'Stuckness' in live supervision: Expanding the therapist's style

'Stuckness' in the live supervision of family therapy trainees can be used creatively to affect their style and expand their use of self in therapy. Supervisors, after clarifying the contract with their trainees, need to examine how their therapeutic style is constrained by personal qualities. These personal constraints may be related to generic difficulties in their personal, professional and cultural context. These include anxieties generated by the situation oflive supervision, or learning to increase stress to a greater level than the trainees learned to tolerate in their families of origin. Observing an impasse that is influenced by these qualities, the supervisor, who also analyses his or her part in the process, can change the supervisory relationship.     

From the institute to the ivory tower: The live supervision stage approach for teaching supervision in academic settings

Abstract

In this paper, we describe an experimental academic course on marriage and family therapy supervision. The course, an adapted version of an institute program, was taught in four stages, combined a seminar and a practicum, and culminated with live supervision of live supervision.     

Temporal integration in duration and number discrimination

Temporal integration in duration and number discrimination by rats was investigated with the use of a psychophysical choice procedure. A response on one lever ("short" response) following a 1-s white-noise signal was followed by food reinforcement, and a response on the other lever ("long" response) following a 2-s white-noise signal was also followed by food reinforcement. Either response following a signal of one of five intermediate durations was unreinforced. This led to a psychophysical function in which the probability of a long response was related to signal duration in an ogival manner. On 2 test days, a white-noise signal with 5, 6, 7, 8, or 10 segments of either 0.5-s on and 0.5-s off or 1-s on and 1-s off was presented, and a choice response following these signals was unreinforced. The probability of a long response was the same function of a segmented signal and a continuous signal if each segment was considered equivalent to 200 ms. A quantitative fit of a scalar estimation theory suggested that the latencies to initiate temporal integration and to terminate the process are both about 200 ms, and that the same internal accumulation process can be used for counting and timing.     

The frequency,sources, and correlates of sexual harassment among women in traditional male occupations

Sexual harassment has increasingly come to be recognized as a major problem confronting working women. Utilizing the results of a survey of women in traditional male occupations (N=160), this paper summarizes some new data on the amount, type, and sources of harassment experienced by this group. Interpreting these findings within the content of the larger theory of patriarchy, it also identifies and provides further clarification of some individual and organizational correlates of harassment. The data offer provisional support for recent theoretical claims that women in male-defined occupations occupy a particularly problematic position vis-`a-vis men. Over 75% of the respondents reported experiencing at least one form of harassment as compared to the 50% + generally cited for the population as a whole. Consistent with the general cultural patterns of sexual violation, incidence of harassment was found to be inversely related to the level of severity. Probably predicated at least partially on opportunity structure, peers were cited as the most frequent source of harassment, followed by supervisors, subordinates and clients. A number of individual correlates of harassment were also identified. As expected, married workers and older respondents reported lower levels of harassment. A curvilinear relationship was found to exist between length of employment and harassment. Finally, respondents who were employed as managers and engineers reported approximately equal levels of harassment, while those in the professions such as the sciences, computers, public administration, etc., reported significantly lower levels of harassment. Consistent with the thesis of organizational culpability in the prevalence and persistence of sexual harassment, individuals employed in firms perceived to have high equal employment opportunity for women reported significantly lower levels of harassment than those in firms with low opportunity.     

How Spencer made number: First uses of the number words

This article describes the development of number concepts between infancy and early childhood. It is based on a diary study that tracked number word use in a child from 12 to 38 months of age. Number words appeared early in the child’s vocabulary, but accurate reference to specific numerosities evolved gradually over the entire 27-month period. Reliable performance on standardized number and counting tasks lagged behind accurate number use in informal settings by many months. Although there was evidence that this child labeled mentally represented sets, these instances comprised a very small proportion of the total sample and were usually references to anticipated sets rather than remembered sets.     

Orthographic neighborhood size,number of word meanings,and number of higher frequency neighbors

The present lexical decision task experiment examined orthographic (large, medium, small), number-of-meanings (ambiguous, unambiguous), and number of higher frequency neighbors (few, many), factors that have to date not been studied simultaneously. For both mean reaction time and percentage error, the critical three-way interaction between these factors was significant. Breakdown of this interaction revealed that the ambiguity effect (unambiguous-ambiguous) decreased as neighborhood size increased, but only when there were many higher frequency neighbors in the neighborhood. These results appear inconsistent with serial search models but are understandable within the context of interactive-activation models of word recognition.     

