Brief psychodynamic counselling with young adults

Short-term counselling is frequently employed within university counselling services in which there can often be an inherent institutional objective of returning students to the academic treadmill as soon as possible (Coren, 1996). On the other hand, this is perhaps tempered by the availability of counselling throughout the student's academic career, affording them the opportunity to return for further intensive short-term work (or longer-term if indicated or required). However, research into the effectiveness of short-term counselling suggests that interventions of less than eight sessions are as effective as those lasting significantly longer (Barkham, 1989). This may be particularly true in the case of students experiencing transitory problems relating to their life at university. This paper uses a case illustration to examine the value of short-term psychodynamic counselling in a university situation.     

Source memory in Parkinson's disease

Three experiments (ns = 14 per group) are reported which investigated the ability of Parkinson patients to remember the characteristics of conditions under which a memory was acquired. In Exp. 1, subjects were required to indicate for each item in a recognition memory test whether it was spoken by Experimenter 1 or by Experimenter 2 (external-external source memory). In Exp. 2, subjects had to indicate for each item whether it was generated by themselves or by the experimenter (internal-external source memory). In Exp. 3, subjects had to judge whether an item was generated by themselves in saying or in thinking (internal-internal source memory). We found that patients with Parkinson's disease were not impaired in the previous two kinds of source memory (Exp. 1 and 2) but were impaired in internal-internal source memory (Exp. 3) relative to the age-matched control groups. In addition, both groups' performance could be improved when given distinctive cues, i.e., perceptual cues in Exp. 1 and different-domain cues in Exp. 2. These results suggest that the availability of cues was critical for Parkinson's disease in source memory. Finally, the result of Exp. 2 also showed generation effects for patients with Parkinson's disease. The generation effect refers to better memory of information by people when they had to produce it, e.g., producing associates to a word, compared with memory of information given to them.     

Empfehlungen zur Behandlungspraxis bei psychotherapeutischen Kriseninterventionen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Toward an Evolutionary Psychology of Religion and Personality

Evolutionary psychology is an emerging paradigm for the social sciences that offers a powerful metatheoretical framework for personality psychology and, as I attempt to demonstrate in this article, for the psychology of religion as well. I argue that religion is not an evolved adaptation; rather, the diverse range of beliefs, behavior, and experience that we collectively refer to as religion emerge as byproducts of numerous, domain-specific psychological mechanisms that evolved to solve other (mundane) adaptive problems. These include mechanisms for reasoning about the natural world (naive physics and biology), about other people' minds (naive psychology), and about specific kinds of interpersonal relationships (attachment, kinship, social exchange, coalitions, status hierarchies).     

Convergent cortical representation of semantic processing in bilinguals

This study examined whether semantic processes in two languages (English and Spanish) are mediated by a common neural system in fluent bilinguals who acquired their second language years after acquiring their first language. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was performed while bilingual participants made semantic and nonsemantic decisions about words in Spanish and English. There was greater activation for semantic relative to nonsemantic decisions in left and right frontal regions, with greater left frontal activation. The locations of activations were similar for both languages, and no differences were found when semantic decisions for English and Spanish words were compared directly. These results demonstrate a shared frontal lobe system for semantic analysis of the languages and are consistent with cognitive research on bilingualism indicating that the two languages of a bilingual person access a common semantic system.     

Exposure to disgust-evoking imagery and information processing biases in blood-injection-injury phobia

Biased processing of threat-relevant information is a central construct among contemporary theories of anxiety. However, biases in attentional and memory processes have not been systematically investigated in blood-injection-injury (BII) phobia. Theory has suggested that disgust rather than fear characterizes BII phobia and may mediate processing biases differently. We investigated the effects of a disgust mood induction on attention and memory in BII phobic and nonphobic participants. The Stroop task failed to demonstrate an attentional bias toward medical and disgust words, even under conditions of disgust provocation. However, an implicit memory task showed that BII phobics completed more medical and disgust word stems than nonphobics. These results suggest that BII phobia may be characterized by a similar implicit memory, but not an attentional, bias found in other anxiety disorders. As such, information processing in BII phobia may be qualitatively different from other anxiety disorders. Implications for further research regarding information processing biases in BII phobia are discussed.     

The Utility of the Revised Life Orientation Test to Measure Optimism among Hong Kong Chinese

To examine the utility of the revised Life Orientation Test (LOT-R) to measure optimism among Hong Kong Chinese, the psychometric properties of the revised and the original versions of the Life Orientation Test were compared. A total of 248 Hong Kong Chinese undergraduates were studied in the fall and 165 of these participants were tested again 5 months later. Results indicated that the LOT-R is a reliable and valid measure of dispositional optimism among Hong Kong Chinese. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the LOT-R represents a one-factor model of optimism better than does the original version. Despite its brevity, the LOT-R is psychometrically sounder than the original sclae. These findings point to the feasibility of replacing the original with the revised scale in future research among Hong Kong Chinese. However, the utility of the revised test in cross-cultural comparisons may still be limited by the absence of emic components. Further research on optimism in the Chinese people with the LOT-R should pay more attention to the identification of emic dimensions.     

“Theobiology”: Attempting to Understand God and Ourselves

Theobiology, describing the interface between theology and biology, is proposed as a means to help us in our attempt to understand God, God's world, and ourselves. This embodiment of theological knowledge includes the relationship of humans to plants and animals, to the environment or God's world of creation, to God. Humans experience through their bodies and bodily functions, their senses and perceptions, all knowledge, including theological, psychological, and sociological knowledge. Gender, perhaps the largest division in any species, is a very important issue in biology and in theobiology. The gender and attributes associated with God and Christ—those of the male—have alienated and disenfranchised female persons. A balance between flesh and spirit, the sacred and the secular, women and men is vital if we are to achieve a healthy life and to live as a loving Creator would want all to live—in love, peace, and harmony, with caring and mutual respect among all that make up life—plant, animal, environment, and God.