Psychology

Summary
The present article gives an overview of the psycho­logical treatments of psychological trauma. The article is oriented towards practitioners who want to update their knowledge of the recent developments in psychotraumatology. The research findings, based on meta-analyses and good practice guidelines, are presented and the issues related to the implementation of evidence-based treatments are discussed.
The study has shown that the critical stress incident debriefing developed by J. T. Mitchell in 1983 (or psychological debriefing) is not recommended imme­diately after trauma. Metaanalysis (Rose et al., 2003; van Emmeric et al., 2002) revealed no positive long-term effects of debriefing immediately after trauma, with indications of negative outcomes in some studies. Practical guidelines of the International Society of Traumatic Stress Studies, as well as other guidelines do not recommend debriefing as a regular procedure for all survivors. Practical, social or legal assistance provided in an empathic way is recommended during the first month after the trauma.
Meta-analytical studies published since 1998 concerning the effectiveness of posttraumatic stress disorder treatments demonstrated the efficacy of trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapies (TF-CBT) and eye movement reprocessing and desen­sitization therapy (EMDR). Evidence from studies on the effects of a brief eclectic psychotherapy for posttraumatic stress disorder (BEPP), developed by B. Gersons, internet-based treatments, and virtual reality are promising, and these treatments in the future are possible effective alternatives for TF-CBT and EMDR in evidence-based practice. Psychological treatments should be the first option for the treatment of PTSD, with medication used only when the appro­priate psychological treatments are unavailable or the client prefers medication over psychosocial treatment.
While a number of RCT studies have shown the efficacy of TF-CBT and EMDR treatment for PTSD, there is still a gap between research and everyday clinical practice. From the practitioner’s point of view, transfer of manual-based methods from RCT efficacy studies to daily practice is not easy. Clinicians are facing complicated cases, and comorbid disorders are widely prevalent with PTSD. We must also be aware that with the new treatments developed, training of these methods and particularly the availability of sys­tematic supervisions are not always easily accessible; this slows down the dissemination and implementation of evidence-based treatments. Clinicians have to take their own responsibility for selecting what is best for a particular client; however, practitioners also need to make decisions based on what science shows to be the most effective treatment.
Key words: psychological trauma, posttraumatic stress disorder, effectiveness of treatment.

Veiksmingi psichologinės pagalbos būdai psichotraumatologijoje  1.16 MB

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Veiksmingi psichologinės pagalbos būdai psichotraumatologijoje 

Summary
Ambiguous figures are pictures which reverse their appearance during prolonged viewing and can be perceived in two (or more) available interpretations. Explanations for this phenomenon favour either early bottom-up processes or higher-level top-down processes. This study aimed to investigate the perception of simultaneously presented neutral and biased (i.e. with a slight modification towards one or another of the available interpretations) ambiguous figures. Our results have indicated that observers tend to perceive two adjacent identical figures as reversing simultaneously, and the same percepts dominated both in the reversal rate and the duration of perception. In the case of biased and neutral figures presented in pairs, modifications of interpretation either increased or decreased the frequency of a biased percept. The results show that both bottom-up and top-down perceptual processes influence the perception of ambiguous figures.
Key words: ambiguous figure, adaptation, multiple-figure presentation, bias, visual perception

Tendencijos įtaka dviejų dviprasmių figūrų suvokimui  1.25 MB

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Summary
The study analyzes the phenomenon of meaning making for the bereavement of a person with whom they had close relationships, based on the experience of seven research participants. All of them had been nursing a relative till the death from an incurable disease. The study aims to identify the essential structure and get a clear and systematic description of meaning-making for the bereavement. All the data were collected in depth semi-structured
interviews (lasting 50–80 minutes). The main question of the interview was “please remember and describe the specific situation or the moment when you understood that you have lost your a close person. What does this understanding mean to you?” An analysis of the interviews was performed on the basis of the A. Giorgi phenomenological psychological analysis method. At the end of the study, there were discovered and identified 13 essential aspects, 5 directions, and 2 fundamental spaces of meaning-making for the bereavement. All the findings were shared by every participant. The results were summarized into a single definition. First of all, results of the research have revealed that meaning-making for the bereavement is a process rather than a one-off event or situation. The results show that the meaning-making for the bereavement of a close person is mainly expressed by qualitative changes in relationships and in the world-view. In the area of qualitative changes in the relationships, it is worth to distinguish changes in the relationship with the relative one: here one can find a big concern for nursing the loved one, experiencing the ongoing existence of a dead relative and feeling a strong spiritual support from them because of the deep relations before death. The other changes in the area are qualitative changes in social relations.
The area of qualitative changes in the world-view unfolds in three levels. The first level concerns the evaluation of experiences in time perspective: change in the attitude towards bereavement is reavealed; the evaluation of its emotional states becomes objective; and all these aspects are summarized as a valuable lesson for personal grow.
The second level concerns the identification and appreciation of discovered benefits: the relevance of living here and now; the importance of changes in the personal system of the relevance of living here and now; the importance of changes in the personal system of values; and the recognition that relative’s attitude towards death affected the worldview of others. The third level unfolds the discovery of fundamental truths: the meaning of the experience of loss is perceived as metaphysical and beyond the limits of the human mind; the temporality of existence and the unknowability of death is recognized.
Key words: bereavement, sense-making, phenomenological research.

