Recognition of notated melodies by possessors and nonpossessors of absolute pitch

Musically trained listeners compared a notated melody presented visually and a comparison melody presented auditorily, and judged whether they were exactly the same or not, with respect to relative pitch. Listeners who had absolute pitch showed the poorest performance for melodies transposed to different pitch levels from the notated melodies, whereas they exhibited the highest performance for untransposed melodies. By comparison, the performance of melody recognition by listeners who did not have absolute pitch was not influenced by the actual pitch level at which melodies were played. These results suggest that absolute-pitch listeners tend to rely on absolute pitch even in recognizing transposed melodies, for which the absolute-pitch strategy is not useful.     

The future of psychotherapeutic environments: Learning from experience at a Swedish therapeutic community

Ten years' experience in a Swedish therapeutic community outside the organisation and culture of the psychiatric services is summarised with reference to a longitudinal prospective study. This therapeutic environment proved to be better suited to patients' needs, and the organisation and setting were more in accord with the treatment philosophy than at other units with which it was compared. It was possible to identify different phases in the history of the therapeutic community and the development of patients. The patient group as a whole have shown improvement in psychiatric terms, as well as with regard to psychosocial interpersonal and emotional functioning. The more lasting personality traits have not, however, altered. Difficulties in the work, and obstacles to change, appeared to derive from: the therapists' tendency to disregard problems in the relationship; not enough work focused on separation and negative, hostile feelings. Termination of treatment was a strain which the patients found difficult to manage. The period subsequent to the stay at the therapeutic community was decisive for the long-term outcome. Today, it is necessary to amend our concepts of a decisive and complete cure.     

When sounds look right and images sound correct: Cross-modal coherence enhances claims of pattern presence

How do people decide whether a stimulus contains a pattern? One possibility is that they rely on a global, non-specific signal of coherence. Interestingly, this signal might reflect a combination of different stimulus sources. Consequently, the coherence of one stimulus might influence decisions about coherence of a second, unrelated stimulus. We explored this possibility in three experiments in which participants judged the presence of a pattern in targets from one sensory modality, while being exposed in the background to incidental coherent and incoherent stimuli in a different modality (visual → auditory, auditory → visual). Across all three experiments, using a variety of judgments, coherence of incidental background cross-modal patterns enhanced claims of pattern presence. These findings advance our understanding of how people judge order in the structured as well as in the unstructured world.     

Motivational enhancement therapy for African American substance users: a randomized clinical trial

Limited empirical evidence concerning the efficacy of substance abuse treatments among African Americans reduces opportunities to evaluate and improve program efficacy. The current study, conducted as a secondary analysis of a randomized clinical trial conducted by the Clinical Trials Network of the National Institute of Drug Abuse, addressed this knowledge gap by examining the efficacy of motivational enhancement therapy (MET) compared with counseling as usual (CAU) among 194 African American adults seeking outpatient substance abuse treatment at 5 participating sites. The findings revealed higher retention rates among women in MET than in CAU during the initial 12 weeks of the 16-week study. Men in MET and CAU did not differ in retention. However, MET participants self-reported more drug-using days per week than participants in CAU. Implications for future substance abuse treatment research with African Americans are discussed.     

Vicissitudes of ideas of cure in analysands and their analysts: a longitudinal interview study

This longitudinal prospective study focuses on analysands' and analysts' implicit ideas of how psychoanalysis might help analysands' psychological problems. Seven analysands and their analysts were periodically interviewed. Single ideas of cure from 75 interviews were inductively categorized. Nine distinct types of cures emerged, representing the wished-for goals of psychoanalysis, as well as the actions to achieve the wished-for changes. Each category might comprise more or less utopian ideas of wished-for cure as well as ideas of an attainable, more limited cure, or combinations of these. The utopian ideas of wished-for cures persisted throughout the psychoanalytic process for more than half the analysands and analysts. The abandonment of these ideas was related to the experienced outcome of psychoanalysis. The relation between the theories of one analysand and her analyst is explored in depth in a case study with special emphasis on the analytic process. The study suggests that the psychoanalytic process might profit from the analyst's observance of such incongruities and an openness to work through them.     

Young adults talk about their problems

This study aims to explore how young adults in psychotherapy and young adults in general describe their problems and how their problem formulations change over time. Two matched samples from longitudinal prospective studies were compared using thematic analysis. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted at baseline, 1.5 years after termination of psychotherapy (N=12) in the clinical sample and 3 years after baseline in the non clinical sample (N=12). Inductive thematic analysis revealed six themes: problems associated with oneself, family, intimate relationships, sense of belonging, occupation, and social roles. The psychotherapy sample was characterized by problems with oneself closely related to other problematic areas, at both pre-treatment and at follow-up 1.5 years after termination, while problematic sense of belonging was a general theme only prior to psychotherapy. However, they were less troubled by their problems after psychotherapy. Problems with oneself decreased considerably in the non-clinical sample, while problems with intimate relationships were twice as frequent at follow-up. In the psychotherapy sample, the initial experience of being passively trapped within their problems was transformed into an experience of being an active agent in their own life. However, considerable differences between the psychotherapy sample and non-clinical sample still persisted at follow-up.