The use of structured experiences in family therapy

Structured experiences such as sculpting, psychodrama, rôle-play and growth games are frequently used in family therapy. This article puts forward a framework for the use of structured experiences which can be used in the context of a family session to ensure that the family will gain the maximum learning and change. Use of the framework is illustrated with examples from practice.     

A Cross-Modal Comparison of Telephone and Face-to-Face Selection Interviews in Graduate Recruitment

Although there has been an increase in the use of telephone interviews for graduate recruitment by companies in the UK, there is little evidence attesting to their equivalence with traditional face-to-face selection interviews. A total of 70 candidates applying to a multinational oil corporation received both face-to-face and telephone interviews as the first stage of the 1996 graduate recruitment milkround. Group A (N = 41) received an initial face-to-face interview followed by a telephone interview and group B (N = 29) a telephone interview followed by a face-to-face interview. Findings indicate that candidates received significantly lower ratings when interviewed by telephone than when interviewed face-to-face (p ≤ 0.001). A significant interaction was also found (p ≤ 0.05) with candidates who received face-to-face interviews following telephone interviews demonstrating improved performance in their face-to-face interviews. The practical implications of these findings for companies wishing to use telephone interviews are discussed.     

When All Is Still Concealed: Are We Closer to Understanding the Mechanisms Underlying Evaluative Conditioning?

Fulcher and Hammerl's (2001) important exploration of the role of contingency awareness in evaluative conditioning (EC) raises a lot of issues for discussion: (1) what boundaries, if any, exist between EC and affective learning paradigms?; (2) if EC does occur without awareness does this mean it is nonpropositional learning?; (3) is EC driven by stimulus-response (S-R), rather than stimulus-stimulus (S-S), associations and if so should it then surprise us that contingency awareness is not important?; and (4) if S-R associations are at the heart of EC, should we automatically assume EC is part of a different learning mechanism to autonomic Pavlovian conditioning (Field, 2000a, 2000b)? This article, after a critical review of Fulcher and Hammerl's work, discusses these issues with reference to what can be realistically inferred about the mechanisms underlying EC.     

Epistemic modals, relativism and assertion

I think that there are good reasons to adopt a relativist semantics for epistemic modal claims such as ``the treasure might be under the palm tree', according to which such utterances determine a truth value relative to something finer-grained than just a world (or a <world, time> pair). Anyone who is inclined to relativise truth to more than just worlds and times faces a problem about assertion. It's easy to be puzzled about just what purpose would be served by assertions of this kind, and how to understand what we'd be up to in our use of sentences like ``the treasure might be under the palm tree', if they have such peculiar truth conditions. After providing a very quick argument to motivate a relativist view of epistemic modals, I bring out and attempt to resolve this problem in making sense of the role of assertions with relativist truth conditions. Solving this problem should be helpful in two ways: first, it eliminates an apparently forceful objection to relativism, and second, spelling out the relativist account of assertion and communication will help to make clear just what the relativist position is, exactly, and why it's interesting. Thanks to Brian Weatherson, John Hawthorne, Daniel Stoljar, Frank Jackson, Ben Blumson, Seth Yalcin, Karen Bennett, Kent Bach, Matthew Weiner, Jonathan Kvanvig, Eric Swanson, David Chalmers, Agustin Rayo, Dustin Locke, Aaron Bronfman, Michael Allers, Ivan Mayerhofer, and to the participants at the BSPC 2005 for helpful discussion.     

Scarcity,engagement, and value

Scarcity has been found to intensify value, positive or negative, rather than simply enhancing it. Some researchers have proposed that scarcity affects value by increasing how much attention is paid to a stimulus. We conceptualized sustained attention as stronger engagement and operationalized a situation of scarcity by telling participants who were choosing between two objects that the object that was chosen would then be replaced (Replenish) or not replaced (Scarce). To distinguish sustained attention-stronger engagement in a situation of scarcity from grabbing attention (salience from distinctiveness), the choice was between one option with a single instance (solitary-high salience) and a second option with several duplicates (abundant-low salience). We predicted that stronger engagement from a situation of scarcity would, first, intensify the value of the chosen item regardless of whether it was solitary or abundant, with positive items becoming more positive and negative items becoming more negative, and second, the stronger engagement from the situation of scarcity would transfer intensification to another separate object in the same setting. The results of Studies 1 and 2 supported both of these predictions. Study 3 tested a boundary condition for these scarcity–engagement effects in terms of how real participants experienced the choice items to be, where ‘realness’ is another source of engagement strength. As expected, the scarcity–engagement effect on intensifying value was replicated for participants who experienced the activity as real but was eliminated for those who did not.     

Egocentric and allocentric navigation strategies in Williams syndrome and typical development

Recent findings suggest that difficulties on small‐scale visuospatial tasks documented in Williams syndrome (WS) also extend to large‐scale space. In particular, individuals with WS often present with difficulties in allocentric spatial coding (encoding relationships between items within an environment or array). This study examined the effect of atypical spatial processing in WS on large‐scale navigational strategies, using a novel 3D virtual environment. During navigation of recently learnt large‐scale space, typically developing (TD) children predominantly rely on the use of a sequential egocentric strategy (recalling the sequence of left–right body turns throughout a route), but become more able to use an allocentric strategy between 5 and 10 years of age. The navigation strategies spontaneously employed by TD children between 5 and 10 years of age and individuals with WS were analysed. The ability to use an allocentric strategy on trials where spatial relational knowledge was required to find the shortest route was also examined. Results showed that, unlike TD children, during spontaneous navigation the WS group did not predominantly employ a sequential egocentric strategy. Instead, individuals with WS followed the path until the correct environmental landmarks were found, suggesting the use of a time‐consuming and inefficient view‐matching strategy for wayfinding. Individuals with WS also presented with deficits in allocentric spatial coding, demonstrated by difficulties in determining short‐cuts when required and difficulties developing a mental representation of the environment layout. This was found even following extensive experience in an environment, suggesting that – unlike in typical development – experience cannot contribute to the development of spatial relational processing in WS. This atypical presentation of both egocentric and allocentric spatial encoding is discussed in relation to specific difficulties on small‐scale spatial tasks and known atypical cortical development in WS.