Family therapy research: What are the most important variables?

This report summarizes the results of a nearly day-long session of a group of experienced and distinguished family therapy practitioners and researchers. The task the group set for itself was to begin delineating the most important variables to attend to in understanding family therapy and evaluating its effectiveness. With full recognition that such a task could be only partially and tentatively accomplished in the time allotted, a great many such variables were outlined.     

Philosophy of medicine in the Netherlands

This report explores the relationship between philosophy and medicine in the Netherlands. In Section 1 we outline the ups and downs of medico-philosophical research in our country: pre-war flourishing, post-war decline, and modern renaissance. In Section 2 we review recent Dutch literature in the philosophy of medicine. The topics dealt with include methodology of medical science, alternative medicine, the basic concepts of medicine, anthropological medicine, medicalization, medicine and culture, and health care ethics.     

In defence of a ratio model for movement detection at threshold

Sutherland (1961) proposed that the detection of motion might depend upon the ratios of firings in cells sensitive to movement in opposite directions. Sekuler and his collaborators have argued that the notion of a ratio mechanism at threshold is wrong. The findings and arguments upon which this conclusion was based are challenged, an explicit model is described which provides an account of data previously held to be inconsistent with a ratio model, and an experiment is reported which provides unequivocal support for the ratio model and whose findings are inconsistent with the predictions from Sekuler's “independence” model.     

Studies in social influence: V. Minority influence and conversion behavior in a perceptual task

The effects of influence attempts by a majority and by a minority were examined on both a manifest response level and a latent perceptual level. Female subjects were exposed to a series of blue slides that were consistently labeled as green by a female confederate. The confederate was presented as a member of either a majority or a minority. On each trial, subjects were required to indicate the color of the slide presented and the color of the afterimage perceived on a white screen following removal of the slide. It was predicted that (a) the subject's judgment of the chromatic afterimage would be modified when the influence agent represented a minority, and (b) this modification will be more pronounced when the source of influence is absent than when it is present. The results supported the prediction in both the main study and its replication.