Adaptation of Nussbaum's Capabilities Framework to Community Mental Health: A Consumer‐Based Capabilities Measure

The capabilities approach provides a rich evaluative framework to guide transformative change in the community mental health system. This study reports the content and construct validity and psychometric properties of a contextualized measure of the extent to which mental health programs foster achieved capabilities. The Achieved Capabilities Questionnaire for Community Mental Health (ACQ‐CMH), adapted from Nussbaum's capabilities framework, was developed previously with consumer collaboration. Content validity was assessed through a collaborative process, involving a panel of eight consumers, staff members, and senior researchers. The resulting shorter version (ACQ‐CMH‐98) was completed by 332 community mental health consumers sampled throughout Portugal. Factor (PCA) analysis, internal consistency reliability, and test–retest reliability over 2 weeks (N = 33) showed good psychometric properties. The resulting six‐factor structure with 48 items explains 48.88% of the total variance (KMO = 0.89; Bartlett p = .00). Internal consistency of the obtained dimensions ranges from .91 to .76. Associations of the measure with recovery, quality of life, and psychological distress scales add further evidence of construct validity. The adaptation of Nussbaum's framework stressed specific components that may enhance understanding and change within the community mental health system.     

The influence of high-risk pregnancies and social support systems on maternal perceptions of the infant

This study examines the effects of high-risk pregnancies on the maternal perception of the full-term healthy infant, as well as the influence of social support systems on these effects. Thirty mothers after high-risk pregnancy and 30 mothers after low-risk pregnancy were interviewed when their infants were 3 months old. Their perceptions of own and average baby were evaluated as well as the amount and availability of and their satisfaction with social support. The obtained results confirm the hypothesis that mothers after high-risk pregnancies tend to perceive their infant as significantly more difficult than mothers after low-risk pregnancies. A main finding of this study is that high-risk pregnancy mothers perceive an average baby in a much more positive way. Social support was not found to affect significantly the maternal negative perception of the infant after a high-risk pregnancy. These findings are discussed in the context of the continuity of the process of maternal affiliation to the infant before and after delivery.     

Ventral and dorsolateral regions of the midbrain periaqueductal gray (PAG) control different stages of defensive behavior: Dorsolateral PAG lesions enhance the defensive freezing produced by massed and immediate shock

Rats that receive nociceptive electric shock in an environment normally show the conditional fear-induced defensive response of freezing when returned to that environment. If several electric shocks are given in a massed manner they will condition less freezing than the same shocks given in a distributed manner. If a single shock is given immediately after placement in the chamber it does not support any conditioning, although the same shock given after a brief delay does. Electrolytic lesions of the dorsolateral periaqueductal gray (PAG), which damaged dorsomedial, dorsolateral, and lateral PAG, enhanced freezing under these conditions. Lesions of the ventral PAG, which caused extensive damage to the central gray below the aqueduct, reduced conditioning under the more optimal parameters (distributed or delayed shock). This was taken to indicate that both of these regions support different modes of defensive behavior and that when activated, the dorsolateral PAG inbits conditional fear-induced defensive behavior. © 1995 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Age and Assessments of Professional Expertise: The Relationship between Higher Level Employees’ Age and Self‐assessments or Supervisor Ratings of Professional Expertise

In this article the relationship between higher level employees’ age and assessments of professional expertise is described. Hypotheses have been tested with original survey data from 417 higher level employees and 224 direct supervisors. Concerning the analyses of the effects of age, our hypotheses have for the greater part been confirmed. In our study, we have found that age‐related stereotyping is an important phenomenon where assessments concerning professional expertise are made by supervisors. As regards the self‐ratings, there is no relationship between age and professional expertise. Further research is needed to understand the pattern of differences between the two types of ratings. Some speculations concerning improvements of the measurements are discussed.     

The ventriloquist effect does not depend on the direction of automatic visual attention

Previously, we showed that the visual bias of auditory sound location, or ventriloquism, does not depend on the direction of deliberate, orendogenous, attention (Bertelson, Vroomen, de Gelder, & Driver, 2000). In the present study, a similar question concerning automatic, orexogenous, attention was examined. The experimental manipulation was based on the fact that exogenous visual attention can be attracted toward asingleton—that is, an item different on some dimension from all other items presented simultaneously. A display was used that consisted of a row of four bright squares with one square, in either the left- or the rightmost position,smaller than the others, serving as the singleton. In Experiment 1, subjects made dichotomous left-right judgments concerning sound bursts, whose successivelocations were controlled by a psychophysical staircase procedure and which were presented in synchrony with a display with the singleton either left or right. Results showed that the apparent location of the sound was attractednot toward the singleton, but instead toward the big squares at the opposite end of the display. Experiment 2 was run to check that the singleton effectively attracted exogenous attention. The task was to discriminate target letters presented either on the singleton or on the opposite big square. Performance deteriorated when the target was on the big square opposite the singleton, in comparison with control trials with no singleton, thus showing that the singleton attracted attention away from the target location. In Experiment 3, localization and discrimination trials were mixed randomly so as to control for potential differences in subjects’ strategies in the two preceding experiments. Results were as before, showing that the singleton attracted attention, whereas sound localization was shifted away from the singleton. Ventriloquism can thus be dissociated from exogenous visual attention and appears to reflect sensory interactions with little role for the direction of visual spatial attention.     

Vocal congruence in mother-infant play

Turn-taking is the fundamental temporal structure of adult dialogue. This structure defines two types of joint silence: intrapersonal pause (silence bounded by the vocalizations of a single speaker) and switching pause (silence bounded by the vocalizations of different speakers). Switching pauses mark the boundaries of the turn exchange. In adult conversation the mean durations of both types of pause are characteristically matched between partners. This matching, termed vocal congruence, occurs developmentally earlier in the case of switching pauses. We hypothesized and confirmed that mothers and infants match switching pauses but not intrapersonal pauses at 4 months, even though the infants' vocalizations are prelinguistic. Second, since there are known affective correlates of vocal congruence in adult conversation, we hypothesized a similar affective correlate for mother-infant vocal congruence. We found, for the intrapersonal pause only, that the degree of matching within a dyad correlated with infant affective engagement. We conclude, from switching pause congruence, that a turntaking dialogic structure is being regulated in the mother-infant pair at 4 months in the same way as seen in adult conversation. Thus, both the temporal structure of adult dialogue and its affective correlate are prelinguistic.Supported in part by NIMH grant No. 41675.     

A comparison of the Probe technique and conventional therapy for young stutterers

This study contrasted the gains made in speech theraphy by 39 stutterers, 15 of whom were treated by conventional methods and 24 by the Probe technique. It was found that the Probe technique yielded substantially greater gains in fluency than did the conventional method, having more influence on final performance than factors such as initial fluency, time since onset of stuttering, or the presence of other unacceptable behaviors.