When Knowing Becomes Remembering: Individual Differences in Susceptibility to Suggestion

In two experiments, the authors explored factors that might influence a person's tendency to make source-monitoring errors about autobiographical memories. In the first experiment, undergraduates retrieved a memory from childhood (a) that was known about but not remembered, (b) that was remembered, or (c) for which they were unsure of their memory's source. After writing down the memory, experimental groups listened to a guided visualization tape and answered questions about the event—interventions designed to help them focus on details of their memory. Controls also retrieved and wrote down a memory; however, instead of visualizing the memory, they were instructed to conduct a visual search task. Results indicated that guided visualization led participants to rate known memories closer to remembered events. A second experiment examined individual difference variables that might be related to this know-to-remember shift. Results indicated that extraversion, external locus of control, a memory that conveyed fear, and overall affective content predicted this rating. The applicability of these findings to the psychotherapy process is discussed.     

Self-Control: A Function of Knowing When and How to Exercise Restraint

ABSTRACT— To successfully pursue a goal in the face of temptation, an individual must first identify that she faces a self-control conflict. Only then will the individual exercise self-control to promote goal pursuit over indulging in temptation. We propose a new model that distinguishes between the problems of conflict identification and those of conflict resolution. We then review research on the factors that influence conflict identification and those that determine conflict resolution.     

Suicide Among Minority Elderly: A Preliminary Investigation

ABSTRACT: In the United States, suicide has traditionally been considered a White elderly phenomenon. Suicide rates have been increasing for Nonwhites in recent years, but it is not clear how this may have affected the age distribution, particularly for specific Nonwhite groups. An investigation of official 1976 suicide statistics among minority elderly revealed that suicide rates are also highest among the old for Chinese-, Japanese- and Filipino-Americans. Among Blacks and Native Americans, however, suicide rates are extremely low for the aged. Explanations for these findings are suggested and the need for a long-term study is indicated.     

Suicide Prevention in the Elderly (Age 65–99)

Suicide rates by age are highest among older adults. Subpopulations of elderly adults at high risk are identified, including White males, the target of a Healthy People 2000 Objective. Several specific programs are described and a range of measures to prevent suicide in late life are suggested. These measures include primary prevention steps related to education and information dissemination, and secondary prevention involving early identification and assessment of the depressed and suicidal as well as improved referral efforts.     

Physiological Reactions to a Suicide Film: Suicide Attempters,Suicide Ideators,and Nonsuicidal Patients

A film about two teenagers who commit suicide was shown to three groups of psychiatric inpatients: 17 who had attempted suicide, 20 who had expressed suicidal thoughts, and 10 who were not suicidal. Anxiety before and after the film was evaluated with psychometric (anxiety rating scale) and physiological tools (heart and respiration rate, blood pressure, electromyogram). Values noted before and after screening, and the degree of change in these values, were compared. In addition, psychomotor agitation was rated at several points during the film. Most results were negative. The suicide attempters had significantly lower postscreening heart rates and a significantly lesser change in heart and respiration rates than the other two groups. The suicide attempters revealed an increase in psychomotor agitation until the discovery of the suicide and a decrease thereafter, whereas the agitation of the nonsuicidal patients continued to increase from the start to the end of the film. The study suggests that on some parameters, suicide attempters reveal less anxiety than nonsuicidal psychiatric patients following exposure to a simulated suicide. The reaction of suicide ideators falls somewhere between the two groups.     

Saying Goodbye to Our Children: A Phenomenon of Soul-Making

In this article, the author navigates a personal yet common circumstance as a possible experience of soul-making, a concept outlined by James Hillman in his pivotal text Re-Visioning Psychology. Pulling the four moves of personifying, pathologizing, psychologizing, and dehumanizing through the life event of a child's graduating from high school and moving onto college, the author reveals, through the myths of Chronos, Ananke, Demeter, and Persephone, how saying goodbye to our children can deepen our relationship with psyche. The article offers an accessible interpretation of the often heady and conceptual theories of Hillman and describes a process of learning to accept and even come to find love in the inevitability of one's own mortality.     

The Goodbye Brochure: Helping Students to Cope With Transition and Loss

This article describes a brochure that has been used by various college personnel in their attempts to help students in coping with transition and loss. The brochure's content is presented, and its development, use, merits, and limitations are discussed.     

Compound-Schedules Approaches to Noncompliance: Teaching Children When to Ask and When to Work

Researchers have demonstrated for practitioners how to use multiple-schedules preparations to thin initially dense schedules of reinforcement during functional communication training, without sacrificing benefits associated with dense schedules of reinforcement for manding. However, special considerations may be required for practitioners to successfully apply this strategy to noncompliance. The purpose of our study was to evaluate whether multiple-schedules preparations could maintain contextually prescribed compliance and manding during interventions for noncompliance. For one participant, a multiple-schedules intervention was sufficient to establish socially valid outcomes. For the other, chained-schedules modifications were required before compliance emerged in relevant components.     

不宜说海灯名誉侵权案终审结果已被普遍接受

北京某刊物2001年第8期刊登<别让真实遭尴尬>一文,就<四川日报>记者敬永祥因揭露海灯法师而被法庭判决败诉一案提出质疑:某些虚伪的事实何以能在一审、终审中被法庭采信?文章指出,法律在任何情况下都不应是少数或地方长官意志的体现,法律毕竟不能创造或伪证事实性真实.这些言论是完全正确的.     

A Priori Knowledge of the World: Knowing the World by Knowing our Minds

Philosophical Studies -