Artimo žmogaus netekties įprasminimo fenomenologinis tyrimas  1.32 MB

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Summary
It is difficult to take no notice of the gap existing between the relevance of the theme of sexuality in adolescence for young people themselves and the lack of attention of academia trying to understand, analyze, and conceptualize this experience of young people. There is still a need to understand the profound subjective sexual experience in adolescence, i.e. to reveal the pathways how the feeling that “I am a sexual person” arises in an adolescent’s self-awareness. The aim of the present study was to update and expand the understanding of the phenomenon of the adolescence sexuality experience and to offer an updated model of understanding it, which has been created with reference to adolescents’ narratives. Particularly, it is meant to understand, organize, and analyze a typical, characteristic of the normal development of adolescent girls’ sexual experience, highlighting the discursive position of the subject in order to answer one basic question: how or in what way in the awareness of an adolescent arises the feeling that “I am a sexual person”. The interpretive qualitative study of the exploratory strategy was based on a hermeneutic phenomenological methodological investigator’s position for interpreting the experience of the participants. Data obtained during a semi-structured interview were analyzed using the method of interpretative phenomenological analysis (Smith et al., 2009). The findings have been interpreted in consistence with the paradigm of a positive and normative development of sexuality in adolescence together with some psychoanalytic developmental theories. The study has revealed the typical feelings associated with the regularity of sexual subjectivity emergence in the process of growing self-awareness. The structure of the abstracted meta-theme called “Adolescence sexuality as part of an intensive I–Other experience” is presented to the reader in this publication. The material provides new data on the first conscious sexual experiences of adolescent girls, conceptualized as a “gaze situation”. The gaze situation is characterized by the interaction of four psychological micro-processes which stimulate sexual awareness and the integration of sexual self-experience. The author chooses to conceptualize these micro-processes as a) shifting reactions towards adolescent girls; b) the sense of personal singularity and uniqueness; c) the body becoming an alluring public object; d) striving to repeat the pleasurable experience of being looked at. Two additional themes were discussed as features of the intense I–Other experience related to the growing heterosexual sexual awareness: a) the Other should be a person outside the family, b) the Other should be a person of the opposite sex. Despite some limitations of the study, its findings confine importance of intersubjective experiences with the other sex to the development of sexual selfhood in adolescence.
Key words: qualitative hermeneutic research, “gaze situation”, adolescent girls, sexuality, mirroring.

Paauglių mergaičių seksualinio subjektyvumo analizė  1.01 MB

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Summary
Employee psychological empowerment is treated as a multidimensional construct manifesting in several dimensions. It has been researched for several decades using various scales depending on the definition of psychological empowerment chosen by a reasercher. However, there is a lack of widely applicable, compact instruments for a reliable and valid assessment of psychological empowerment. Furthermore, there has been a lack of empowerment research in Lithuania. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to construct a Lithuanian psychological empowerment questionnaire and to evaluate its psychometric properties (reliability and validity).
The strategy of the empirical construction of a questionnaire was used. At first, statements to describe the concept of psychological empowerment were generated, using group interviews and expert evaluation. Fifteen final items were included into the Lithuanian Psychological Empowerment Questionnaire (LPEQ). Then, an empirical research was performed: 189 respondents from 8 organizations filled up the LPEQ, G.M. Spreizer (1995) Psychological Empowerment Questionnaire (PEQ), B. E. Ashforth (1990) Helplessness Scale, Intrinsic Motivation Scale (Warr et al., 1979), and socio-demografic questions.
The results of the study have revealed that the LPEQ has a high internal reliability (Cronbach α = 0.909). Five factors were extracted using the exploratory
factor analysis, three items each. Psychological empowerment was defined based on five dimensions: meaning, enthusiasm, decision making, authonomy, and trust in competence. The Cronbach α was between 0.755 and 0.880 for the dimension level. These five dimensions show support for the existing models of psychological empowerment (Spreitzer, 1995; Menon, 2001), but also they supplement these models with for instance, the dimension of enthusiasm.
The convergent validity of the LPEQ was confirmed by strong correlations (p < 0.01) between the LPEQ and the PEQ subscales, and the Intrinsic Motivation Scale. It was supported by a negative correlation between the LPEQ subscales and the Helplessness Scale. Based on the analysis of correlations, the discriminant validity of the LPEQ dimensions’ levels was confirmed.
In conclusion, the Lithuanian Psychological Empowerment Questionnaire (LPEQ) can be characterized as an instrument with appropriate psychometric
properties for the use in research and practice. Directions for the future research in the field have been offered.
Key words: psychological empowerment, psychological empowerment questionnaire, reliability, validity.

