Awareness of Recognition Memory for Polish and English Folk Songs in Polish and English Folk

Polish and English people listened either once or three times to excerpts from Polish and English folk songs before being given a recognition test in which, when recognising an excerpt, they had to report whether they remembered hearing it, knew they had heard it, or guessed they had heard it. Both Polish and English people remembered more of the excerpts from their own folk songs, and they remembered more of the excerpts they heard three times rather than once, regardless of the national background of the songs. They also knew they had heard more of the excerpts they heard three times, but only if they were from the other folk's songs. Repetition did not affect knowing songs from one's own national background. These findings confirm and extend previous findings suggesting that remembering and knowing are functionally independent states of awareness.     

Judging familiarity and emotion from very brief musical excerpts

In the present study, the gating paradigm was used to measure how much perceptual information that was extracted from musical excerpts needs to be heard to provide judgments of familiarity and of emotionality. Nonmusicians heard segments of increasing duration (250, 500, 1,000 msec, etc.). The stimuli were segments from familiar and unfamiliar musical excerpts in Experiment 1 and from very moving and emotionally neutral musical excerpts in Experiment 2. Participants judged how familiar (Experiment 1) or how moving (Experiment 2) the excerpt was to them. Results show that a feeling of familiarity can be triggered by 500-msec segments, and that the distinction between moving and neutral can be made for 250-msec segments. This finding extends the observation of fast-acting cognitive and emotional processes from face and voice perception to music perception.     

Reflections on Bill Kell: The Legend and His Legacy

Bill Kell influenced many contemporary counseling psychologists through his work as author and as director of training at the Michigan State University Counseling Center from 1957 until his death in 1973. This article describes the legend and legacy of Bill Kell, by using excerpts from six oral histories collected from former trainees, colleagues, and family members.     

Good pitch memory is widespread

Abstract - Here we show that good pitch memory is widespread among adults with no musical training. We tested unselected college students on their memory for the pitch level of instrumental soundtracks from familiar television programs. Participants heard 5-s excerpts either at the original pitch level or shifted upward or downward by 1 or 2 semitones. They successfully identified the original pitch levels. Other participants who heard comparable excerpts from unfamiliar recordings could not do so. These findings reveal that ordinary listeners retain fine-grained information about pitch level over extended periods. Adults' reportedly poor memory for pitch is likely to be a by-product of their inability to name isolated pitches.     

Psychological Aspects of Genetic Counseling: XII. More on Counseling Skills

Three brief excerpts of genetic counseling sessions are analyzed to illustrate difficulties in applying counseling skills. Suggestions are advanced as to how genetic counselors might improve their competence in counseling practices and handle such issues as transference more effectively.     

Infants' discrimination of happy and sad music

Infants can detect information specifying affect in infant- and adult-directed speech, familiar and unfamiliar facial expressions, and in point-light displays of facial expressions. We examined 3-, 5-, 7-, and 9-month-olds' discrimination of musical excerpts judged by adults and preschoolers as happy and sad. In Experiment 1, using an infant-controlled habituation procedure, 3-, 5-, 7-, and 9-month-olds heard three musical excerpts that were rated as either happy or sad. Following habituation, infants were presented with two new musical excerpts from the other affect group. Nine-month-olds discriminated the musical excerpts rated as affectively different. Five- and seven-month-olds discriminated the happy and sad excerpts when they were habituated to sad excerpts but not when they were habituated to happy excerpts. Three-month-olds showed no evidence of discriminating the sad and happy excerpts. In Experiment 2, 5-, 7-, and 9-month-olds were presented with two new musical excerpts from the same affective group as the habituation excerpts. At no age did infants discriminate these novel, yet affectively similar, musical excerpts. In Experiment 3, we examined 5-, 7-, and 9-month-olds' discrimination of individual excerpts rated as affectively similar. Only the 9-month-olds discriminated the affectively similar individual excerpts. Results are discussed in terms of infants' ability to discriminate affect across a variety of events and its relevance for later social-communicative development.     

