A supervision approach for teaching structural/strategic therapy in a limited setting

Many counselors are currently undergoing a Kuhnian paradigm shift from linear models of behavioral problem conceptualization to systemic conceptual models. As a result, it has become incumbent on counselor-educators to introduce the systems concept of family therapy to their students within a framework that renders it meaningful not only intellectually but also practically. This paper presents one way of doing this successfully with master's level counselors-in-training who have no live families on which to practice. An overview of systems approaches to family therapy is presented along with a seven-stage supervision approach for teaching structural/strategic therapy in limited situations where the supervision of live families is not practical or possible.     

Training and Research in Counselling

Formal counselling training in Britain began with the preparation of school counsellors in universities and relied largely upon American models. Early courses were highly didactic but over the last decade practical and experiential aspects have taken precedence. Basic counselling training has now been extended into the preparation of many workers, voluntary and professional. Counselling research also had academic origins, but has broadened to include many different work settings. Much of the published research has been in the form of surveys of counselling services, but some detailed studies of process are noted. There is a need for research to be increased, and the gap between research and practice shortened, if counselling is to demonstrate its relevance to contemporary needs.     

Direction- and velocity-specific responses from beyond the classical receptive field in the middle temporal visual area (MT)

The true receptive field of more than 90% of neurons in the middle temporal visual area (MT) extends well beyond the classical receptive field (crf), as mapped with conventional bar or spot stimuli, and includes a surrounding region that is 50 to 100 times the area of the crf. These extensive surrounds are demonstrated by simultaneously stimulating the crf and the surround with moving stimuli. The surrounds commonly have directional and velocity-selective influences that are antagonistic to the response from the crf. The crfs of MT neurons are organized in a topographic representation of the visual field. Thus MT neurons are embedded in an orderly visuotopic array, but are capable of integrating local stimulus conditions within a global context. The extensive surrounds of MT neurons may be involved in figure-ground discrimination, preattentive vision, perceptual constancies, and depth perception through motion cues.     

Alternation behavior, spatial discrimination, and reversal disturbances following 6-hydroxydopamine lesions in the nucleus accumbens of the rat

The effects of dopaminergic depletion of the nucleus accumbens was tested in various behavioral tasks such as alternation, spatial discrimination, and reversal learning, and in an extinction paradigm in a T maze. Animals with lesions showed impairment of spontaneous alternation behavior, disturbances in the acquisition of spatial discrimination, and great difficulty in reversing previously learned habits. In the extinction phase, experimental animals are unable to adjust their behavior, and continue to choose the previously reinforced arm of the T maze. It is suggested that the nucleus accumbens plays an important role in the transition of motivation into action, and that dopamine has a facilitatory influence on the mediation of these processes.     

Heart-rate responses of infant rats and guinea pigs to stimulus onset and offset: tests of the generality of a bidirectional effect

To test the generality, across modality and across species, of a bidirectional effect of photic stimulation in infant rats found in previous experiments, two experiments examined the effects on heart rate (HR) of onset and offset of auditory stimulation in rats and of photic stimulation in guinea pigs. Experiment 1 demonstrated a unidirectional, decelerative response in rats 17 and 21 days of age to the onset and offset of a 1-kHz tone, at both low (80 dB) and high (100 dB) intensity levels and at 14 days to the onset of the high-intensity tone. Experiment 2 demonstrated that infant guinea pigs, which unlike infant rats are precocial and not nocturnal, responded to the offset but not to the onset of light, and that this response was decelerative. These results indicated a lack of generality of the bidirectional HR effect, and were discussed in terms of the orienting/defensive reflex distinction.     

Memory and aging: Implications for theories of memory development during childhood

Research is reviewed suggesting that early school age children and older adults demonstrate a similar pattern of performance deficits (relative to the performance of young adults) on memory tasks, raising the possibility that age-related changes in some common factor might account for both memory development and memory decline. It is argued here that whereas “metamemory” theory of memory development does not provide a viable theory of memory decline, Craik's (F. I. M. Craik & M. Byrd, 1982, in F. I. M. Craik & S. E. Trehub (Eds.), Aging and cognitive processes, New York: Plenum; F. I. M. Craik & E. Simon, 1980, in L. W. Poon, J. L. Fozard, L. S. Cermak, D. Arenberg, & L. W. Thompson (Eds.), New directions in memory and aging, Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum) attentional deficit theory of memory decline provides a viable theory of memory development as well. Evidence supporting this position is reviewed, and directions for future research are discussed.     

Color discrimination on Mangaia

Bornstein’s hypothesis that there is a loss of color discrimination in tropical areas was not supported in earlier research in the Cook Islands. Using a more sensitive color vision test (the Farnsworth-Munsell 100-Hue Test), a loss of color discrimination in the red-purple and blue-green regions of the spectrum was found. The lack of sex differences in this color discrimination loss supports a physiological rather than a genetic explanation of the observed decrement.     

Appetitive differential conditioning of the rabbit’s jaw movement response

Two experiments examined appetitive differential conditioning of the rabbit’s jaw movement response (JMR) in a two-phase procedure. The first phase entailed reinforced training with one conditioned stimulus (CS+), and the second phase involved intermixed presentations of CS+ and an unreinforced stimulus (CS?). In Experiment 1, CS+ was a 600-Hz tone, and CS-was either a 660-,1,000-, or 2,100-Hz tone. In Experiment 2, the magnitude of the water unconditioned stimulus (US) paired with CS+ was either 1, 3, or 9 ml. The experiments revealed that 1) the level of responding to CS-rose for several days and then declined over the remainder of training; 2) the physical similarity between CS+ and CS?directly affected the level of responding to CS?but had no discernable effect on the level of responding to CS+ ; and 3) US magnitude positively affected the level of responding to CS + and, to a lesser extent, CS?. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for Spence’s gradient interaction theory and Pavlov’s external inhibition hypothesis.     

Illusory figures: Individual differences apparent depth and lightness

When the luminance of a pattern that induces a sharp-edged illusory circle was decreased, both illusory contrast with the surround and the illusory depth difference between that circular area and the inducing elements reliably increased. Thus, changes in both of these effects apparently participate in (contribute to) the increased overall salience that had previously been found with decreased luminance. However, among individuals, the correlation between this improvement in contrast and this increase in depth was exceedingly small.