Soldiers: a suitable case for treatment?

This paper examines the soldier's world in order the illuminate their potential psychotherapeutic need. It briefly explores the history of therapeutic treatment of soldiers from the Russo-Japanese War of 1904/1905 to modern conflicts as well as covering operations other than war, such as peacekeeping in Northern Ireland. Specific conditions, including PTSD, are considered and some general points are made for counsellors and psychotherapists without a military background.     

Is there a memory for sentences?

A critical discussion of the model of sentence memory which enjoyed greatest popularity in the psycholinguistic research of the sixties, namely the model based on the deep-structure-plus-tag hypothesis of sentence memory, is presented together with the results of an experiment on prompted recall for sentences with various intervals after presentation and with two types of instructions. This experiment contributed to show that immediate memory for sentences can be affected by appropriate instructions, and that after a short time after presentation only the main semantic information of the sentences is recalled. An alternative model is presented, based on the notion of storage of the meaningful elements of the sentences in a rather abstract form, and of recall as a reconstructive process to produce new sentences. The results of two new experiments on sentence memory, the first a free and prompted recall experiment with children, the second a recognition memory study with adolescents, are then presented and discussed in relation to the model.     

Is exposure a necessary condition for fear-reduction?

In most of the effective techniques for reducing fear, exposure to the fear-provoking stimulus is a prominent feature. It is argued that in many circumstances, engaged exposure to the fear stimuli is a sufficient condition for fear-reduction, but there is no good reason for supposing that such exposure is a necessary condition for fear-reduction. Seven examples of fear-reduction apparently taking place in the absence of exposure are used to illustrate the argument. Some theoretical and practical consequences of the argument are introduced.     

Is Forgotten Evidence a Problem for Evidentialism?

The “problem of forgotten evidence” is a common objection to evidentialist theories of epistemic justification. This objection is motivated by cases where someone forms a belief on the basis of supporting evidence and then later forgets this evidence while retaining the belief. Critics of evidentialist theories argue that in some of these cases the person's belief remains justified. So, these critics claim that one can have a justified belief that is not supported by any evidence the subject possesses. I argue that these critics are mistaken.     

Is inclusion a valid control for ostracism?

Considerable knowledge about ostracism’s impact comes from research using Cyberball, an online ball-tossing game. In Cyberball, the inclusion condition is the control condition, to which ostracism is compared. The assumption is that Cyberball-inclusion is not affirming and represents an expected level of inclusion. However, without a no-inclusion control condition, it is unclear whether inclusion elevates need satisfaction, whether ostracism depresses need satisfaction, or both. We introduce Cybertree—a control condition designed to provide a similar experience to Cyberball without inclusion. Individuals playing Cybertree did not differ from included individuals in terms of feeling ostracized, level of need satisfaction, and mood. Both Cyberball inclusion and Cybertree differed significantly from ostracized individuals. We conclude that Cyberball inclusion is a reasonable control group for Cyberball ostracism but discuss research questions that may benefit from the use of Cybertree.     

Is believing for a normative reason a composite condition?

Here is a surprisingly neglected question in contemporary epistemology: what is it for an agent to believe that p in response to a normative reason for them to believe that p? On one style of answer, believing for the normative reason that q factors into believing that p in the light of the apparent reason that q, where one can be in that kind of state even if q is false, in conjunction with further independent conditions such as q’s being a normative reason to believe that p. The primary objective of this paper is to demonstrate that that style of answer cannot be right, because we must conceive of believing for a normative reason as constitutively involving a kind of rationality-involving relation that can be instantiated at all only if there is a known fact on the scene, which the agent treats as a normative reason. A secondary objective, achieved along the way, is to demonstrate that in their Prime Time (for the Basing Relation) Errol Lord and Kurt Sylvan do not succeed in undermining the factoring picture in general, only a simple-minded version of it.

     

Is a closed mind better for students?

A commentary is given on the seven articles in this special issue. Ordered in terms of interest and importance this readers preference list begins with the broad review articles by Boekaerts, De Raad and Schouwenburg, and Messick, in this order. Next comes the curious article by Eysenck. It is curious because it so clearly reveals his continuing refusal to accept Conscientiousness or W as an independent factor of personality. How to open a closed mind? The three research articles left this reader in a state of depression, mostly because of the negative correlations found in two of the three studies between students self-ratings on Openness and their grades obtained in the early years of University schooling.     

