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Erving Goffman's concept of framing is one of his most enduring contributions to social science. Despite the canonical status of Frame Analysis (1974) in multiple fields, few acknowledge its intellectual engagement with animal studies. It was Gregory Bateson, in an analysis of animal play, who first posited the idea of frames as metacommunicative propositions that signal the meaning of behavior. In this paper, we show that Goffman did not just opportunistically borrow the idea of framing from Bateson, but also advanced Bateson's thesis that nonhuman animals are capable of (re)framing the meaning of behavior. He emphasized that animals and humans could meta‐communicate with each other as well. Goffman polemicized against human exceptionalist theories of cognition and communication—not only in Frame Analysis, but also in unpublished remarks he delivered at a controversial conference on animal communication, and he suggested that the ability to meta‐communicate is a more appropriate index of mind than language. Although new research indicates that many species use "significant symbols" and have a "theory of mind," most interactionists have not reckoned with the sociological implications of animals as "minded" social actors capable of metacommunication with each other—and with people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective(s): Psychologists' experiences of an online training tool in metacommunication as well as an in‐supervisory metacommunication exercise were examined. Method: A total of 101 participants completed a training tool in metacommunication and changes in self‐efficacy (SE) to use metacommunication with clients, the proportion of metacommunication used in vignette‐responses, and their willingness to use metacommunication in supervision were assessed pre‐ and posttraining and at 6‐week follow‐up. A total of 48 participants elected to undertake the in‐supervision exercise. Results: Participants reported significantly higher willingness and self‐efficacy after completing the online training. They also showed a higher proportion of metacommunicative statements in their posttraining vignette responses compared with pretraining. The increase in willingness was retained at 6‐week follow‐up. There was an increase in self‐efficacy from pre‐ to postonline‐training, and this increased at follow‐up. Conclusions: This opens the door to better developing metacommunication skills in supervisees through both online training and the metacommunication supervisory exercise. Areas for continued research are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rhetorical questions emerging spontaneously in consultations can be used as a tool for developing self‐reflexivity and exploring the therapeutic alliance in the process of therapy with couples and families. This paper presents a technique based on the enunciation of rhetorical questions, which can point to an impasse in the process of therapy and contain a key to its resolution. The technique focuses on the distinctive feature of rhetorical questions as convening a paradoxical injunction: a question not intended as a question, while uttered as such. The technique in four steps is illustrated by examples from therapy, supervision, consultation, and self‐supervision. Its focus is the interlink between the therapeutic relationship and the process of therapy and it is informed by a second‐order cybernetics approach, dialogical practice, and the systemic literature on emotion. The technique can help develop curiosity in working with families, lead to unforeseen developments, and touch on prejudices not made explicit in previous therapeutic encounters. Whether we are acting as supervisors, therapists, or clients, the creation of a ‘secure enough’ context for rhetorical questions becomes critical to allow freeform exploration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metacommunity theory has advanced the understanding of the patterns and processes shaping community structure at multiple scales. Various models have been put forward to explain the relative effects of environmental filtering, dispersal, and species traits on community composition. Here, we focus on complex, three-dimensional webs of two social and two solitary spider species as habitat patches for associated communities of arthropods in a tropical rainforest in Ecuador. We used variance partitioning, constrained ordination, coherence analyses, and a colonization experiment to assess the role of environmental filtering and dispersal in this system.We found that the composition of communities associated with the four host species was mostly differentiated along two ordination axes, with the first axis roughly corresponding to level of sociality (solitary vs. social) and the other to web size. Associate abundance increased, but their density per unit volume decreased with host web size for all host species. Webs of social spider species had more variable communities and proportionally more aggressive (i.e., predatory) associates. After rarefaction to control for larger samples in larger webs, only one of the species showed a significant increase of species richness as a function of web size. The relatively quick colonization of experimentally established webs suggests high dispersal of more generalist species, but their lower proportion in older webs provides some evidence of a colonization--competition trade-off at longer temporal scales. The distinctness of the communities associated with the four host species, and the eventual change in proportion of associates in newly founded vs. old webs, despite high dispersal, is consistent with environmental