The U.S. Supreme Court Decision in Jaffee v. Redmond: Implications for Counselors

In 1996, the U.S. Supreme Court held that communications between licensed psychotherapists and their patients are privileged under the Federal Rules of Evidence. The nature of privileged communication, the history of this Supreme Court decision, and implications of the decision for counselors are discussed.     

Responsibility Attributions for Drunken Behavior: The Role of Expectancy Violation1

Research on attributions about drunken aggression has suggested that intoxication serves to excuse the aggressor while increasing blame to the victim. In this study, we examined subjects' responses to a scenario depicting a violent interaction in which intoxication of aggressor and victim, victim's behavior, and aggressor's previous violent background were varied. We predicted that to the extent that the violent act violated the expectations of the observer, alcohol intoxication would serve to decrease dispositional and responsibility attributions to the aggressor. Instead, the findings showed that alcohol use led to increased attributions of causality, blame, and responsibility for both aggressor and victim. The results are discussed in terms of both attribution theory and societal factors influencing the acceptability of excuses involving alcohol.     

Predicting Intentions of AIDS-Preventive Behavior Among Adolescents

The aim was to predict adolescents' i]ntentions of regular condom use on the basis of an extended version of Ajzen and Fishbein's (1980) theory of reasoned action. Attitude and subjective norm concerning regular condom use were measured along with their antecedent beliefs and evaluations, with fear of AIDS and knowledge about AIDS included as additional variables. A mixed-gender sample comprising both sexually active and sexually inexperienced adolescents was studied. The results strongly support the impact of attitude toward regular condom use as a determinant of a corresponding behavioral intention. Normative pressures failed to predict intentions of regular condom use, as did fear of AIDS and knowledge about AIDS. The findings are discussed with respect to intervention campaigns aimed at promoting condom use among adolescents as an AIDS-preventive measure.     

Conflict between incompetences and influence of a low-expertise source in hypothesis testing

In a 2–4–4–like reasoning task, 69 subjects tested hypotheses following exposure to a low-expertise source proposing an alternative hypothesis. Subjects compared self- and source's competence either independently or interdependently. Results show that interdependence leads subjects to assert self-validity and the source's invalidity, and to test hypotheses through confirmation. Independence produces a conflict between incompetences, i.e. doubt concerning self- and source's validity, leading to disconfirmatory testing.     

Stimulus-independent thought depends on central executive resources

Stimulus-independent thoughts (SITs) are streams of thoughts and images unrelated to immediate sensory input. Four experiments examined the contribution of aspects of working memory to production of SITs. In Experiments 1 and 2, interventions that were targeted on, respectively, phonological and visuospatial components of working memory both interfered with production of SITs, but there was evidence that these tasks also made demands on central executive resources. Experiments 3 and 4 specifically examined the hypothesis that production of SITs and control of nonproceduralized tasks both depend on central executive resources, and so should show mutual interference. In Experiment 3, prior practice on pursuit rotor and memory tasks reduced the interference with SITs from concurrent task performance. In Experiment 4, randomness within a task involving random-number generation was less when SITs were being produced concurrently than it was when they were not. The results suggest that production of SITs depends on central executive resources.     

Uncertainty in estimating distances from memory

Magnitude estimations involving spatial characteristics, such as distance, typically show a compressive function when estimates are made from memory. In particular, as the magnitude of a property grows larger and larger, estimates become more and more inaccurate, with increasing underestimates of the actual magnitude. Previous theories have attempted to explain this difference by supposing that magnitude estimation was accomplished through a reperceptual process, in which the errors of perception are magnified, or a transformation process, in which the memory trace undergoes a consistent alteration toward a more schematic form. The present experiments present evidence in support of an uncertainty hypothesis. When subjects are uncertain of the actual value of a distance, they are forced to guess on the basis of the mean distance they encountered, because they are unable to retrieve the information accurately. When they can retrieve the information, they are more certain and their estimates are more accurate. This hypothesis was also extended to integrative conditions in which the subjects were presented with the stimulus display in a piecemeal fashion. In these cases, distance estimates were derived by combining spatial representations. This method of presentation caused distance estimates to become less accurate.     

Worldly and workaday worries: Contemporary concerns of children and young adolescents

Top-of-the-head worries were elicited from young people, grades 4 to 8, both before and after they completed quantitative risk assessments of specific health and environmental problems. Results revealed that many students carry a substantial worry burden that includes not only personal matters such as grades and social relations, but also concerns about death and about global issues such as homelessness and environmental degradation. The gender and grade differences that emerged were consistent with a developmental extension from self to societal perspectives. Differences in worry profiles from before to after the risk assessment interviews revealed some impact of recent exposure, as illustrated by a pre—post increase from 7% to 30% in students spontaneously expressing AIDS-related concerns. Implications of the breadth and severity of young people's concerns are discussed, as are the ambiguities inherent in standard assessment approaches.This research was supported by grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD27035) and the University of California Universitywide AIDS Research Program (R901040). We very much appreciate the cooperation of Sally Snyder and the Irvine Unified School District, Amy Watson and the Corinne A. Seeds University Elementary School, Trina Panaqua and the Bruin Kids of UCLA, and the Fernald Child Study Center. Special thanks are due to the 4th- through 8th-grade student participants. We are also grateful to Ellen Dellis, Virginia Elderkin-Thompson, Judy Hollingshead, Alison Holman, Judy Koch-Jones, and Kim Witte for their help with the interviews and to Tammy Merlo, Shealen Nash, and Beth Twambley for competent coding assistance. Finally, we thank the anonymous editorial reviewers for constructive comments on the nature of fear and worry.     

IMPLICIT MEMORY IN AMNESIC PATIENTS:

Abstract— Amnesic patients generally exhibit spared priming effects on implicit memory tasks despite poor explicit memory In a previous study, we demonstrated normal auditory priming in amnesic patients on an identification-in-noise test in which the magnitude of priming is independent of whether the speaker's voice is the same or different at study and test In the present experiment, we examined auditory priming on a filter identification test in which the magnitude of priming in control subjects is higher when the speaker's voice is the same at study and test than when it is different Amnesic patients, by contrast, failed to exhibit more priming in a same-voice condition than in a different-voice condition Voice-specific priming may depend on a memory system that is impaired in amnesia