Life-Review Technique in the Treatment of PTSD in Elderly Patients: Rationale and Three Single Case Studies

Persons exposed to traumatic events in childhood and adolescence may suffer from the symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) well into old age. The aim of this paper is to introduce a structured life-review technique for the treatment of elderly PTSD patients. This technique centers on the discussion and evaluation of each consecutive stage of life. The therapist encourages the patient to reminisce on both positive and negative experiences; positive coping experiences are reinforced. A single session on the traumatic event is integrated into the discussion of the stages of life, which are dealt with in chronological order. In the following, 3 case studies (e.g., survivors of the 1945 Dresden bombing) are presented. Psychometric measures (PTSS-10, IES-R) for the case studies are reported. Finally, the potential and limitations of the pilot study and the new approach are discussed.     

Mind, Self, and Personality: Dynamic Interactions from Late Childhood to Early Adulthood

This paper aims to integrate research on mind, personality, and self-development using a general model which hypothesizes that mind and personality are organized in 3 levels. The first level includes environment-oriented, domain-specific systems that specialize in the representation of and interaction with particular types of relationships in the environment in both the cognitive and the social realms. The second level comprises self-oriented monitoring and representation processes that build maps of the environment-oriented systems. Self and identity derive from the interaction between these 2 levels, which is subject to the constraints and the system's processing capacity at the successive ages. These constraints may be taken as the third level of the self. Efficiency in overcoming these constraints is determined by the self-oriented processes, generating feelings and self-representations of self-worth. These feelings are idiosyncratic, and function as a personal constant, which is applied on self-evaluation and self-representations. This constant is rescaled and differentiated with development. Thus, we have simultaneously both modular and transmodular constructs in the mind and the self, which change with relative independence of each other under the constraints of the general processing capabilities and the personal constant. A series of studies are presented to support this model, and its implications for life-span theories of development are discussed.     

The costs and benefits of processing emotional stimuli during rapid serial visual presentation

Using a dual-target identification task during rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP), we examined facilitation and interference effects exerted by emotional stimuli. Emotionally arousing first targets (T1s) were encoded with higher accuracy than neutral T1s. At the same time, identification of a second neutral target (T2) was impaired reflecting a failure of disengaging attention from arousing T1s. Similar interference was triggered by arousing filler stimuli that were not voluntarily searched for in the RSVP stream (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, we showed that interference is reduced (though facilitation for arousing T1s is maintained) when the second task itself involves variations in emotional arousal. Vice versa, when arousal associated with the T2 stimulus was predictable, interference recurred (Experiment 4). Our findings indicate that the perceived emotional intensity of a stimulus is a determinant of successful identification during RSVP: Encoding of arousing stimuli is reliably facilitated. Interference effects with subsequent processing arise independently and are strongly modulated by the overall task context and specific processing strategies.     

Terrorism as Collective Communication: The Collective Communication Model of Terrorism (CCMT)

This paper proposes that the psychological and behavioral effects of terrorist threat can be understood as a collective communication process that occurs between terrorists and their potential victims. Based on classic communication theory, terrorists are regarded as the senders of a specific collective message (such as ‘stop oppressing our culture’); a terrorist incident as the collective message itself (through its performance, modality and targets); and the potential victims as its collective receivers (who interpret the intention of the attack as a function of their pre-existing attributes, such as traits or salient social identities). The perception of terrorism as a dynamic and interactive process between collective senders, messages and receivers opens new theoretical perspectives regarding whether (a) terrorism can be successful in reaching its collective aim; (b) if it is interpreted as rational or irrational; and (c) how to counteract the vicious, cyclical relationship between terrorism and counter-terrorism. Previous findings on the psychology of terrorism can be organized within this theoretical framework, and the psychological impact of varying attributes of the perpetrators (senders), incident (message), and the reactions of the potential victims (receivers) systematically investigated. A series of self-conducted studies are also reviewed and found to provide direct support for the collective communication model of terrorism.     

Sensitivity and responsivity measures for discrimination learning

The present report considers alternative measures of sensitivity and response bias for the discrimination learning paradigm. The classical signal detection measures, d′ and β, were compared with their nonparametric equivalents, A′ and B″, with theoretical measures derived from threshold theory and with empirical measures derived from the ROC graph. Differential rabbit eyelid conditioning data from three experiments were analyzed with these measures, and the results of these analyses were used along with other information to determine which measures of sensitivity and response bias are most useful for the analysis of discrimination learning data.     

Between- and within-person level motivational precursors associated with career exploration

Career exploration is a critical process for child and adolescent development leading people toward suitable work and developing a vocational identity. The present study examined the role of motivational precursors, namely work valences and personal agency beliefs, in explaining in-breadth and in-depth career exploration. Given the dynamic nature of motivation, we teased apart the between-person differences and within-person variabilities in motivational precursors to examine how they are independently associated with career exploration. Two hundred one high school students comprised the sample and were surveyed three consecutive years. Results revealed that work valences and agency beliefs were associated with career exploration at both the between- and within-person level. Further, when individuals exhibited greater level of agency beliefs and positive valences, they were more likely to exhibit more in-depth exploration one year later. Implications for career guidance are discussed.