The effectiveness of psychoanalytic psychotherapy: the role of treatment duration, frequency of sessions, and the therapeutic relationship

This is an effectiveness study of treatment outcome that relies on patients' perception of their mental health during and after psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Ninety-nine outpatients attending the IPTAR Clinical Center (ICC) responded to the Effectiveness Questionnaire (EQ) adapted from that developed by Consumer Reports. Effectiveness is studied from various perspectives. Findings indicated (1) an incremental gain in effectiveness scores from six to over twenty-four months of therapy; (2) an incremental gain with greater session frequency from one to two or three weekly sessions; (3) facilitation of effectiveness by the experience of a positive relationship with the therapist; (4) an interplay between clinical syndrome and treatment conditions. A method giving clinical validity to the quantitative findings is described. Brief summaries of two recorded interviews reveal differential reconstruction of events that had occurred during treatment. The findings are discussed from the vantage point of two hypotheses: cognitive dissonance and internalization of therapeutic experience.     

EEG slow frequency and WISC-R correlates

On the basis of slow frequency indices obtained from computerized EEG assessments, 36 children were ranked the highest and 23 the lowest in a heterogeneous population of children involved in a brain-behavior assessment program. WISC-R results show the high or excess slow frequency group to have low verbal and normal performance subtest scores, while those with the least slow frequency activity were above normal on verbal and performance scores. Discriminant function analyses of the WISC-R profiles significantly separated the two EEG groupings, with the Information Subtest and Verbal IQ the best discriminating measures. The results suggested that diffuse EEG slow frequency reflected a maturational lag. Cluster analyses showed that the subtest profile was constant independently of IQ. Other findings indicated that the presence of excessive slow frequency activity was associated with less electrophysiological and psychometric differentiation.This work was supported by a contract awarded by The Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services, a contract awarded by The Ontario Ministry of Education, a grant awarded to W. Corning by The National Science and Engineering Research Council, and by a University of Waterloo Faculty Research grant and a SSHRC leave fellowship to R. A. Steffy. The authors wish to acknowledge the assistence of K. Blom, B. Jones, J. Free, J. Washburn, L. MacDonald, G. Verspagen, the secretarial department, and the shop staff of the University of Waterloo, Psychology Department.     

Effects on preference of reinforcement delay, number of reinforcers, and terminal-link duration

Three experiments used concurrent-chains procedures to examine the effects of reinforcement delay, number of reinforcers, and terminal-link duration on preference. In Condition 30 of Experiment 1, food was delivered after 30 seconds in each 150-second terminal link, with four additional food deliveries occurring at 30-second intervals in one of the links. In Condition 5, food was delivered after 5 seconds in each 25-second terminal link, and the four additional reinforcers were delivered at 5-second intervals. Preferences for the multiple-food chain were greater in Condition 30. In Experiment 2, the terminal link(s) providing only one reinforcer terminated immediately after delivery of the reinforcer. Preferences for the multiple-food chain were smaller than in Experiment 1. In Condition 5 of Experiment 3, food was delivered after 5, 75, 100, 125, and 150 seconds in one 150-second link and after 5 seconds in the other. Condition 50 differed only in that the first (or only) reinforcer in each link was delivered after 50 seconds instead of after 5 seconds. Preferences for the multiple-food chain were greater in Condition 50. Results of Experiments 1 and 2 do not correspond to results obtained by Moore (1979).     

The effects of spatial frequency and target type on perceived duration

Two experiments are reported that attempt to demonstrate a critical role played by sensory persistence on a standard perceived-duration task employing brief visual stimuli. Experiment 1 examined the effect on perceived duration of varying the spatial frequency of a target. For both 40- and 70-msec flashes, increased spatial frequency resulted in reduced estimates of perceived duration. These results were contrasted with predictions derived from cognitive processing models of duration perception. In Experiment 2, three typical types of target employed in current research (an outlined circle, a “noise”-filled circle, and a completely filled circle) were shown to differ significantly in their perceived duration and in their sensitivity to increases in physical duration. The results were discussed in terms of variable degrees of retinal persistence produced by the three types of targets. The possible implications for specific discrepancies in the literature and across-study comparisons in general were enumerated.     

Multiple meanings,number of related meanings,frequency of occurrence,and the lexicon

A series of experiments was conducted examining lexical access of words with multiple meanings. Words with many meanings were accessed faster than words with few meanings. This effect was obtained independently of word frequency. Furthermore, while words may have several etymological derivations, the number of derivations does not affect access. Finally, among words with an equal number of derivations and an equal number of meanings, those whose meanings tend to be associated with only one derivation are also accessed faster. The relation between number of meanings and word frequency is discussed, especially with respect to the role number of meanings may have played in other research.     

Preparation for live consultation and live supervision when working without a one‐way screen

This article focuses upon the preparatory work which two people should undertake when they intend working together with families. Although a particular model of joint work, namely live consultation between peers , without the use of a one-way screen forms the core of the article, the ideas which have been developed in relation to that model apply, with some variations, to all forms of joint work. Some of these variations are considered towards the end of the article.
Many of the ideas here presented arose within a number of workshops which we led on the subjects of Live Consultation and Live Supervision Without One-Way Screens. We are grateful to the participants for their ideas, especially to those of the 1981 York Association of Family Therapy Conference workshop who returned questionnaires about their use of these methods.     

