Verifying the validity of the whole person model of mental health education activities in colleges based on differential equation

Based on the differential equation verification method, this study explores the characteristic model of mental health education activities for all employees and provides further research basis for constructing the competency characteristics for all employees in mental health education colleges. The results show that (1) the competence characteristics of all psychological teachers in mental health education colleges include interpersonal understanding and communication, respect for students, student service orientation, self-regulation and control, self-confidence, desire for achievement, influence, promotion of student development, organisation and coordination, 12 characteristics of professional knowledge skills, analytical thinking and reflective ability, (2) these 12 characteristics can be summarised into 4 dimensions: help and service, personal effectiveness, management skills and cognitive dimensions and (3) 12 characteristics of the model. The top 5 in the ranking are interpersonal understanding and communication, self-regulation and control, respect for students, student service orientation and promotion of student development.

Executive Functions do not Underlie Performance on the Edinburgh Social Cognition Test (ESCoT) in Healthy Younger and Older Adults

Objective:Current measures of social cognition have shown inconsistent findings regarding the effects of executive function (EF) abilities on social cognitive performance in older adults. The psychometric properties of the different social cognition tests may underlie the disproportional overlap with EF abilities. Our aim was to examine the relationship between social cognition and EF abilities using the Edinburgh Social Cognition Test (ESCoT; Baksh, R.A., Abrahams, S., Auyeung, B., & MacPherson, S.E. (2018). The Edinburgh Social Cognition Test (ESCoT): Examining the effects of age on a new measure of theory of mind and social norm understanding. PloS One, 13(4), e0195818.), a test assessing four different aspects of social cognition: cognitive theory of mind (ToM), affective ToM, interpersonal understanding of social norms, and intrapersonal understanding of social norms.Method:We administered the ESCoT, EF measures of inhibition, set shifting, updating, and a measure of processing speed to 30 younger and 31 older adults. We also administered the Visual Perspective Taking task (VPT) as a ToM test thought to be reliant on EF abilities.Results:Better performance on cognitive ToM was significantly associated with younger age and slower processing speed. Better performance on affective ToM and ESCoT total score was associated with being younger and female. Better performance on interpersonal understanding of social norms was associated with being younger. EF abilities did not predict performance on any subtest of the ESCoT. In contrast, on the VPT, the relationship between age group and performance was fully or partially mediated by processing speed and updating.Conclusions:These findings show that the ESCoT is a valuable measure of different aspects of social cognition and, unlike many established tests of social cognition, performance is not predicted by EF abilities.

Fostering group creativity through design thinking projects

The purpose of this study was to develop team projects in design thinking, for promotion and examination with the cultivation of group creativity. Research was conducted during the spring of 2017, with sixteen graduate students. Using artifact-based interviews, we analyzed the development of group creativity during the five stages of design thinking: understanding knowledge, empathizing, sharing perspectives, generating ideas, and prototyping. Results showed that analytical thinking was present throughout the overall project, while factors related to group creativity (such as learner orientation, interpersonal understanding, and flexibility) were observed at different rates as the project progressed. Results suggest that such pedagogical strategies as idea checking and training for applicability are necessary in order to foster group creativity.

The Practice of Phenomenological Empathy Training

This article provides concrete examples of a phenomenological approach to empathy training, which is a pedagogical method designed for higher education. First, the phenomenology of empathy and empathy training is briefly described. Second, excerpts from training sessions in higher education are provided as examples. The examples are meant as to concretize the purpose of the training in relation to the overall pedagogical process. In addition, some clarifications are made about how a phenomenological approach can facilitate university students’ deeper understanding of how empathy relate to interpersonal understanding in the we-relation.

Editorial

This is a collection of linguistic trivia, picked from the mundaneness of everyday speech. However, as each of the papers so well documents, the trivia is far from trivial and the seemingly marginal linguistic phenomena studied here are full of significance, not least from the vantage point of the margins. The papers provide detailed analyses of how ‘small talk’ regularly contributes to the emergence of meaning and interpersonal understanding; items that get repeated across turns and speakers, for example, help interlocutors stake out joint coordinates in relation to the flow of conversation, scaffolding what a speaker may be taken to be referencing—or intending to reference—and allowing them to mutually work towards a shared stance on ‘what a word might mean’.

Understanding Persons and the Problem of Power

Trending work in social epistemology suggests that those with power actively and passively hinder those without power from interpreting and communicating their experiences of suffering and persecution, thus obstructing their role in the production of knowledge about these experiences. This kind of “epistemic oppression” raises a puzzle about the nature and possibilities of interpersonal understanding, which this chapter calls the problem of power. Put simply, if what counts as “knowledge” is regulated by those with power, then can empowered people ever genuinely understand oppressed people? This essay attempts to answer this question, which in turn leads to a new theory of what it means to understand other persons.