The Influence of Retention,Turnover, and Alliance on Process and Outcomes in Rolling Group Psychotherapy for Cocaine Disorder

A longitudinal repeated measures design was used to investigate the influence of treatment retention, and membership turnover on individual outcomes, and the relationship between individual-level and group-level therapeutic alliance in rolling group psychotherapy for individuals with cocaine abuse disorder. Eighteen patients were studied; data were collected prior to therapy and then monthly for 24 months. Patient outcomes and process were assessed. Improvements in symptoms and psychological functioning were associated with retention in psychotherapy. Membership turnover had a negative influence on symptoms. Development of an individual alliance was affected by the development of group-level therapeutic alliance, but not by time spent in therapy.     

References to Mental States in Mother–Child Conversation in the Second Year of Life

Research into social influences on young children’s growing understanding of others’ inner states has highlighted the value of early conversational exchanges. This longitudinal study was aimed at investigating whether and how mothers changed their inner state words when children were 16 months olds (T1) and 4 months later (T2), and the children’ s ability to use references to mental states at 20 months. Overall language measures (e.g. number of words, mean length utterances) and internal state labels were analyzed during play interactions at T1 and T2 for the mothers, and at T2 for the children. Results highlighted that the mothers partially modified their mentalistic vocabulary over 4 months. Moreover, the use of maternal references directed to the other at T1 is linked to the children’s ability to use references with a commentary function at T2. Conversation with the caregivers during daily activity may constitute, for children, a key practice to enhance their metarepresentation skills.     

The Effect of Victims' Social Support on Attributions of Blame in Female and Male Rape

The effects of perceived social support of the victim, victim gender, and participant gender on attributions of blame in rape were examined. The impact of attitudes toward gender roles was also investigated for their mediational role between participant gender and blame. Participants ( N= 121) read a report of an incident of rape and evaluated the victim and the perpetrator. Two ANOVAs showed that social support and participant gender influenced blame attributed to the victim, while victim gender influenced blame attributed to the perpetrator. Socially supported victims were blamed less than were unsupported victims. Men were more blaming of rape victims than were women, but further analyses showed this was mediated by attitudes toward gender roles. Men held significantly more traditional attitudes toward gender roles than did women, and this accounted for the effect of participant gender on victim perceptions. The perpetrator of male rape was blamed less than the perpetrator of female rape. Findings are discussed in terms of the differential attributional mechanisms that may underpin men's and women's reasoning about different types of rape.     

Evidence for a distributed hierarchy of action representation in the brain

Complex human behavior is organized around temporally distal outcomes. Behavioral studies based on tasks such as normal prehension, multi-step object use and imitation establish the existence of relative hierarchies of motor control. The retrieval errors in apraxia also support the notion of a hierarchical model for representing action in the brain. In this review, three functional brain imaging studies of action observation using the method of repetition suppression are used to identify a putative neural architecture that supports action understanding at the level of kinematics, object centered goals and ultimately, motor outcomes. These results, based on observation, may match a similar functional-anatomic hierarchy for action planning and execution. If this is true, then the findings support a functional-anatomic model that is distributed across a set of interconnected brain areas that are differentially recruited for different aspects of goal-oriented behavior, rather than a homogeneous mirror neuron system for organizing and understanding all behavior.     

Teachers’ burnout, depression, role ambiguity and conflict

The present study investigates issues associated with teachers’ burnout in primary education as related to depression and role conflict–ambiguity. At the time of the study the participants (562 teachers) were working in seventy nine (79) Primary Education State Schools in Greece (Athens and two prefectures in the southern part of the country). The results showed that of the three factors comprising the Burnout inventory (MBI, Maslach and Jackson, MBI: Maslach Burnout Inventory; manual research edition, 1986), (i.e., Emotional exhaustion, Personal accomplishment, Depersonalization) Emotional Exhaustion showed a statistically significant (positive) correlation with the factors that comprise: (a) the Scale of Depression (CES-D: Ensel, in: Lin et al. (eds.) Social support, life events and depression, 1986; Radloff, Applied Psychological Measurement 1: 385–401, 1977) such as Depressed affect, Somatic retarded activity and (b) Degree of Role Conflict (Role Conflict and Role Ambiguity Scale, Rizzo et al., Administrative Science Quarterly, 15:150–163, 1970, adapted in Greek by Koustelios and Kousteliou, Psychological Reports, 82:131–136, 1998); similarly, Positive affect (CES-D) and Degree of Role Clarity (Role Conflict and Role Ambiguity Scale) showed a statistically significant (negative) correlation with the same factor (Emotional exhaustion). Furthermore, a regression analysis performed with Personal accomplishment as the dependent variable showed that the (combined) factors of Role Ambiguity, Positive Affect and Somatic Retarded Activity contributed significantly to the prediction of the dependent variable; A third regression analysis performed with Depersonalization as dependent variable showed that Somatic Retarded Activity, Role Conflict, Positive Affect, Interpersonal Affect and Role Ambiguity contributed significantly to the prediction of this variable. Overall, the results showed that Greek teachers experience low-moderate levels of Burnout, Depression, Role conflict and Role ambiguity.     

Toward an Understanding of “The Sex Game”: The Effects of Gender and Self-Monitoring on Perceptions of Sexuality and Likability in Initial Interactions1

Results of several studies indicate that men attribute more sexual meaning to heterosexual interactions than do women. Based on Abbey's (1982) findings, we hypothesized that males, in comparison to females, would attribute more sexuality to opposite-sex partners. Based on findings from several self-monitoring dating studies, we predicted that high self-monitors would rate their partners and themselves higher on sexuality and likability traits than would low self-monitors. A laboratory study was conducted in which mixed-sex pairs of participants discussed their likes and dislikes about college life. Participants then rated themselves and their opposite-sex partners on a set of sexuality and likability trait adjectives and indicated their interest in getting to know their partner better. Results supported the gender hypotheses, whereas they only partially supported the self-monitoring predictions. The self-monitoring effects on self-ratings of sexuality and partner ratings of likability are used to explain why high self-monitors are more successful than low self-monitors in establishing heterosexual relationships.