Strategies Used in the Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder: A Survey of Practicing Psychologists

One hundred and twenty three practicing psychologists completed surveys regarding the therapeutic techniques they employ for patients with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Participants identified their predominant orientation and rated the frequency with which they used a range of 27 specific strategies. Logistic regression analyses identified an expected relationship between specific techniques and the theoretical orientations to which they are most closely linked. These findings suggest a high level of concordance between self-described theoretical orientation and the specific treatment techniques utilized, but also that some theoretical orientations are comprised of smaller independent clusters of strategies. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Emotion and motor control: movement attributes following affective picture processing

The authors investigated the impact of emotion on the performance of a square-tracing task after participants (N = 40) were exposed to pleasant (P), unpleasant (U), and neutral (N) pictures. Physiological and self-report measures indexed affective valence and arousal. In Experiment 1, greater error followed exposure to 4 consecutive U images than exposure to 4 consecutive P images. Speed of performance did not vary as a function of valence. In Experiment 2, participants viewed 1 slide per trial within a modified exposure protocol. Speed of performance varied as a function of valence; faster performance followed U relative to P stimuli. Accuracy of performance did not vary between conditions. Corresponding self-report and physiological measures generally corroborated previous evidence. Findings collectively indicated that the length of exposure to affective stimuli mediates speed and accuracy of motor performance; compared with P stimuli, U stimuli led to either increased error (short exposure) or increased speed (multiple exposures). The authors conclude that brief and extended exposures to affective pictures have direct behavioral consequences, and they discuss the implications of that finding.     

Dispositional and task-specific social-cognitive determinants of physical effort perseverance

The authors performed 3 studies to investigate the effects of social-cognitive variables on physical effort perseverance. Linear hierarchical regressions indicated that task-specific variables and perceived ability or competence accounted for the majority of perseverance variance in all 3 studies. The strongest single predictors in this cluster of variables were perceived competence, confidence, and readiness to invest effort. Physical self-health and ability accounted for a lesser portion of effort perseverance variance, with self-presentation confidence being the major single predictor in this cluster. The goal orientation cluster accounted for the least amount of effort perseverance variance. Together with task-specific confidence and the readiness to invest effort, as well as determination and commitment and competence, the findings support the contention that task-specific efficacious beliefs to a large extent determine persistence and endurance behaviors.     

Perception of students in the south of Brazil of status of psychology as a science

73 university students (M age=20.5 yr., SD=4.8; range 17-44 yr.) from the southern state of Paraná took the Psychology as Science scale to assess whether they view psychology as a rigorous science. Analysis showed the students considered psychology to be a science, agreed study of psychology should be part of a university curriculum, not many believed that psychological research may contribute to the solution of psychological problems, and few believed obtaining a Bachelors of Science degree in Psychology was useful in obtaining employment. Data were compared with a previous study conducted on a northeastern sample.     

Recognition memory and introspective remember/know judgments: Evidence for the influence of distractor plausibility on “remembering” and a caution about purportedly nonparametric measures

One popular technique in the study of human recognition memory involves the elicitation of remember and know judgments and the attribution of those judgments to qualitative states of memory retrieval. An alternative view, reviewed here, implicates quantitative, but not qualitative, differences in evidence as the basis for those two judgments. That theory makes two clear and testable predictions: that of criterion shifts in "remembering" and that of isodiscriminability across different response sets. In this experiment, the makeup of the distractor set in a recognition test is shown to influence overall recognition criterion and also rates of "remember" responses. The second portion of the article demonstrates how A' is a poor choice of a measure to test the prediction of isodiscriminability. When this measure is corrected (Equation 7) to make it more consistent with current knowledge about the receiver-operating characteristic in recognition memory, it reveals that there is no difference in discriminability between "remember" and all positive responses.     

