Dual diagnosis: Clinical issues in the treatment of substance abuse,and affective,personality, and psychotic disorders

Co-morbidity of alcohol and substance with the spectrum of other psychiatric diagnoses is examined with specific emphasis on diagnostic indicators for anxiety and mood disorders. Diagnostic issues for the chemically dependent person are examined with the context of borderline personality disorder, schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders. Clinical research related to the dually-diagnosed patient is explored     

Religious aspects of bereavement

The purpose of this study was to learn more about the role of religious beliefs and practices in bereavement. Subjects were 312 adults each bereaved approximately one year. They were interviewed at the rate of about 50 per year over a 6 year period. Conclusions include: a) The opportunity to say goodbye to the deceased was significantly related to positive coping and outlook; (b) 47% of our subjects reported contact with the deceased following the death but such contact was not related to coping or outlook; c) grieving people are much more likely to turn to women than men for help; d) 77% said their religious beliefs were of considerable help in their grief.     

The Search for Employment: Motivation to Engage in a Coping Behavior1

The search for employment was examined as coping through engagement in motivated behavior. A model predicting social networking and employer contact behavior was tested with a sample of persons anticipating college graduation. Proposed relations among behavioral antecedents were primarily drawn from Ajzen's (1985) theory of planned behavior, with the addition of cognitively appraised challenge. Structural equations analysis revealed general support for hypothesized relations among attitude, norms, perceived behavioral control, intentions, and behaviors. Cognitively appraised challenge partially mediated the effects of perceived behavioral control on job search intentions. Significant variance in job search attitude was attributed to a valence by outcome expectancy interaction. Findings may be useful in promoting job search efforts, as well as furthering theoretical delineation of the search process.     

Boundary regulation in family and personal systems: Perceptions of late adolescents

Examination of boundary regulation can provide family therapists with a framework to describe both the functioning of family systems and personal systems (i.e., the intrapsychic functioning of individual family members). In the present study, late adolescents' perceptions of boundary regulation within their family systems (i.e., ratings of family health, communication, leadership, expressiveness, cohesion, and family conflict) were related to regulation of their personal boundaries (i.e., self-reported personal competence, distress, and patterns of defense mechanism use). In addition, personal system variables reliably discriminated between adolescents who described their families as psychologically healthy versus psychologically unhealthy.     

The effects of memory load and the contrast of the rod signal on partial report superiority in a Sperling task

Subjects participated in a Sperling task. The independent variables included delay of report cue, dark background field vs. a light background field intense enough to nearly saturate the rod system (duration of rod icon), and whether or not subjects were required to retain a list of letters or words (memory load) while performing in the Sperling task. Partial report superiority is normally taken as an indication of iconic memory. However, the main result was that memory load, which presumably does not affect the duration of the icon, increased partial report superiority. The effect of luminance of the background field was to reduce the partial report superiority. The results show that the existence of a partial report superiority and/or a decaying partial report curve does not necessarily imply the existence of an icon or visual storage.     

Decoding effects of cognitive complexity,tolerance of ambiguity,and verbal–nonverbal inconsistency1

The effects of inconsistency between the verbal and nonverbal components of a message were investigated. Subjects were 72 females who rated the attitudes of encoding confederates who communicated either consistent or inconsistent messages. Verbal and nonverbal components were varied as either positive or negative and each of the four possible combinations served as an experimental condition. The nonverbal cues of amount of eye contact, postural orientation, forward–backward lean, and head nodding were found to influence the judgment of the total message. Verbal and nonverbal components were found to have interactive rather than additive effects. Inconsistent nonverbal cues had a stronger effect when accompanying a positive verbal message than when accompanying a negative verbal component. The effects of decoders' levels of cognitive complexity and tolerance of ambiguity were also assessed. Evidence suggests that both complexity and ambiguity tolerance have effects on the utilization of inconsistent nonverbal cues. Low complexity/low tolerance subjects were less influenced by nonverbal cues in the positive verbal–negative nonverbal condition. These subjects were also found to differentiate less between supplied rating dimensions than other groups.     

Reinforcement and punishment in a closed system

Children chose between toys freely and with various restrictive contingencies. Sometimes play with a preferred toy was contingent on play with a nonpreferred toy. Sometimes play with a nonpreferred toy was contingent on play with a preferred toy. Another toy (free toy) was always available during contingency sessions. Because toy playing occupied the entire session the response system was closed. When one response increased in duration others had to decrease. An analysis of closed-system responding revealed that the restrictions of the closed system together with the restrictions imposed by the contingencies forced subjects to alter the proportion of time devoted to the three responses. A geometrical model representing the closed system and an analytical method based on distance are presented to describe the data.     

TRANSITIONS IN CHILDREN'S ROLES AND CAPABILITIES*

Stage theories and empirical studies have concentrated on a few periods of childhood (e.g., age 5 to 7 years) as important times of transition. On the basis of ethnographic suggestions that the age period 8 to 10 years also involves interesting changes, the authors carried out a search of published empirical studies for findings of transitions in capabilities at 8 to 10 years. An annotated bibliography is provided summarizing the studies found in a 5-year period in three journals. The authors discuss possibilities for characterizing the transition at age 8 to 10, as well as how such a transition meshes with the concept of stage.