Metacognition reflects a spectrum of activities that includes discrete acts in which persons form ideas about specific thoughts and feelings, and synthetic acts in which persons integrate discrete thoughts and feelings into complex representations of themselves and others. This article reviews literature suggesting that persons with schizophrenia and related psychosis experience deficits across the spectrum of metacognitive activities and that these deficits play a key role in dysfunction, often mediating and moderating the impact of symptoms and social adversity on daily life. Treatment approaches including metacognitive training and adaptations of psychotherapy are still in their infancy. Future work is needed to study the etiology of deficits in discrete and synthetic metacognition, as well as their overlap with related constructs such as mentalization and social cognition.

We coded the content of mediation agreements reached by families receiving parenting‐related mediation services at a law school community clinic. We compared agreements reached by families identified as having or not having a history of intimate partner violence (IPV) on a variety of issues hypothesized to be related to risk of future interparental contact and conflict and thus violence. Families with and without a history of IPV did not make significantly different legal or physical custody or parenting‐time arrangements. Nor did these groups differ in specifying the details of how to handle some issues that could lead to future conflict (e.g., making up missed parenting time). They also did not differ in the likelihood of agreeing to supervised visitation or exchanges of children in public places. However, agreements of families with a history of IPV were more likely to include safety restrictions (e.g., restrictions on interparental fighting, physical discipline of children, substance use) and counseling referrals. We discuss implications of the study findings in the context of the debate surrounding mediation with families who have experienced IPV. Key Points for Family Court Community: The appropriateness of mediation with families exhibiting a history of IPV is a focal point of debate in family law. This work compares the content of mediation agreements reached by families with and without a history of IPV in a law school community clinic.

Divorce mediation, an alternative to litigation when resolving disputes raised by the dissolution of a marriage or the separation of unmarried parents, has gained popularity over the past few decades. Yet, research is needed to better understand what processes make family mediation successful and for whom family mediation is successful. To study predictors of reaching agreement in family mediation, we gathered data from divorce and paternity cases at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law Viola J. Taliaferro Family and Children Mediation Clinic. Numerous factors, including history of intimate partner violence, father's reported concerns about participating in mediation, higher levels of father's income, number of mediation sessions, and attorney representation, were associated with lower rates of agreement. Associations between significant predictors are presented, as well as the combined impact of attorney representation and a history of relationship violence, which together significantly predicted lower agreement rates. The implications of these findings for understanding family mediation processes are considered.

Handling mediation cases with a history of intimate partner violence (IPV) is one of the most controversial issues in the field of divorce mediation. Before deciding whether and how to mediate cases with IPV, mediators must first detect violence. Using random assignment of cases to an enhanced screening condition (n ϭ 30) and to a standard screening control condition (n ϭ 31), we compared information gathered from a brief, behaviorally specific IPV screening questionnaire to mediators' independent determination of the presence or absence of violence using standard mediation clinic screening procedures. Mediators did not label as violent about half of the cases reporting IPV on the screening questionnaire. Mediators were more likely to report IPV when fathers were reported (by mothers) to have engaged in a greater number of differing violent behaviors, but a score reflecting severity and frequency of party reported violence did not predict mediator detection of violence. In cases with two mediators, mediators did not always agree on whether or not the case involved IPV. Possible reasons for the differences in mediator and party reports of IPV are considered, and we emphasize the potential importance of using systematic methods to screen for violence in divorce mediation.

No abstract