Is culture a problem for social psychology?

Culture has been regarded as an anathema to psychology as an empiricist research tradition. Despite the explosive growth of research on culture and psychology over the last decade of the 20th century and its importance in Asian social psychology, the ontological and epistemological tension between psychology as a science and psychology as a cultural/historical discipline introduced in the writings of the thinkers of the Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment still lingers on in the contemporary discourse of psychology. Clifford Geertz once ominously suggested that cultural psychology may have chewed more than it can. In the present paper, the interpretive turn in social science as exemplified by writings of Charles Taylor and Paul Ricoeur is reviewed and how it may impinge on the practice of Asian social psychology as an empirical science in methodological, epistemological, and ontological respects is discussed. It is argued here that the current practice of Asian social psychology is largely, though not entirely, free of the challenges mounted by these theorists, and that Asian social psychology has an advantage of not being encumbered by this traditional tension due to a monist ontology that is prevalent in Asia.     

Is cognitive behaviour therapy for chronic fatigue syndrome also effective for pain symptoms?

Patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) frequently report chronic pain symptoms. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for CFS results in a reduction of fatigue, but is not aimed at pain symptoms. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that a successful treatment of CFS can also lead to a reduction of pain. The second objective was to explore possible mechanisms of changes in pain. The third objective was to assess the predictive value of pain for treatment outcome. Data from two previous CBT studies were used, one of adult CFS patients (n=96) and one of adolescent CFS patients (n=32). Pain severity was assessed with a daily self-observation list at baseline and post-treatment. The location of pain in adults was assessed with the McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ). Patients were divided into recovered and non-recovered groups. Recovery was defined as reaching a post-treatment level of fatigue within normal range. Recovered adult and adolescent CFS patients reported a significant reduction of pain severity compared to non-recovered patients. Recovered adult patients also had fewer pain locations following treatment. The decrease in fatigue predicted the change in pain severity. In adult patients, a higher pain severity at baseline was associated with a negative treatment outcome.     

Is there a place for Feminists in a Christian Church?

Based on a dialogue held on 16 May 1986 in London at Westminster Cathedral Hall, and organised by Catholic Women's Network and Women in Theology. Dr Daphne Hampson presents her own position at length, Dr Rosemary Ruether responds to it at length, and a discussion between the two of them follows.     

Is there a universal need for positive self-regard?

It is assumed that people seek positive self-regard; that is, they are motivated to possess, enhance, and maintain positive self-views. The cross-cultural generalizability of such motivations was addressed by examining Japanese culture. Anthropological, sociological, and psychological analyses revealed that many elements of Japanese culture are incongruent with such motivations. Moreover, the empirical literature provides scant evidence for a need for positive self-regard among Japanese and indicates that a self-critical focus is more characteristic of Japanese. It is argued that the need for self-regard must be culturally variant because the constructions of self and regard themselves differ across cultures. The need for positive self-regard, as it is currently conceptualized, is not a universal, but rather is rooted in significant aspects of North American culture. Conventional interpretations of positive self-regard are too narrow to encompass the Japanese experience.     

Is There a Cognitive Basis for Religious Belief?

This paper explores whether the psychological study of cognition can provide insight into how religious beliefs are formed and maintained. A review of illustrative findings from the research literature suggests three themes: First, regularities in our everyday experience are primarily identified through assessment of individual situations rather than through use of all relevant data. Second, preconceptions are highly important in shaping perceptions and interpretations of new experience. Finally, intense emotions often generate an inaccurate sense of certainty regarding beliefs congruent with these emotions. The applicability of these themes to the relationship between religious experience and religious belief is examined. The paper concludes by briefly discussing whether the increasing proportion of the population receiving statistical and scientific training will influence the level of religious belief in Western culture.     

Is there a dual system for regular inflections?

A central question in morphological research is whether there are whole-word representations for regularly inflected forms. A series of four lexical decision experiments addressed this question by looking at whole-word frequency effects across a range of frequency values with constant stem-cluster frequencies. Frequency effects were only found for inflected forms above a threshold of about 6 per million, whereas such effects were found for morphologically simple controls in all frequency ranges. We discuss these data in the context of two kinds of dual models and in relation to competition models proposed within the connectionist literature.