Awareness of Genetic Counseling and Perceptions of its Purpose: A Survey of the Canadian Public

Genetic counseling can result in better outcomes when clients understand what to expect, and at least theoretically, at some point in their lifespan, anyone could be referred for or benefit from genetic counseling. Thus, in order to identify (and ultimately address) issues around awareness of genetic counseling and perceptions of its purpose, we surveyed the Canadian general population. We acquired 1,000 telephone numbers corresponding to a demographically representative sample of Canada from Survey Sampling International, and invited individuals to participate in a telephone-based survey. We administered a purpose-designed survey (in either French or English) comprising questions regarding: demographics, whether or not the individual had heard of genetic counseling, and 15 Likert scale-rated (strongly disagree—strongly agree) items about the possible purposes of genetic counseling. Responses to these 15 items were used to generate a total “knowledge score”. Of the 1,000 numbers, n?=?372 could not be reached, and the survey was successfully administered to n?=?188 individuals (response rate 30 %). Most respondents (n?=?129, 69 %) had not heard of genetic counseling, and substantial proportions thought that genetic counseling aims to prevent genetic diseases and abnormalities, help couples have children with desirable characteristics, and help people to understand their ancestry. These data could be used to inform the strategy for development of future awareness efforts, and as a baseline from which to measure their effects.     

Motivational Interviewing in the Reciprocal Engagement Model of Genetic Counseling: a Method Overview and Case Illustration

Motivational Interviewing is a well-described counseling method that has been applied to a broad range of health behavior encounters. Genetic counseling is an emerging area of utilization for the method of Motivational Interviewing. The relational and technical elements of the MI method are described within the context of genetic counseling encounters. Case excerpts will be used to illustrate incorporation of MI methods into the Reciprocal Engagement Model of the genetic counseling encounter.     

Individual needs and charismatic promises

Using psychoanalytic theory, the author explains how a woman came to devote herself to a man's group that conceived of itself as the New Kingdom of God. He refers to notes from counseling sessions with the woman, Jane, and to excerpts from the book,T, which is an autobiography of the group's leader, Thomas. The author compares their ego profiles as measured on ego assessment scales and argues that this allows us to see how Thomas gained his charismatic status.     

Individual Psychology as a Basis for the Counseling of Low Achieving Students

The counseling of low achieving students by use of a method bated on the principles of the Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler is described. The basic assumptions and techniques are presented along with excerpts from counseling sessions.     

Video in the College Classroom: An Exploratory Study

The effect of a counselor working directly with college teachers on a specific student learning problem—oral nonparticipation in discussion classes—was explored. Seven college history instructors viewed with a counselor videotaped excerpts of their own classroom discussion sessions. During playback sessions the counselor modeled and verbally and nonverbally reinforced certain instructor behaviors seen on video. Four instructors viewed tapes individually (IT) with the counselor; three instructors viewed tapes in a group (GT) with the counselor. Results: (1) Instructors reported video-playback counseling was very helpful in changing their behavior in the classroom; (2) Instructors became more aware of how verbal and nonverbal cues influence student behaviors; (3) Small group playbacks seemed as effective as individual playback procedure.     

Relationship Between a Feminist Approach to Career Counseling and Career Self-Efficacy Beliefs

To determine whether liberal feminist and conventional approaches to career counseling might differentially affect women's career self-efficacy beliefs, 40 college women heard audiotapes of career counseling and provided ratings of their own career self-efficacy. Analysis supported the suggestion that a feminist approach to career counseling can have a significantly more positive effect on career self-efficacy than a conventional approach. This was true for ratings on the category of nontraditional careers as well as for overall career self-efficacy ratings.     

Sexual Abuse Survivors: Identifying Symptoms and Special Treatment Considerations

Because of the prevalence of child sexual abuse, many adult counseling clients will have sexual abuse in their histories. Counselors should familiarize themselves with the symptoms of sexual abuse survivors to assist with disclosure. Failure to address the abuse will interfere with the success of the counseling process. Special sensitivity is required of counselors to provide a safe environment in which survivors can examine the pervasive impact of the abuse on their lives, explore and ventilate their feelings, and resolve the trauma so it ceases to block their development. An eclectic approach, including group counseling, is recommended.     

The Self of the Counselor

The counselor generally finds more difficulty in examining his “self” than in looking at the self of other counselors or of clients. On the assumption that the best display of counselor self occurs during the counseling relationship, a number of counseling excerpts are examined in an attempt to illustrate the level of counselor freedom. Counselor freedom is viewed as being related to the ability of the counselor to establish an empathic relationship with the client, to his ability to operate within the client's frame of reference, and to his ability to be genuine and honest in his relationship with the client.     