Darbuotojų psichologinis įgalinimas: lietuviškojo tyrimo metodo psichometrinės charakteristikos  943.75 KB

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Summary
The Five-factor Model (FFM) is currently the most common dimensional approach to personality traits. Research of children’s personality traits is a new challenge for scientists, which motivates to step into an almost unknown area. These investigations were encouraged by the success of the Five-factor Model research on adults: scientists quite intensively started going deeper into the research of children’s personality traits starting from early childhood till late adolescence. The present study was designed to investigate the psychometric properties of the Lithuanian version of the Hierarchical Personality Inventory for Children (HiPIC, Mervielde and De Fruyt, 1999). The HiPIC is an instrument to assess the five dimensions of the five-factor model for children between 6 and 12 years. The HiPIC measures 18 facets grouped into five dimensions: Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Benevolence, Emotional Stability, and Imagination (Mervielde and De Fruyt, 1999). This inventory, contrary to the NEO PI-R, was developed using a bottom-up strategy (Mervielde and De Fruyt, 2002).
The present research included three phases. A parent rating was obtained for 739 children all aged between 7 and 11. Some children were rated by their both parents, some by mother or farther; 1081 parents filled the questionnaires. The HiPIC was distributed in the classroom by the researchers to the children who had to bring the questionnaire to their parents. All 144 HiPIC items were translated and retranslated into Lithuanian by professional translators with the author of the inventory supervision during all three phases of the research.
The facets’ internal consistency was estimated by the Cronbach alpha coefficient. At the domain level, the internal consistency ranged from 0.808 to 0.909, and at the facet level the internal consistency ranged within 0.574–0.873. In order to assess the construct validity, we conducted a principal component
exploratory factor analysis with the varimax rotation of the 18 facet scales. In order to compare the factorial structure with the theoretical structure of the inventory, first we chose to extract five factors, but the further factor analysis showed that the Lithuanian HiPIC version had more arguments for a four-factor structure with a blend of the Conscientiousness and Imagination domains and explaining 71.93% of variance.
The Lithuanian version of the HiPIC is reliable, although construct validity indicators had some weakness. The internal consistencies are satisfactory and similar to those found with the original Flemish version and the French version. As a conclusion, the Lithuanian HiPIC version can be used in scientific research in assessing children’s personality traits.
This research was funded by a grant (No. MIP-016/2012) from the Research Council of Lithuania.
Key words: children’s personality traits, the Five Factor Model, HiPIC, psychometric properties.

Lietuviškosios hierarchinio vaiko asmenybės aprašo (HiPIC) versijos psichometrinės charakteristikos  901.04 KB

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Summary
Organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) is defined as “individual behaviour that is discretionary and not directly or explicitly recognized by the formal reward system and in the aggregate promotes the efficient and effective functioning of the organization” (Organ et al., 2006). The concept of OCB was initially introduced in the 1980s, and it soon became a widely internationally and cross-culturally investigated phenomenon. Empirical evidence suggests that OCB is related to a number of positive outcomes at individual, group, and organizational levels. Therefore, the last three decades were abundant in studies aimed towards the clarification of OCB dimensionality and identifying its antecedents and consequences in a variety of settings.
The Lithuanian research on this topic, however, is scarce. Due to the fact that the construct of OCB is quite culturally sensitive and studies on OCB in Lithuania are still in their preliminary phase, there is no valid and reliable instrument that could be used to measure it.
Therefore, the main goal of the present study was to gather data on OCB in a Lithuanian employee sample and to develop an instrument that would enable
measuring citizenship behaviours in Lithuanian organizations.
In order to develop the Lithuanian version of the OCB questionnaire, we chose an integrated approach, i.e. first an extensive theoretical analysis of classical
OCB models had been carried out. Next, three qualified psychologists selected the OCB dimensions that appeared most commonly across different OCB models. Finally, based on this selection, a composite 53-item questionnaire was developed, encompassing various aspects of organizational citizenship.
The study was carried out in a sample of 289 employees from a number of Lithuanian organizations (22.1% of male, 77.9% of females; mean age 32.32 years).
To identify the dimensionality of OCB, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted. Next, after conducting the item analysis, 29 items were retained and repeatedly factor-analyzed. The results have revealed five OCB dimensions: altruism, courtesy, civic virtue, conscientiousness, and initiative. An overall questionnaire and all its subscales have proven to have high reliability coefficients (Cronbach alphas > 0.76). Moreover, the analysis has shown that the distinguished OCB dimensions were separable from in-role performance and correlated to a number of factors reported as the most common OCB correlates (e.g., organizational identity, commitment, and job satisfaction).
To generalize, preliminary findings strongly suggest that the Lithuanian version of the OCB questionnaire, developed in this study, has adequate psychometric properties and is congruent to the classical concept of OCB. Naturally, in the future, additional empirical evidence will be necessary to support the identified OCB factor structure.
Key words: organizational citizenship behaviour, validity and reliability of organizational citizenship behaviour questionnaire.

Pilietiškas darbuotojų elgesys organizacijoje: kai kurios lietuviškojo klausimyno psichometrinės charakteristikos  567.12 KB

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