementing career management

The role of affective information in the sociomoral development of preschool children

Early theories of social-cognitive development emphasized children\u27s unilateral respect for rules and authority (Piaget, 1932/65). Recently, however, children have been found to make conceptual distinctions among moral, conventional, and personal events. These distinctions are hypothesized to be related to the differential judgments that 6- to 8-year-old children have been shown to make about the emotional experience of others in these types of events (Arsenio & Ford, 1985). However, it is not known if preschoolers make similar distinctions between the affect of various participants in different event-types. The judgments of preschoolers regarding the affect of participants in sociomoral events were examined. Forty-two 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds were presented with scenarios depicting different sociomoral event-types, and asked to assess the affective consequences of events for story participants. Results show that preschoolers differentiate type of affect between sociomoral events and between event participants. Potential implications are that young children are aware of the emotional consequences of events and that this knowledge plays a role in their sociomoral judgments