Individuation and adult children of alcoholics

42 adult male and 99 female volunteers from the Washington and Baltimore areas were administered the Psychological Separation Inventory, the Personal Authority in the Family System Questionnaire, the Adult Child of Alcoholics Screening Test, the Michigan Alcoholism Screening Test, and the Symptom-Checklist-90--R in a study of variables associated with the development of psychopathology of adult children of alcoholics. Individuation evolving from family dynamics rather than from intrapsychic individuation was more crucial to the development of psychopathology.     

Psychological profiles of adult children of alcoholics in search of therapy

Adult children of alcoholics (ACOAs) and adults from dysfunctional families of origin are increasingly recognized as high risk groups for psychiatric disorders. However, there has been little empirical investigation of the psychological characteristics of these populations. This study compares clinical samples of these two groups using the Symptom Checklist-90, (SCL-90), the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and the Irrational Beliefs Test (IBT), as well as DSM-III-R diagnoses and demographic information. The two groups did not differ significantly on the psychological tests and showed similar demographics and diagnoses. Both groups showed levels of psychopathology comparable to other psychiatric populations. It was concluded that clinical samples of ACOAs and adults from dysfunctional families of origin have many problems of clinical proportion. Assessment and treatment of these groups is best done by properly trained professional staff and because of their similar problems and treatment needs the two groups may be treated together.     

Utilizing ret for effective treatment of adult children of alcoholics

Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOAs) are a recognized clinical population that includes approximately one of every eight Americans. Although there has been a great deal of interest in this population, studies indicate that only 5% of ACOAs receive effective treatment. The authors assert that Rational-Emotive Therapy can provide ACOAs the education, expression of suppressed feelings, and cognitive restructuring that research indicates is necessary for recovery. This paper discusses issues associated with ACOAs and methods of using RET with this population.Marjorie E. Ferstein, M.S., is an Advisor in the Judicial Program of the University of Georgia.Susan C. Whiston is an Assistant Professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.     

Dilemmas and countertransference considerations in group psychotherapy with adult children of alcoholics

This article will explore special leader issues that emerge in psychodynamically oriented therapy groups with adult children of alcoholics. Particular focus will be on countertransference feelings that get stirred up in group leaders and techniques for dealing with some of these special dilemmas. Specific issues include (a) assumption of sameness between the therapist and the patient (the therapist assuming that he or she "understands" because of having also grown up in an alcoholic family); (b) the "will to restore," which may be destructive when the therapist, whose own self-esteem is dependent on the patient's progress in therapy, forces a "rush to recovery" on the patient; (c) other personal issues in the life of the therapist that may also resonate with experiences of the patient; (d) "countertransference goodness and availability" as it affects therapists' abilities to set reasonable limits on their patients, as well as reasonable expectations for themselves; and (e) special issues regarding therapist transparency and self-disclosure.     

Sampling issues in research on adult children of alcoholics: adolescence and beyond

A critical examination of 98 studies on adult children of alcoholics, published from 1986 to 1995, was prompted by suggestions that sampling issues confound research findings. Over half of the studies that were reviewed involved college students. It is important to understand the methodology used in creating a knowledge base that relies heavily on late adolescent and young adult offspring of alcoholics. Thus, two main questions were asked when reviewing these studies: What methods were employed to classify offspring as being children of alcoholics? To what extent does our knowledge about adult children of alcoholics depend on college student samples and clinical samples?     

Psychological adjustment among adult children of alcoholics: a cross-cultural study.

In this study, we compared Hispanic and Caucasian college students identified as adult children of alcoholics in terms of psychological adjustment using the Diagnostic Inventory of Personality and Symptoms (DIPS; Vincent, 1985). Results of the study suggested that, among college students, Caucasian men seem to be at a greater risk for using alcohol and drugs than Caucasian women or Hispanic men and women.     

Conceptual implicit memory in subclinical depression

Depression adversely affects explicit memory when implicit memory remains intact unless implicit retrieval requires conceptual processes. The impairment of conceptual implicit memory could be the consequence of the completion of implicit memory tests being contaminated by a voluntary retrieval strategy, hence similar results to those in explicit tests are observed. In this study we adopted a method sensitive to the presence of contamination. Depth-of-study-processing effects were observed for the controls completing the explicit version of a word-association task but were absent for the controls completing the implicit version when compound associates were retrieved. This dissociation indicated the adoption of the designated retrieval strategy in each test with the conceptual implicit memory test being uncontaminated. Subclinically depressed participants showed impairment in the explicit version, while for those completing the implicit version there was evidence that they used a voluntary retrieval strategy. The theoretical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Context effects in auditory implicit memory

The context effect in implicit memory is the finding that presentation of words in meaningful context reduces or eliminates repetition priming compared to words presented in isolation. Virtually all of the research on the context effect has been conducted in the visual modality but preliminary results raise the question of whether context effects are less likely in auditory priming. Context effects in the auditory modality were systematically examined in five experiments using the auditory implicit tests of word-fragment and word-stem completion. The first three experiments revealed the classical context effect in auditory priming: Words heard in isolation produced substantial priming, whereas there was little priming for the words heard in meaningful passages. Experiments 4 and 5 revealed that a meaningful context is not required for the context effect to be obtained: Words presented in an unrelated audio stream produced less priming than words presented individually and no more priming than words presented in meaningful passages. Although context effects are often explained in terms of the transfer-appropriate processing (TAP) framework, the present results are better explained by Masson and MacLeod's (2000) reduced-individuation hypothesis.     

