Self-Healing Aspects of EMDR: The Therapeutic Change Process and Perspectives of Integrated Psychotherapies

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) (Shapiro 1989a, 1989b, 1995) is an innovative, comprehensive approach to psychotherapy. While EMDR's use of eye movements has attracted a great deal of attention, the efficacy of the EMDR method can be explained parsimoniously in terms of many different types of therapy. Lang's (1985) information processing networks provide a way to understand the Accelerated Information Processing model proposed by Shapiro to explain EMDR. A representative EMDR session is presented to illustrate the integrative components of EMDR's procedural elements and the range of clinical effects. Therapeutic changes seen as a result of self-healing using EMDR are discussed from the perspectives of other psychotherapeutic approaches in order to understand the contribution of EMDR to the psychotherapy integration movement.     

Male Leadership in an Addicted Women's Group: An Empirical Approach

This study examined the premise that women's addiction groups should be facilitated by female leaders. Results from pretest‐posttest comparisons indicated that attitudes toward men of participants in groups facilitated by men were more positive than were those of participants in groups facilitated by women.     

The Explosion Calculus

Studia Logica - A calculus for classical propositional sequents is introduced that consists of a restricted version of the cut rule and local variants of the logical rules. Employed in the style of...     

Reinforcement Without Awareness: I. Voice Level

Although some studies have reported that reinforcement can strengthen people's behaviour without their awareness, most studies that have incorporated adequate procedures for assessing awareness have been unsuccessful. Using rigorous procedures, we report two studies designed to provide more scope for learning without awareness by making the reinforcement contingency as unobtrusive as possible. Subjects were told that the experiment was on ESP, and that they were to say which of two words the experimenter was thinking about. In fact, reinforcement was contingent on the loudness of the subject's voice when responding. Even though subjects reported no awareness of a relationship between trial outcomes and their behaviour, the probability of the reinforced responses increased significantly over trials in both experiments. These results support the view that reinforcement can occur without awareness.     

Cultural Dimensions of Early Pregnancy Loss: Spiritual and Religious Issues

Nearly one in five clinically confirmed pregnancies ends in a loss before 20 weeks (Bardos et al., 2015). Despite the prevalence of miscarriage, many women and partners experience a lack of acknowledgment and support while also encountering complicated concerns related to the intersection of perinatal loss, culture, religious and spiritual issues, medical treatment, their reproductive stories, and grief (Randolph et al., 2015). Counselors working with these clients must address complex cultural considerations. As such, we review key cultural and religious/spiritual issues related to early pregnancy loss and offer recommendations for practice based on the current literature in the context of the Association for Spiritual, Ethical, and Religious Values in Counseling (2009) counseling competencies.     

Are Episodic Buffer Processes Intact in ADHD? Experimental Evidence and Linkage with Hyperactive Behavior

Working memory deficits are present in a substantial proportion of children with ADHD, and converging evidence links these deficits with ADHD-related behavioral and functional impairments. At the same time, working memory is not a unitary construct, and evidence is lacking regarding the role of several components of this system in ADHD. Preclinical behavioral studies are needed to fractionate the multicomponent working memory system, determine which specific subcomponent(s) are impaired in ADHD, and more importantly link these subcomponent(s) with specific ADHD-related behavioral symptoms/functional impairments. The current study reflects one piece of that puzzle, and focuses on the episodic buffer component of working memory. Across multiple testing days, a well-characterized sample of 86 children ages 8–13 (M=10.52, SD=1.54; 34 girls; 64% Caucasian/Non-Hispanic) with ADHD (n=49) and without ADHD (n=37) completed three counterbalanced working memory tests that were identical in all aspects except the key subcomponent process (phonological, visuospatial, episodic buffer). Gross motor movement during these and control tasks were measured using 4 high-precision actigraphs. There was no evidence of group differences in gender, age, SES, or IQ. Bayesian mixed-model ANOVAs indicated that the ADHD group performed significantly worse on all three working memory tests (d=1.17–1.44) and was significantly more hyperactive than controls (d=0.66–1.05) during the visuospatial and episodic buffer tests. In contrast, the ADHD and Non-ADHD groups were equivalent with regard to effects of episodic buffer demands on performance and hyperactive behavior. The most parsimonious conclusion is that the episodic buffer is likely intact in ADHD, and unrelated to ADHD hyperactivity symptoms.     

Effects of mixing and cueing simple addition and multiplication

Miller and Paredes (1990) found that both children's and adults' performance of simple addition and multiplication tested in mixed-operation blocks was slower and more susceptible to operation errors (e.g., 6 + 2=12 or 6×2=8) compared to pure-operation blocks; but mixed-operation costs were greater for addition than for multiplication. We pursued the source of these effects in adults (n=96) by examining effects of operation switching and cueing. We replicated the asymmetrical costs of mixing addition and multiplication and demonstrated that these owed, in part, to asymmetrical task switching costs. Operation foreknowledge (a visual cue appearing 2 s before the problem) moderated both mixing and switch costs. This suggests that an asymmetry between addition and multiplication in the utility of preparation contributed to asymmetric mixing costs. Miller and Paredes proposed that the asymmetric costs of mixing operations observed in adults echoed an asymmetry developed in childhood when multiplication is initially learned. This might be correct, but our results raise the possibility that the asymmetry reflects operation-specific costs and interference effects that arise during the experiment.     

The role of cue familiarity in adults’ strategy choices for simple addition

Are adults’ decisions to use direct memory retrieval for simple addition influenced by the familiarity of problem operands? We manipulated the familiarity of a subset of operands by having adults repeatedly practise specific additions (two+five=?; Experiment 1) or magnitude comparisons (two five, choose the larger; Experiment 2). Both experiments provided evidence that pre-exposure to single-digit operands increased reported use of direct retrieval for new combinations of the familiarised operands. RT and error patterns across experiments also supported the conclusion that increased use of retrieval facilitated performance. These results show that operand familiarity potentially plays a significant role in adults’ strategy choices for simple addition.     

Simple addition and multiplication: No comparison

Some models of memory for arithmetic facts (e.g., 5+2=7, 6×7=42) assume that only the max-left order is stored in memory (e.g., 5+2=7 is stored but not 2+5=7). These models further assume an initial comparison of the two operands so that either operand order (5+2 or 2+5) can be mapped to the common internal representation. We sought evidence of number comparison in simple addition and multiplication by manipulating size congruity. In number comparison tasks, performance costs occur when the physical and numerical size of numerals are incongruent (8 3) relative to when they are congruent (8 3). Sixty-four volunteers completed a number comparison task, an addition task, and a multiplication task with both size congruent and size incongruent stimuli. The comparison task demonstrated that our stimuli were capable of producing robust size congruity and split effects. In the addition and multiplication task, however, we were unable to detect any of the RT signatures of comparison or reordering processes despite ample statistical power: Specifically, there was no evidence of size congruity, split, or order effects in either the addition or multiplication data. We conclude that our participants did not routinely engage a comparison operation and did not consistently reorder the operands to a preferred orientation.