Memory for musical surface

This study of memory for music presented listeners with the first half of a short piano piece, O. Messiaen's Mode de valeurs et d'intensités. The piece is written according to a unique compositional principle that rigidly couples values of pitch (chroma and octave), duration, and dynamics. Listeners heard test excerpts, which were judged in terms of whether or not they might have come from the piece (either from the part they had heard or from the remainder of the piece). Even in the first block of trials, listeners were able to recognize segments from the part of the piece they had heard, suggesting surprisingly accurate memory for surface characteristics. Listeners were also able to generalize to the rest of the piece, accurately judging segments from the part of the piece they had not heard. However, performance on four kinds of transformed segments showed that the abstraction of a piece's surface characteristics adopts rather loose criteria. Even highly trained professional musicians informed of the compositional constraints before the experiment were not sensitive to the specific couplings between musical parameters. Rather, listeners appeared to be sensitive to contour (the pattern of increasing and decreasing pitch) and global correlations between pitch height and duration, dynamics, and interval size. Performance did not change with repeated hearings of the music.     

Misery loves company: mood-congruent emotional responding to music

We examined emotional responding to music after mood induction. On each trial, listeners heard a 30-s music excerpt and rated how much they liked it, whether it sounded happy or sad, and how familiar it was. When the excerpts sounded unambiguously happy or sad (Experiment 1), the typical preference for happy-sounding music was eliminated after inducing a sad mood. When the excerpts sounded ambiguous with respect to happiness and sadness (Experiment 2), listeners perceived more sadness after inducing a sad mood. Sad moods had no influence on familiarity ratings (Experiments 1 and 2). These findings imply that "misery loves company." Listeners in a sad mood fail to show the typical preference for happy-sounding music, and they perceive more sadness in music that is ambiguous with respect to mood.     

Using found poetry to illuminate the existential and posttraumatic growth of women with breast cancer engaging in art therapy

Arts-based research (ABR) is an expanding methodological genre, which adapts the tenets of the creative arts to make social science research accessible, evocative, and engaging. It crosses the boundaries of both art and science, but has made few inroads within the discipline of psychology. This article describes a pilot project examining how art-making shaped the trajectories of women diagnosed and treated for breast cancer. Using ABR as a way of distilling the findings, we demonstrate how experiences of existential and posttraumatic growth can be understood more intensely and profoundly through found poetry. Found poems (excerpts from interviews reframed as poetry) offer a richer, more meaningful, and potent evocation of themes than traditional coding categories. Poetry permits the voice of the participant to be more clearly heard and allows the reader to access deeper insights and understandings of the complexities of growth through adversity.     

Memory for frequency of hearing popular songs

In two experiments college students were asked to provide situational frequency estimates of 10-s excerpts from rock songs. In both experiments familiarity of the musical selections heard one, two, three, or four times was varied. In Experiment 2 the nature of instructions given to subjects prior to presentation of the musical excerpts was also manipulated. Across both experiments subjects' estimates were less accurate for unfamiliar than for familiar rock music. In Experiment 2 instructions to remember frequency, as well as general memory instructions, resulted in better memory for presentation frequency than did instructions to "ignore" music while working on math problems. Memory for situational frequency was also related to knowledge of rock music as defined by subjects' ability to identify the titles and artists of the presented songs. The present pattern of results with popular music is viewed as similar to that obtained in experiments investigating memory for frequency of verbal stimuli. Although providing support for an automatic processing view of frequency encoding, the results also implicate meaningful elaboration of stimuli as an important determinant of memory for frequency of events.     

Direct-to-Consumer Personal Genomic Testing: A Case Study and Practical Recommendations for “Genomic Counseling”

Technological advances and information-seeking consumers have pushed forward the movement of direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing. Just like with other types of testing, there are potential risks, benefits and limitations. A major limitation of DTC testing is the incomplete view it provides regarding lifetime risk for common, complex diseases, since most tests only analyze 1–2 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and do not include evaluation of medical or family histories, which is necessary to risk assessment. Further, it is not currently well-established whether personal genomic testing results will lead toward improved health behaviors, adverse psychological effects or potential overuse of the health care system. To display these and other issues, we present an in-depth case study of an individual who ordered DTC genetic testing and subsequently sought genetic counseling. This case presents a unique learning experience for the field of genomic counseling, as the patient did not fit the typical assumptions regarding ‘early adopters’ of DTC testing. It also allowed the genetics health care providers involved in the case to identify gaps in current genetic counseling practice that need to be filled and approaches to employ for successful delivery of genomic counseling. Based on our experience, we developed practical recommendations for genomic counseling, which include novel approaches to case preparation, use of electronic tools during the counseling session, and focusing on education as the major component of the genomic counseling session, in order to provide patients with the knowledge necessary to independently interpret and understand large amounts of genomic testing information provided to them.