Serial position effects in implicit memory

Serial position effects in explicit and implicit memory were investigated in a noncolour word Stroop task. Participants were presented with a study list of four words printed in different colours and were tested for memory of the list position of the colour (explicit memory task); they were then asked to complete a word stem primed (or not primed) by one of the words in the study list (implicit memory task), a task presented as a distractor task. Serial position effects were observed in both explicit and implicit memory, for both response times and proportion of correct responses, with marked primacy effects, a drop in performance towards the third list position and a rise in memory performance at the fourth list position, the recency effect being most pronounced in implicit memory. It is concluded that explicit and implicit expressions of memory are governed by similar principles of temporal information processing.     

Retroactive interference effects in implicit memory

One source of evidence for separate explicit and implicit memory systems is that explicit but not implicit memory is impacted by interference (e.g., Graf & Schacter, 1987). The present experiment examined whether retroactive interference (RI) effects could be obtained in implicit memory when a strong test of RI was used. People studied an original list of word pairs (e.g., COTTON-PRIZE) using the typical RI paradigm. During the interpolated phase, participants studied either interference pairs for which the same cue was re-paired with a different target (e.g., COTTON-PRINT) or novel pairs (e.g., HOST-VASE). RI was tested with the modified opposition cued recall test (Eakin, Schreiber, & Sergent-Marshall, 2003). The original-list cue was presented along with the beginning stem of its target (e.g., COTTON-PRI-) and a hint (e.g., not PRINT). RI effects were obtained for explicit and implicit memory. Taken together with prior research finding proactive interference effects in implicit memory, the findings indicate that implicit memory is not immune from retroactive interference. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Gender, birth order and family role identification among adult children of alcoholics

Much attention has been paid to the influence of family dynamics in role identification development for the children of alcoholics. This article considers the development of stable and enduring behavior traits for the child through examination of alcoholic parent(s)gender, child birth order, and child gender correlates. An examination of the main and interaction effects of child gender, gender of the alcohol parent(s), and child birth order on strength of identification with the Hero, Scapegoat, Mascot or Lost Child family roles revealed significant gender differences for the Mascot, and Lost Child roles. The presence of two alcoholic parents was significant in producing diminished strength of identification with Mascot role behaviors.     

Gender, birth order and family role identification among adult children of alcoholics

Much attention has been paid to the influence of family dynamics in role identification development for the children of alcoholics. This article considers the development of stable and enduring behavior traits for the child through examination of alcoholic parent(s)gender, child birth order, and child gender correlates. An examination of the main and interaction effects of child gender, gender of the alcohol parent(s), and child birth order on strength of identification with the Hero, Scapegoat, Mascot or Lost Child family roles revealed significant gender differences for the Mascot, and Lost Child roles. The presence of two alcoholic parents was significant in producing diminished strength of identification with Mascot role behaviors.     

Intuition in the context of implicit memory

Summary Most recent work concerned with intuition has demonstrated that people can respond discriminatively to coherence that they cannot identify. Specifically, in a gestalt-closure task subjects were shown slides of paired drawings. One of the drawings represented a fragmented picture of a common object, whereas the other was constructed by rotation of the elements of the coherent gestalt. When the subjects were unable to name the object, they were urged to make a forced-choice decision regarding which of the two drawings represented a real object. The results showed that the proportion of pictures not correctly identified, that were nevertheless correctly selected as coherent, was significantly higher than chance. The current experiment replicated these findings. In addition, it was shown that a study phase with either coherent or incoherent picture primes can bias intuitive judgments in the test phase in accordance with a processing view. Incoherent-picture primes reduced the forced-choice decisions to a level of chance. Moreover, priming was found to be dependent on the similarity between the study and the test stimuli. We argue that a more fluent reprocessing of coherent, or primed, stimuli may be a basis for intuitive judgments. Intuition may go wrong when priming has favored an incoherent solution.     

Transfer across modality in perceptual implicit memory

We examined whether words studied in one modality (visual or auditory) would prime performance in the opposite modality in five different perceptual implicit memory tests: auditory perceptual identification, auditory stem completion, visual perceptual identification, visual stem completion, and visual fragment completion. Significant transfer across modality was observed in all five tasks. However, a large proportion of the subjects reported using explicit retrieval strategies during the implicit tests. Those subjects who claimed not to have used explicit retrieval processes during the test phase demonstrated transfer across modalities in the stem completion tests and the perceptual identification tests, but not in the fragment completion test. The results indicate that implicit visual word-fragment completion is unique, in the sense that it relies exclusively on perceptual memory processes, whereas the other tasks rely, in part, on nonperceptual memory processes.     

概念内隐记忆中的注意促进效应

Swallow和Jiang (2010)最早发现, 编码时的目标探测会促进同时呈现的背景信息在随后记忆测验中的表现, 并将这一现象称为注意促进效应(Attentional Boost Effect, ABE)。随后研究发现这一现象并不会出现在概念内隐测验中, 由此提出目标探测主要促进的是背景信息的知觉加工, 而非语义加工。本研究通过3个实验, 操纵了对背景信息的编码加工类型(知觉加工或概念加工)。结果发现, 当与目标探测同时进行的是对背景信息的概念加工任务, 则ABE会出现在随后的概念内隐测验中。反之, 当对背景信息进行的是知觉加工任务时, 则ABE会出现在随后的知觉内隐测验而不是概念内隐测验中。这些结果表明, 目标探测既可能促进背景信息的知觉加工, 也可能促进背景信息的语义加工, 但只有在目标探测下背景信息的编码加工与随后内隐测验中所依赖的提取加工具有一致性, 才会产生ABE。     

Clinical depression and implicit memory.

We investigated performance on implicit and explicit memory tasks in subjects diagnosed with major depression and matched controls. Depressed subjects showed impaired performance on both the explicit and implicit tasks in comparison with controls. These findings are in contrast to groups such as amnesic patients and older adults, who show preserved abilities on implicit tasks and deficits on explicit tasks.