filtering and species traits playing a major role in determining patterns of species distribution in this system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the influence of regional processes on local patches is well studied, the influence of local patches and their spatial arrangement on regional processes is likely to be complex. One interesting idea is the keystone community concept ( KCC); this posits that there may be some patches that have a disproportionately large effect on the metacommunity compared to other patches. We experimentally test the KCC by using replicate protist microcosm metacommunities with single-patch removals. Removing single patches had no effect on average community richness, evenness and biomass of our metacommunities, but did cause metacommunities to be assembled significantly less by local environmental conditions and more by spatial effects related to stochastic factors. Overall our results show that local patch removal can have large regional effects on structural processes, but indicate that more experiments are needed to find evidence of keystone communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the prior view that primate communication is based only on signal decoding, comparative evidence suggests that primates are able, no less than humans, to intentionally perform or understand impulsive or habitual communicational actions with a structured evaluative nonconceptual content. These signals convey an affordance-sensing that immediately motivates conspecifics to act. Although humans have access to a strategic form of propositional communication adapted to teaching and persuasion, they share with nonhuman primates the capacity to communicate in impulsive or habitual ways. They are also similarly able to monitor fluency, informativeness and relevance of messages or signals through nonconceptual cues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This paper reports on a specific lexical field of Nigerian Pidgin (NgP), namely its metacommunicative lexicon. Based on a corpus approach, the study identifies a set of lexical items that refer to acts of communication, in particular verbs of speaking and folk-linguistic labels for varieties and registers that pertain to the use of NgP. This study contributes to our understanding of lexical usage in NgP, a field that is less documented than its phonology and syntax. The metalinguistic lexicon of NgP is also instrumental in performing 'enregisterment talk' on two levels: how individual speakers position themselves in interaction, and how the overall Nigerian language ecology and legitimate ways of being a Nigerian speaker are constructed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ample evidence suggests that ecological communities can exhibit historical contingencies. However, few studies have explored whether differences in assembly history can generate alternative local community states in metacommunities in which local communities are linked by dispersal. In a protist microcosm experiment, we examined the influence of species colonization history on metacommunity assembly under homogeneous environmental conditions, by manipulating both the sequence of species colonization into local communities and the rate of dispersal among local communities. Whereas the role of dispersal in structuring local communities decreased over time and became non-significant towards the end of the experiment, species colonization history significantly influenced local communities throughout the experiment. Local communities, regardless of the rate of dispersal among them, exhibited two alternative states characterized by the dominance of different species. The alternative community states, however, emerged in the absence of priority effects that were often associated with alternative community states found in other assembly studies. Rather, they were driven by variation in species interaction strength among local communities with different assembly histories. These results suggest that dispersal among local communities may not necessarily reduce the role of species colonization history in shaping metacommunity assembly, and that differences in species colonization history need to be explicitly considered as an important factor in causing heterogeneous community states in metacommunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To understand the relative roles of local and regional processes in structuring local communities, and to compare sources of dispersal, we studied plant species composition in the context of a field experiment in vernal pool community assembly. In 1999, we constructed 256 vernal pools in a grid surrounding a group of over 60 naturally occurring reference pools. Each constructed pool received a seeding or control treatment. Seeding treatments involved several "focal species" native to vernal pools in this region. Earlier analyses identified local habitat quality (pool depth) and pool history (seeding treatment) as strong predictors of local species composition. For the current analysis, we asked how connectivity among pools might enhance models of focal species presence and cover within pools, using long-term data from control pools and from unseeded transects within a stratified random sample of all constructed pools. We fitted connectivity models for each of four focal species, and compared the relative support for connectivity, seeding treatment, and pool depth as predictors of local species presence and cover. We modeled connectivity in several ways to quantify the relative importance of immigration ( 1 ) from constructed pools, (2) from reference pools within the study site, (3) from a cluster of natural pools