Dark adaptation of foveal cones during the cone-plateau period

Following substantial bleaching by "white" light, absolute threshold, relative spectral sensitivity and sensation of hue of monochromatic lights were measured at the central fovea during the cone-plateau period. The absolute-threshold level was found to increase and then decrease markedly, the relative spectral sensitivity remained invariant, while the sensation of hues of monochromatic lights from the long- and middle-wave regions of the spectrum changed toward hues of shorter wavelengths.     

Conflict resolution and social understanding in six to twelve year old boys

Three different aspects of children's social competency were studied, i.e. social methods, (via their suggested solution to given conflict situations), social understanding (via their explanations of the solution given) and role-taking capacity. 75 boys—ages 6, 8 and 12 years—were interviewed concerning different conflict situations, six of which involved a child/child interaction and six a child/adult interaction. A separate role-taking task was also used. Developmental differences in social methods were found only in situations involving adults, where older children to a greater extent chose altruistic methods for solving the conflict. As regards social understanding, developmental changes were found and correspond to results reported by previous researchers. Role-taking capacity was found to increase with age. Role-taking as measured here was not related to social understanding. Social method and social understanding were significantly related to each other in some of the situations, mainly in those involving only children. The results indicate that different norms prevail for solving conflicts with adults versus with peers, and that the role-taking aspect is but one of several involved in the development of social understanding.     

A systemic belief approach to epileptic seizures: A case of being spellbound

A systemic treatment approach, namely systemic belief therapy, has been found to be useful when dealing with families constraining beliefs when experiencing physical health problems. Two interventions which facilitate the altering of constraining beliefs are the externalization of physical symptoms and therapeutic letters. Epileptic seizures are examined in the context of the interaction between families and health care professionals. A case example is presented which highlights the use of this systemic approach to assist a young couple in challenging their beliefs about their ability to control and monitor epileptic seizures.     

Overt repetition as a means of controlling rehearsal

Abstract.— Three different ways of using the concept of rehearsal were discussed. Examples were presented showing confusions in the literature due to a failure to distinguish these three definitions. A free recall experiment was conducted with the purpose of investigating three problems relating to the concept of rehearsal: ( a ) an unclear relationship between overt and covert repetition, ( b ) whether overt repetition excluded other control processes, and (c) whether a shallow repetition produces a permanent memory trace or not. Using a pronounced time pressure it was demonstrated first that overt repetition facilitated recall performance of recency items and that recall of primacy items was facilitated by covert repetition. Secondly, it was shown that overt repetition did not exclude other types of encoding. Finally, a shallow maintaining repetition did not produce a permanent memory trace. The results are interpreted as supporting a level of processing point of view rather than a multistore approach.     

Treatment of bipolar depression

Bipolar disorder is underdiagnosed and often mistaken for unipolar depression. Bipolar patients spend 33% of their time in a state of depression compared to 11% of time spent in a manic state. Duration of time depressed and severity of depression are associated with increased risk for suicide, which occurs in 10% to 20% of bipolar patients. Antidepressants are increasingly being used as adjuncts in the depressed phase of bipolar disorder, although they provide a moderate risk for switch into mania. Lithium and some antiepileptics and atypical antipsychotics have shown antidepressant effects in the treatment of bipolar disorder. Other adjuncts for treatment-refractory patients include monoamine oxidase inhibitors and electroconvulsive therapy.     

Vollmer on Allport-some short comments

In an earlier issue of this journal, Fred Vollmer criticizes Allport's rejection of operational definitions (Vollmer, 1974), He states that it is useless to postulate an internal structure behind or within the observations made of personality. These observations constitute personality. Thus psychologists should only study the observed phenomena and operational definitions are important tools in this endeavour. In this reply we want to show that his views are confused and try to point out the roots of this confusion.     

The Contributions of Child Behavioral Functioning and Parent Distress to Family Functioning in Pediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease

The objective of this study was to examine the relative contributions of both parental and adolescent functioning to family functioning in adolescent patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and their families. Participants were 45 adolescents (27 male, 18 female) 13-17?years old (M?=?15.41?years, SD?=?1.32) with IBD and their parents. Families completed measures of patient behavioral functioning and depression, parent distress and family functioning. Disease severity assessments were completed via data provided by patients' gastroenterologists. Results indicated that parent-reported patient behavioral problems accounted for a significant 26% of variance in family functioning. Post-hoc analysis revealed that externalizing behavior problems accounted for the majority of this variance compared to internalizing behavior problems. These results suggest that externalizing problems may have a more significant impact on these families than previous research indicates. Moreover, externalizing behaviors may significantly impact family adaptation and should be taken into consideration during routine clinical care. Further research is needed to replicate and expand upon these findings.     

'Talk to me baby, tell me what's the matter now': Semiotic and developmental perspectives on communication in psychoanalytic infant treatment

Infants suffer to a considerable degree from disturbances in nursing, sleep, mood, and attachment. Psychotherapeutic methods are increasingly used to help them. According to case reports, psychoanalytic work with infants and mothers has shown deep‐reaching and often surprisingly rapid results, both in symptom reduction and in improved relations between mother and child. The clinical urgency of the method makes it important to study its results and theoretical underpinnings. Among the theoretical issues often raised in discussions on this modifi ed form of psychoanalysis, those addressing the nature of communication between analyst, baby, and the mother are the most frequent. For example, how and what does an infant understand when the analyst interprets to her? What does the analyst understand of the infant's communication? These issues are addressed by investigating the infant's tools for understanding linguistic and emotional communication, and by providing a semiotic framework for describing the communication between the three participants in the analytic setting. The paper also investigates problems with the traditional ways of using the concept of symbolization within psychoanalytic theory. The theoretical investigation is illustrated by two brief vignettes from psychoanalytic work with an 8 month‐old girl and her mother. demand for the breast. Like the two lovers in the blues, they seemed to be slaves to     

Dark-adaptation of the human rod system: A new hypothesis

Following a long, full bleach, rod dark-adaptation curves from two normal trichromats were obtained with test fields of various size, exposure time and retinal eccentricity. The results show that there is a substantial region of threshold recovery with an approximately constant, linear slope of about 0.27 log per minute of dark-adaptation, which is independent of the test variables. It is suggested that the increase in sensitivity during this constant, linear slope is completely determined by changes in the concentration of bleached rhodopsin. The relationship between change of relative threshold (T) and fraction of bleached rhodopsin ( B ) is given by T=B ^3,7. This exponential law is well described by the displacement of the equilibrium between the active and inactive states of an allosteric enzyme built as a tetrarner.     

Mechanisms of long-term dark adaptation

It has previously been suggested that long-term dark adaptation is controlled by bleaching signals that regulate the activity of an allosteric, positively cooperative protein (Stabell et al., 1986a, b). Recent biochemical evidence strongly supports this assumption, indicating that the primary regulator of the light-sensitive channels in the plasma membrane of the outer segments of the photoreceptors is a homo-oligomeric, allosteric, positively cooperative protein. In this report, we discuss the possibility that signals from bleached photopigments may control the dark-adaptation process through the allosteric protein of the plasma membrane. It is suggested that the concentrations of the bleached photopigment and of the allosteric effector are reciprocal quantities.