Identifying emergent leaders in psychotherapy groups

This paper is the second in the series on group development and emergent leadership. It describes the design of a sociometric instrument which will be used for the identification of the four emerging leaders from the perspective of the group participants themselves. These four leaders, Task, Emotional, Scapegoat and Defiant, perform ongoing maintenance functions in the group and take up the critical function of spokesmen in the group's dialectical processing of phase-specific, group level issues. The goal here is to design an instrument which would allow both clinician and researcher to identify these critical persons early in a group's life.Ariadne P. Back is in private practice in Chicago, Illinois.     

Acquisition of information from rapidly presented verbal and nonverbal stimuli

Two experiments tested recognition memory for rapidly presented stimuli. In Experiment I 16 words were presented at exposure times ranging from 25 to 500 msec followed by a yes-no recognition test. The results showed a strong dependence of memory performance on both exposure time and serial position. In Experiment II 16 random forms were presented at exposure times ranging from 125 to 2000 msec followed by a yes-no recognition test. Results for random forms showed that memory performance was strongly dependent on exposure time but not on serial position. Taken together, the results of Experiments I and II suggest qualitative encoding differences between verbal vs nonverbal stimuli.     

Matched false-belief performance during verbal and nonverbal interference

Language has been shown to play a key role in the development of a child's theory of mind, but its role in adult belief reasoning remains unclear. One recent study used verbal and nonverbal interference during a false-belief task to show that accurate belief reasoning in adults necessarily requires language (Newton & de Villiers, 2007). The strength of this inference depends on the cognitive processes that are matched between the verbal and nonverbal inference tasks. Here, we matched the two interference tasks in terms of their effects on spatial working memory. We found equal success on false-belief reasoning during both verbal and nonverbal interference, suggesting that language is not specifically necessary for adult theory of mind.     

Modality-specific interference with verbal and nonverbal stimulus information

Subjects recalled both letters and the locations of letters in 2 by 3 and 1 by 6 matrices after either no interfering activity or visual, auditory, or kinesthetic interfering activity. Results for each type of matrix indicated the presence of selective auditory (verbal) interference with the recall of letter identity and selective visual and kinesthetic interference with the recall of letter location. Supplementary correlational analyses indicated that the presence of such a dual encoding strategy was most consistent across subjects for the 2 by 3 matrix. Although the results indicated that use of different modes of representation was related to the verbal-nonverbal nature of the information, it was shown that the structure of the stimulus array also affected the nature of the representation.     

Visual imagery ability and the recognition of verbal and nonverbal stimuli.

High and low visual imagers, defined as such primarily on the basis of spatial manipulation test performance, were required to identify tachistoscopically-presented pictures, concrete words, and abstract words varying in familiarity. Two recognition paradigms were employed, recognition threshold and recognition latency. High imagers were faster in picture recognition under both paradigms when a nonverbal set or strategy was primed and when pictures were relatively unfamiliar in the threshold paradigm. No relationship was found between imagery ability and word recognition in the visual modality, nor was visual imagery ability related to the auditory recognition of verbal and nonverbal stimuli, such as words and environmental sounds. Commonalities between these findings and others in the imagery ability literature were noted.     

Variability signatures distinguish verbal from nonverbal counting for both large and small numbers

Humans appear to share with animals a nonverbal counting process. In a nonverbal counting condition, subjects pressed a key a numeral-specified number of times, while saying “the” at every press. The mean number of presses increased as a power function of the target number, with a constant coefficient of variation (c.v.), both within and beyond the proposed subitizing range (1–4 or 5), suggesting small numbers are represented on the same continuum as larger numbers and subject to the same noise process (scalar variability). By contrast, when subjects counted their presses out loud as fast as they could, the c.v. decreased as the inverse square root of the target value (binomial variability instead of scalar variability). The unexpected power-law relation between target value and mean number of presses in nonverbal counting suggests a new hypothesis about the development of the function relating number symbols to mental magnitudes.     

Interrelations of verbal and nonverbal measures used in experimental aesthetics

Berlyne, D. E. Interrelations of verbal and non-verbal measures used in experimental aesthetics. Scand. J. Psychol., 1973, 14, 177–184.MdashIn Experiment I, 40 miscellaneous visual patterns were rated on 12 scales. Factor analysis of correlations over patterns indicates three factors, provisionally labeled Complexity-Uncertainty. Hedonic Value, and Cortical Arousal. Factor loadings and significant differences among estimated factor scores are discussed with special reference to (1) relations with Osgood's dimensions (2) scales indicative of pleasure and discomfort and (3) scales indicative of arousal. Experiment II measured looking time. Relations between this measure and verbal judgments are examined.     

Age-related changes in verbal and nonverbal memory during early childhood

In the present experiment, age-related changes in verbal and nonverbal memory performance by 2- to 4-year-old children were assessed. All children participated in the same unique event, and their memory of that event was assessed after a 24-hr delay. Overall, children's performance on each memory measure increased as a function of age. Furthermore, children's performance on both the verbal and nonverbal memory tests was related to their language ability; children with more advanced language skills reported more during the verbal interview and exhibited superior nonverbal memory relative to children with less advanced language skills. Finally, children's verbal recall of the event lagged behind both their nonverbal recall and their general verbal skill. It is hypothesized that despite large strides in language acquisition. preschool-age children continue to rely primarily on nonverbal representations of past events. The findings have important implications for the phenomenon of childhood amnesia.     

Regional cerebral blood flow patterns during verbal and nonverbal auditory activation

Current views of the relationship between audition and cerebral function suggest that increases in regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) would occur in the superior, mid, and posterior portions of the temporal lobes, and that these changes would be more lateralized to the left hemisphere for a verbal than a nonverbal auditory task. We measured rCBF using the xenon inhalation technique in a group of healthy subjects during three conditions: (1) resting baseline, (2) auditory verbal activation (listening for word meaning), and (3) auditory nonverbal activation (listening for reduction of intensity in a series of noise bursts). Both verbal and nonverbal conditions produced highly significant increases in rCBF over the left posterior Sylvian region with a trend for verbal activation to evoke a wider area of flow increase than the nonverbal task.