off-site, and (4) along ephemeral waterways. We found strongest support for effects of connectivity with reference pools. Species presence in a target pool was usually well predicted by an exponential decline in connectivity with distance to source pools, and our fitted estimates of mean dispersal distance indicate strong dispersal limitation in this system. Effects of target and source pool size were also supported in some models, and long-term effects of seeding were supported for most species. However, pool depth was by far the strongest predictor of focal species presence, and depth rivaled connectivity with reference pools as a top predictor of cover after accounting for species presence. We conclude that local species composition was determined primarily by local processes in this system, and we encourage more widespread use of a straightforward method for weighing local vs. regional influences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current ecological frameworks emphasize the relative importance of local and regional drivers for structuring species communities. However, most research has been carried out in systems with discrete habitat boundaries and a clear insular structure. Stream networks deviate from the insular structure and can serve as excellent model systems for studying hierarchical community dynamics over different temporal and spatial extents., We used benthic invertebrate data from streams in a small northern Swedish catchment to test whether metacommunity dynamics change between seasons, across spatial hierarchies (i.e. at the whole catchment scale vs. the scales of first-order and second/third-order sites within the catchment) and between stream-order groups., We assessed metacommunity structure as a function of three relevant dispersal dimensions (directional downstream processes, along-stream dispersal and overland dispersal). These dispersal dimensions were related to species groups with relevant dispersal traits (flying capacity, drift propensity) and dispersal capacities (weak vs. strong) to elucidate whether the observed spatial signals were due to dispersal limitation or mass effects., Results showed complex community organization that varied between seasons, with the scale of observation, and with stream order. The importance of spatial factors and specific dispersal dimensions was highly dependent on the time of sampling and the scale of observation. The importance of environmental factors was more consistent in our analyses, but their effect on species community structure peaked at first-order sites. Our analyses of species dispersal traits were not unequivocal, but indicated that both mass effects and dispersal limitation could simultaneously contribute to the spatial signal at the scale of the whole catchment through different dispersal pathways., We conclude that the study of hierarchically organized ecosystems uncovers complex patterns of metacommunity organization that may deviate substantially from those of systems with insular structure and discrete habitat boundaries. Moreover, we show that dispersal constraints imposed by the dendritic structure of stream networks and distinct dispersal mechanisms (e.g. dispersal limitation) may be evident also at very small spatial extents. Thus, even at this small scale, a landscape management approach that takes the dendritic nature of stream networks into account is needed to effectively conserve stream biodiversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of the collaborative relationship between patient and therapist has its roots in the psychodynamic literature. We trace the concept of collaboration in psychodynamic psychotherapy from classical psychoanalysis to contemporary psychoanalysis and psychodynamic therapies. The active collaboration between the participants central to Bordin's pan-theoretical perspective on the alliance is highlighted. Developments in alliance-fostering techniques and in relational therapy offer the clinician innovative ways to enhance the collaboration and to repair strained or ruptured collaboration. A case study illustrates how the collaborative work in psychodynamic therapy serves as both a means of productive work and as an arena for exploring the evolving here-and-now matrix of the relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The worker performing a monitored task and the social processes surrounding the task provide a basis for integrating psychological and sociological research on work performance monitoring and surveillance in call centres. Foci include individual boundaries, compliance and resistance, controlling the effects of monitoring, negotiated order, metacommunication, and social support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. The therapeutic relationship plays a key role in personality disorder (PD) psychotherapy. Some aspects of therapeutic relationship regulation appear important for treatment of PD clients, including those with constricted relational schemas, poor metacognition, and over-regulation of affects described here. Aim. To propose a rational model for how and when to work on the therapeutic relationship by treating the underlying personality pathology. Method. Formalize a step-by-step procedure for performing operations such as validation of clients' experiences, creating a sense of sharedness, assessing the quality of the therapeutic relationship in order to prevent and repair ruptures in the alliance, self-disclosing by the therapist, and metacommunication on the basis of clients' responses to treatment. Conclusion. We discuss the implications of this model for further research into the PD therapy process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study on the discursive premises of sexuality, gay identity, and the closet which causes the emergence of paradox. It states the use of autoethnography, a combination of autobiography and ethnography, in examining the manifestation of the paradoxical premises of sexuality, gay identity, and the closet. It reveals that metacommunication helps clear premises and provides an understanding of how paradox occurs on such premises.

