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Mindfulness helps people focus on what is happening right now. It can help people to have good mental health.A group of researchers from the USA created a mindfulness-based therapy for people with intellectual disabilities, called Soles of the Feet.Soles of the Feet teaches people with intellectual disabilities to focus on the soles of their feet, instead of focusing on difficult thoughts and feelings.This paper thinks about how Soles of the Feet works for people with intellectual disabilities.

Introduction While there could be endless academic discussion revolving around the concept of 'food choice', most agencies concerned with the health of the nation are primarily interested in improving people's diets. This is hardly surprising given the ever-accumulating evidence that eating fruit and vegetables confers major health benefits, including lessening the risks of various forms of cancer and cardiovascular disease, and lowering overall mortality rates (see Gillman 1996; Key et al. 1996). The goal of helping people to change to healthy diets or, even better, of ensuring that they adopt healthy eating habits from childhood onwards, is also central to our research strategy. Such an enterprise requires an understanding of the psychological determinants of human food preferences set within the broader context of general psychological theory. Though this may in part entail studying what people say about their food choices or preferences (i.e. what might be called their 'attitudes' to food), it is critical to relate what they say to what they do: that is, to what they actually eat. And it is not sufficient merely to describe correlations between people's performance on attitude scales or questionnaires and their real or reported dietary intake: it is essential above all to establish the causal factors that bring about changes in people's food consumption. Only thus will we be able to effect significant changes in the eating habits of the general population. Experimental psychology has a central role to play in this endeavour.

There is a dearth of research on the perspectives of adolescent siblings growing up with a brother or sister with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD).Semistructured interviews were used to elicit the perceptions and experiences of 12 typically developing adolescents with a brother with an ASD. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used.The data analysis of the siblings' perceptions yielded 6 themes: (a) difficulties and negative impact of their brother's condition on themselves and their family, (b) how others' reactions to their brother negatively affected them as siblings, (c) how their histories with their brothers contextualised their present circumstances, (d) the varying degrees of acceptance and tolerance towards their brothers, (e) positive perceptions and experiences with their brothers, and (f) their thoughts and worries about the future.The main implications are for supports to adolescent siblings by helping them to develop skills in managing others' reactions and openly discussing concerns about their brother's future.

Research with siblings of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) suggests that they may be at increased risk for behavioural and emotional problems and relatively poor sibling relationships. This study investigated a diathesis-stress model, whereby the presence of Broad Autism Phenotype features in the typically developing siblings might interact with family-environmental risk variables to predict sibling functioning (5–17 years of age) of children with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), their child with an ASD, and their own psychological well-being. Sibling adjustment was associated with the extent of behaviour problems in the child with an ASD and with the extent of the sibling's Broad Autism Phenotype (BAP) features. Sibling relationships were more negative when the child with an ASD had more behaviour problems and when there was evidence of critical expressed emotion in the family environment. Siblings with more BAP features, who had brothers/sisters with an ASD and a greater number of behaviour problems, had more behaviour problems themselves. Siblings with more BAP features who had parents with mental health problems reported more sibling relationship conflict.

Semi‐structured interviews were used to explore the perceptions and experiences of eight typically developing siblings in middle childhood who had a brother with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The interviews were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). The analysis yielded five main themes: (i) siblings’ perceptions of the impact of their brother’s condition on their lives, (ii) siblings’ perceptions of the attitudes of others, (iii) siblings’ tolerance and acceptance towards their brothers, (iv) positive attitudes and experiences, and (v) siblings’ views on support for themselves and their brothers. These exploratory findings can be used to inform future larger scale studies and quantitative research. Initial implications for practice focus on issues related to enhancing the development of support services for siblings of children with ASD.

Siblings of children with autism may be at greater risk for psychological problems than siblings of children with another disability or of typically developing (TD) children. However, it is difficult to establish whether autism or the presence of intellectual disability (ID) explains the findings in previous research. Mothers rated the emotional and behavioural adjustment of siblings of children with ID with ( N = 25) or without ( N = 24) autism. Data were also available 18 months later for siblings of children with autism and ID ( N = 15). Siblings of children with autism and ID had more emotional problems compared with siblings of children with ID only and with normative data. Three variables were pertinent: increasing age of the child with autism, having a brother with autism, and being younger than the child with autism. Behavioural and emotional difficulties of siblings of children with autism and ID were relatively stable over 18 months.

Background: The working culture surrounding challenging behaviour may have a strong effect on staff behaviour. As a first step to influencing staff talk about challenging behaviour, the aim of the present study was to explore whether a 1-day training workshop could have an effect on staff causal explanations. Methods: Fifty-four front line staff, in six separate groups, completed an adapted version of the Self-Injury Behavioural Understanding Questionnaire (SIBUQ; Oliver et al. 1996) both before and after a 1-day training workshop. The workshops were based on principles of Applied Behaviour Analysis. The SIBUQ comprised questions about causes of challenging behaviours presented in 11 short scenarios. The four possible response options for each scenario reflected behaviourally correct, behaviourally incorrect, internal emotional, and internal organic causal explanations. Results: The number of correct behavioural causal hypotheses increased significantly from pre- to post-training. The proportion of incorrect causal explanations that were behavioural in orientation also increased significantly from pre- to post-training. Conclusions: Staff causal explanations for challenging behaviour can be changed using a relatively brief intervention. Further research is needed to establish whether such changes can be used to influence working culture in challenging behaviour services.

ObjectiveThe effects of positive- and negative peer modelling on children's consumption of a novel blue food, presented in each of four snack meals during an "activity" day, were evaluated. It was predicted that: (i) novel food consumption would increase after positive modelling, but decrease after negative modelling; (ii) modelling effects would generalise to a second novel blue food when participants were alone when they ate their snack; (iii) that positive modelling would reverse the effects of negative modelling.DesignA mixed design was employed with random assignment to either Groups A, B, or C (equal numbers of males and females per group). Within groups, each participant received the novel food on four snack occasions. Group A received positive modelling of blue food consumption on the first and third occasions, but were alone when they received the foods on the second and fourth occasions; Group B had negative modelling on the first occasion, positive modelling on the third, and ate alone on the second and fourth; Group C ate alone on all four occasions. To measure generalisation, an additional blue food was presented in all second and fourth "alone" occasions.ParticipantsThirty-five 5-7-year olds took part in Study 1, and 44 3-4-year olds in Study 2.ResultsAll main predictions were confirmed except that positive peer modelling did not reverse the effects of negative modelling in the 3-4-year olds.ConclusionNegative peer modelling inhibits novel food consumption, and its effects are particularly difficult to reverse in younger children.