The secure-base hypothesis: Global attachment, attachment to counselor, and session exploration in psychotherapy

This study explored J. Bowlby's (1988) secure-base hypothesis, which predicts that a client's secure attachment to the therapist, as well as the client's and the therapist's global attachment security, will facilitate in-session exploration. Volunteer clients (N = 59) and trainee counselors (N = 59) in short-term therapy completed the Experiences in Close Relationship Scale (K. A. Brennan, C. L. Clark, & P. R. Shaver, 1998) as a measure of adult global romantic and peer attachment orientations; the Client Attachment to Therapist Scale (B. Mallinckrodt, D. L. Gantt, & H. M. Coble, 1995) as a measure of attachment to counselor; the Working Alliance Inventory (A. O. Horvath & L. Greenberg, 1989) as a measure of working alliance; and the Session Evaluation Questionnaire-Depth Subscale (W. B. Stiles & J. S. Snow, 1984) as a measure of session depth. In line with Bowlby's hypothesis, the findings suggest that session depth is related to the client's experience of attachment security with the counselor and that counselor global attachment moderates the relationship between client global attachment and session exploration. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).     

The Ethics of Academic Journal Editing

This paper amounts to a reply to Professor Donald G. Brown’s thoughtful comment on my “Ethical Issues in Journal Peer-Review”, which appeared in this journal.

Genetic Counseling Dilemmas for a Patient with Sporadic Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis,Frontotemporal Degeneration & Parkinson’s Disease

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), frontotemporal degeneration and Parkinson’s disease may be different expressions of the same neurodegenerative disease. However, association between ALS and parkinsonism-dementia complex (ALS-PDC) has only rarely been reported apart from the cluster detected in Guam. We report a patient presenting with ALS-PDC in whom pathological mutations/expansions were investigated. No other family members were reported to have any symptoms of a neurological condition. Our case demonstrates that ALS-PDC can occur as a sporadic disorder, even though the coexistence of the three clinical features in one patient suggests a single underlying genetic cause. It is known that genetic testing should be preferentially offered to patients with ALS who have affected first or second-degree relatives. However, this case illustrates the importance of genetic counseling for family members of patients with sporadic ALC-PDC in order to provide education on the low recurrence risk. Here, we dicuss the ethical, psychological and practical consequences for patients and their relatives.     

Development and testing of a rapid method for measuring shoal size discrimination

The shoal-choice test is a popular method to investigate quantity discrimination in social fish based on their spontaneous preference for the larger of two shoals. The shoal-choice test usually requires a long observation time (20–30 min), mainly because fish switch between the two shoals with low frequency, thus reducing the possibilities of comparison. This duration limits the use of the shoal-choice test for large-scale screenings. Here, we developed a new version of the shoal-choice test in which the subject was confined in a large transparent cylinder in the middle of the tank throughout the experiment to bound the minimum distance from the stimulus shoals and favour switching. We tested the new method by observing guppies (Poecilia reticulata) in a 4 versus 6 fish discrimination (experiment 1). The new method allowed for a faster assessment of the preference for the larger shoal (<5 min), resulting in potential application for large population screenings. Guppies switched five times more frequently between the two shoals and remained close to the first chosen shoal ten times less compared to experiments with the old method. In experiment 2, we found that with the new method guppies were able to discriminate up to 5 versus 6 fish, a discrimination that was not achieved with the classical method. This last result indicates that minor methodological modifications can lead to very different findings in the same species and suggests that caution should be exercised when interpreting inter-specific differences in quantitative abilities.     

Maximizing noise energy for noise-masking studies

Noise-masking experiments are widely used to investigate visual functions. To be useful, noise generally needs to be strong enough to noticeably impair performance, but under some conditions, noise does not impair performance even when its contrast approaches the maximal displayable limit of 100 %. To extend the usefulness of noise-masking paradigms over a wider range of conditions, the present study developed a noise with great masking strength. There are two typical ways of increasing masking strength without exceeding the limited contrast range: use binary noise instead of Gaussian noise or filter out frequencies that are not relevant to the task (i.e., which can be removed without affecting performance). The present study combined these two approaches to further increase masking strength. We show that binarizing the noise after the filtering process substantially increases the energy at frequencies within the pass-band of the filter given equated total contrast ranges. A validation experiment showed that similar performances were obtained using binarized-filtered noise and filtered noise (given equated noise energy at the frequencies within the pass-band) suggesting that the binarization operation, which substantially reduced the contrast range, had no significant impact on performance. We conclude that binarized-filtered noise (and more generally, truncated-filtered noise) can substantially increase the energy of the noise at frequencies within the pass-band. Thus, given a limited contrast range, binarized-filtered noise can display higher energy levels than Gaussian noise and thereby widen the range of conditions over which noise-masking paradigms can be useful.     

Conceptual foundations and validation of the Pseudoscientific Belief Scale

In this study, we present the Pseudoscientific Belief Scale (PSEUDO; α = 0.90). The conceptual foundations of the scale include (a) a philosophically grounded and functional demarcation criterion between science and pseudoscience; (b) an analysis of the pseudoscientific status of science denialism, which is integrated into the scale; and (c) a bibliographic justification to back up the inclusion of each item. The validation process is carried out based on two studies. Study 1 (N = 3,416) uses both exploratory factor analysis and cluster analysis: Conceptually congruent factors are not reported. Study 2 (N = 292) includes a total of 21 sociodemographic, personality, and cognitive independent variables, as well as the two thematic subscales of PSEUDO as dependent variables, in order to analyze the psychological profile of both sets of believers. Results show high similarity between both groups, confirming construct validity.