Communities assemble through a combination of stochastic processes, which can make environmentally similar communities divergent (high β-diversity), and deterministic processes, which can make environmentally similar communities convergent (low β-diversity). Top predators can influence both stochasticity (e.g. colonization and extinction events) and determinism (e.g. size of the realized species pool), in community assembly, and thus their net effect is unknown. We investigated how predatory fish influenced the scaling of prey diversity in ponds at local and regional spatial scales. While fish reduced both local and regional richness, their effects were markedly more intense at the regional scale. Underlying this result was that the presence of fish made localities within metacommunities more similar in their community composition (lower β-diversity), suggesting that fish enhance the deterministic, relative to the stochastic, components of community assembly. Thus, the presence of predators can alter fundamental mechanisms of community assembly and the scaling of diversity within metacommunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neutral community models embody the idea that individuals are ecologically equivalent, having equal fitness over all environmental conditions, and describe how the spatial dynamics and speciation of such individuals can produce a wide range of patterns of distribution, diversity, and abundance. Neutral models have been controversial, provoking a rush of tests and comments. The debate has been spurred by the suggestion that we should test mechanisms. However, the mechanisms and the spatial scales of interest have never clearly been described, and consequently, the tests have often been only peripherally relevant. At least two mechanisms are present in spatially structured neutral models. Dispersal limitation causes clumping of a species, which increases the strength of intraspecific competition and reduces the strength of interspecific competition. This may prolong coexistence and enhance local and regional diversity. Speciation is present in some neutral models and gives a donor-controlled input of new species, many of which remain rare or are short lived, but which directly add to species diversity. Spatial scale is an important consideration in neutral models. Ecological equivalence and equal fitness have implicit spatial scales because dispersal limitation and its emergent effects operate at population levels, and populations and communities are defined at a chosen spatial scale in recent neutral models; equality is measured relative to a metacommunity, and this necessitates defining the spatial scale of that metacommunity. Furthermore, dispersal has its own scales. Thorough empirical tests of neutral models will require both tests of mechanisms and pattern-producing ability, and will involve coupling theoretical models and experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quality communication in marriage is defined as the interpersonal, transactional, symbolic process by which marriage partners achieve and maintain understanding of each other. This paper addresses the form and function of quality communication. Four categories of behaviors which contribute to quality communication are described: openness, confirmation, transaction management, and situational adaptability. These components of quality communications are functionally linked to marital satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an attempt to improve the way we conceptualize ‘levels’ in family systems. The first section reframes thinking about levels by identifying an array of different ways of thinking about levels. The next section suggests aparsimonious framework for thinking about levels of abstraction in systemic processes. The proposed framework integrates several earlier ways of conceptualizing levels, and helps eliminate some of the confusion, inconsistencies, fragmentation, and limitations of some earlier models. The new framework has three categories that are called Levels I, II, and III. The most abstract level (III) includes phenomena such as family paradigms and values. The intermediate level includes processes such as second-order change, regime, and ‘meta’ processes such as metacommunication and meta- rules. The least abstract level refers to specific processes such as transformation processes and rules. The article concludes with an attempt to demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed framework by showing [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses an inventory of digital soils data and supporting information available or publicized on the World Wide Web. There is an increase in the amount and quality of digital soil survey information at global, national, regional, and local scales. There are regions covered by medium-scale inventories using the SOTER methodology. Large-scale digital data are used for the U.S. Canada, Australia and Europe. Inventory problems include the lack of metadata, limited interpetations for professionals who are not soil specialists, and geodesic incompatibility with other digital data. The frequent reorganization of websites leads to user frustration and, at worst, to the lost of information.