Sensory preconditioning in spatial learning using a touch screen task in pigeons

The authors used a touch screen-based visual-search task to investigate spatial integration in pigeons. First, pigeons were presented with a consistent spatial relationship between compound visual landmarks (LMs) A-X and B-Y, separately. Next, pigeons learned to find a hidden goal on the monitor in the presence of LMs A and B. The goal bore a consistent spatial relationship to LM A, but not to LM B. On nonreinforced probe tests, the peak and distribution of responses to LM X suggest that pigeons computed a novel X-goal spatial relationship on the basis of X-A and A-goal spatial vectors. Responses to LM Y, however, revealed no evidence of spatial integration. These results replicate and extend those of A. P. Blaisdell and R. G. Cook (2005) using an open-field task.     

Thirty-something categorization results explained: selective attention, eyetracking, and models of category learning

An eyetracking study testing D. L. Medin and M. M. Schaffer's (1978) 5-4 category structure was conducted. Over 30 studies have shown that the exemplar-based generalized context model (GCM) usually provides a better quantitative account of 5-4 learning data as compared with the prototype model. However, J. D. Smith and J. P. Minda (2000) argued that the GCM is a psychologically implausible account of 5-4 learning because it implies suboptimal attention weights. To test this claim, the authors recorded undergraduates' eye movements while the students learned the 5-4 category structure. Eye fixations matched the attention weights estimated by the GCM but not those of the prototype model. This result confirms that the GCM is a realistic model of the processes involved in learning the 5-4 structure and that learners do not always optimize attention, as commonly supposed. The conditions under which learners are likely to optimize attention during category learning are discussed.     

The effects of aging on selectivity and control in short-term recall

The ability to control encoding and retrieval processing strategically is critical for the efficient use of memory. We examined the ability of younger and older adults to selectively remember words on the basis of their arbitrary point values by using a technique developed by Watkins and Bloom (1999). In the first three experiments, younger subjects recalled more words than did older subjects, but an independent index of recall selectivity showed that older subjects were apparently more successful in selecting higher valued words. However, a fourth experiment showed that this superior selectivity on the part of older adults was attributable to their greater proportional reliance on primary memory recall. Overall, the data suggest that although older adults recall fewer words than do younger adults, they exert as much control over some aspects of encoding.     

The meaning of autonomy: on and beyond the interpersonal circumplex

Review of existing psychological literature suggests that conceptions of autonomy as an individual difference have taken several forms. Structural analyses of 15 self-report autonomy scales utilizing the interpersonal circumplex (IPC) and the Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality as structural referents confirmed the presence of diverse conceptualizations of this construct. Two hundred ninety undergraduate students completed 15 autonomy scales, the NEO Personality Inventory-Revised (NEO-PI-R), and the Interpersonal Adjective Scales (IAS). Factor analysis revealed three unique conceptualizations of autonomy. Each factor was further differentiated from the others by its unique location on the IPC and its distinct relationships with the domains and facets of the NEO-PI-R. Evaluation of these findings within the context of existing autonomy research leads to the conclusion that only two of the three identified factors reflect autonomy. Factor I, Depressogenic Vulnerability, though relatively consistent with its theoretical foundation, lacks the agentic quality one would expect in an autonomy construct. Factors II and III, presently labeled Self-governance and Agentic Separation, respectively, share an agentic core but differ considerably in their interpersonal content. Theoretical and empirical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Processing of logically valid and logically invalid conditional inferences in discourse comprehension

Two competing theories of processing of conditionals (if-then) were tested. Syntactic theories posit that people only draw inferences conforming to the logically valid modus ponens (MP) schema. Mental models theories predict that people draw MP and invalid affirming-the-consequent (AC) inferences. Three experiments tested these predictions. Participants read short stories that conformed to either the MP or AC form but without conclusions, and they completed either priming or recognition tasks. Results indicate that both MP and AC inferences occur during discourse processing: MP and AC premise forms prime their respective conclusions, participants erroneously judged that they had read the conclusions to MP and AC arguments, and AC inferences did not stem from a biconditional interpretation of conditionals. Findings support mental models theories.