The effect of marker frequency disparity on the discrimination of gap duration in monkeys

Duration-discrimination thresholds of the silent interval (gap) between two successive tones (markers) were measured in four Japanese monkeys. The task was serial discrimination, and monkeys were required to release the lever when the gap duration decreased from 200 ms. Monkeys successfully acquired the task, and gap thresholds of monkeys were revealed to be larger than previous data with human subjects. Gap thresholds were not affected by marker frequency when the two markers were identical in frequency, though the thresholds increased when large frequency differences existed between markers. The effect of marker frequency disparity on gap thresholds in monkeys is discussed in terms of the difficulty in integrating information from discrete frequency channels.     

Cross-linguistic regularities in the frequency of number words.

We examine the frequency of numerals and ordinals in seven different languages and/or cultures. Many cross-cultural and cross-linguistic patterns are identified. The most striking is a decrease of frequency with numerical magnitude, with local increases for reference numerals such as 10, 12, 15, 20, 50 or 100. Four explanations are considered for this effect: sampling artifacts, notational regularities, environmental biases and psychological limitations on number representations. The psychological explanation, which appeals to a Fechnerian encoding of numerical magnitudes and to the existence of numerical points of reference, accounts for most of the data. Our finding also has practical importance since it reveals the frequent confound of two experimental variables: numerical magnitude and numeral frequency.     

Effects of response rate, reinforcement frequency, and the duration of a stimulus preceding response-independent food

Food-reinforced key pecking in the pigeon was maintained under a four-component multiple schedule. In two components, responding was maintained at high rates under a random-ratio schedule. In the other two components, responding was maintained at low rates under a schedule that specified a minimum interresponse time. For both high and low response rates, one of the schedule components was associated with a high reinforcement frequency and the other components with a lower reinforcement frequency. During performance under these schedules, a stimulus terminated by access to response-independent food was periodically presented. The duration of this pre-food stimulus was 5, 30, 60, or 120 sec. Changes in rate of key pecking during the pre-food stimulus were systematically related to baseline response rate and the duration of the stimulus. Both high and low response rates were increased during the 5-sec stimulus. At longer stimulus durations, low response rates were unaffected and high response rates were decreased during the stimulus. For two of three pigeons, high response rates maintained under a lower frequency of reinforcement tended to be decreased more than high response rates maintained under a higher reinforcement frequency. In general, the magnitude of decrease in high response rates was inversely related to the duration of the pre-food stimulus.     

The effects on priming of word frequency, number of repetitions, and delay depend on the magnitude of priming

Conflicting findings with respect to the effects of experimental manipulations on priming have been reported in previous studies. It is argued that, in many priming tasks, large amounts of task-relevant information are available from various sources, and that, therefore, the information available from a specific study episode will have only a small impact on overall performance level. Under such circumstances, high levels of baseline performance and small priming effects will be observed. The experiments reported here investigated the hypothesis that a high baseline performance in informationprocessing tasks that are used to measure priming may constrain priming effects. In a series of wordnaming experiments, perceptual difficulty and, therefore, baseline performance was manipulated. Under easy conditions, priming effects were relatively small and were not affected by word frequency, spaced repetition, or delay. Under more difficult conditions, priming effects were larger, and significant effects of all of the above-mentioned experimental manipulations were observed. Under conditions that produced the largest priming effects, a significant relationship between priming and explicit-memory performance could be observed. In the last experiment, it was shown that the characteristics of the retrieval task can substantially affect the magnitude of priming. It is argued that priming effects should be considered to reflect interactions between memory traces and the information-processing components of the priming task.     

Mental ability,P300, and mismatch negativity: Analysis of frequency and duration discrimination

Individual differences in mental ability (MA) were examined with event-related potentials (ERP). In addition to using an auditory frequency discrimination task, a duration discrimination task was used to elicit P300 and mismatch negativity (MMN) components of the ERP. Frequency and duration P300 latencies explained 9% and 10% of variance of MAB performance scores independently of each other and commonly 28% of variance. The finding that duration P300 latency explained variance of MA independent of that explained by frequency P300 latency, suggests that temporal information processing is partly dissociable from processing of frequency information in its prediction of MA. Duration and frequency MMNs were shown to be indices of discrimination ability and predicted 11% of variance of MAB performance scores. The outcome of the present study not only emphasizes the importance of both mental speed and discrimination ability for MA but also points to the significance of duration- and frequency-related ERP measures for the understanding of underlying brain mechanisms.