The Courage to Care: Teacher Compassion Predicts More Positive Attitudes Toward Trauma-Informed Practice.

Purpose: With greater awareness of the prevalence and impact of childhood trauma and adversity, teachers are now assuming a more active role in creating emotionally healthy environments and responding to student distress. However, supporting trauma-affected students can be a source of amplified teacher stress. Compassion has been identified as a promising construct for frontline professionals in terms of promoting psychological wellbeing, and increasing the sensitivity to detect, tolerate and respond to distress in others. It has also been identified as an important aspect of trauma-informed practice. Nevertheless, the role of compassion in teachers' attitudes towards, and readiness for implementing trauma-informed practices has not yet been explored. This study aimed to address this gap. Methods: A sample of 377 primary and post-primary teachers in Ireland completed the Attitudes Related to Trauma-Informed Care Scale, the Professional Quality of Life Scale, the Self-Compassion Scale, and a socio-demographic survey. Results: Teachers were found to hold generally positive attitudes toward trauma-informed care. They exhibited low to moderate levels of secondary traumatic stress and burnout, and notably high levels of compassion satisfaction, indicating that they tend to embrace their caring role and find meaning and purpose in their work. Regression analyses showed that compassion satisfaction was the strongest predictor of positive attitudes toward trauma-informed care, followed by self-compassion. Older teachers were more likely to display positive attitudes toward trauma-informed care, whilst teachers in single-sex boys' schools held attitudes that were less favorable. Conclusion: This study suggests potential benefits for both teachers and students of positioning compassion at the center of educational policy and practice. The results are contextualized within the Irish and international educational landscape.

Correction To: The Courage to Care: Teacher Compassion Predicts more Positive Attitudes Toward Trauma-Informed Practice.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1007/s40653-022-00486-x.].

Relational Flexibility and Human Intelligence: Extending the remit of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior

The current article will discuss recent research encompassing the relevance of derived relational responding in intelligence, and the establishment of procedures to target this type of flexibility in derived relational responding in practical learning situations. The chapter will review research findings that indicate correlations between speed in flexible relational responding and higher scores on IQ tests. Relevant to flexibility in relational responding, research has demonstrated that children with autism showed poorer flexibility in relational responding than typically-developing peers, and procedures to remediate this type of “rigid” responding are described. Research on derived manding also has practical implications for incorporating derived relational responding into a mand training program to facilitate a “generative” or flexible component (AU)

El presente artículo discute investigaciones recientes centradas en la relevancia del aprendizaje relacional derivado para la inteligencia, y en el establecimiento de procedimientos orientados a promover esta flexibilidad del aprendizaje relacional derivado en situaciones prácticas de aprendizaje. El artículo revisa hallazgos de investigación indicativos de la correlación entre la rapidez en el comportamiento relacional flexible y las puntuaciones altas en tests de CI. Con respecto a la flexibilidad del comportamiento relacional, la investigación ha demostrado que los niños con autismo muestran un comportamiento relacional menos flexible que el de los niños que siguen un patrón típico de desarrollo. Se describen aquí algunos procedimientos para corregir este tipo de comportamiento “rígido”. La investigación sobre mandos derivados también tiene implicaciones prácticas para incorporar el comportamiento relacional derivado a un programa de entrenamiento de los mandos para facilitar un componente “generativo” o flexible (AU)

A derived transfer of functions and the implicit association test.

Participants were trained in a series of interrelated conditional discriminations that aimed to establish four 4-member equivalence classes (i.e., A1-B1-C1-D1, A2-B2-C2-D2, A3-B3-C3-D3, A4-B4-C4-D4). During this training, the four A stimuli (i.e., A1, A2, A3, and A4) were compounded with pictures containing positive or negative evaluative functions (A1/A2 negative & A3/A4 positive). The transfer of evaluative functions to directly and indirectly related members of the equivalence classes (i.e., B, C, and D stimuli) was measured using an Implicit Association Test (IAT). During consistent test blocks, participants were required to press the same response key for target words that were related to those A stimuli that possessed similar evaluative functions (A1/A2-left key & A3/A4-right key). During inconsistent test blocks, target words that were related to those A stimuli with different evaluative functions were assigned to the same response key (A1/A4-left key & A2/A3-right key). Results showed that all 8 participants, who passed a matching-to-sample equivalence test following the IAT, responded more rapidly on consistent relative to inconsistent test blocks. This typical IAT effect was not observed for those participants who did not pass the equivalence test. The results suggest that the IAT effect may arise from formally untested derived relations, and supports the argument that such relations could provide a valid behavioral model of semantic categories in natural language.