Counselling in general practice: Clients' perceptions of significant events and outcome

An investigation of clients' perceptions of the change process and outcome of counselling in primary care is presented. Significant events were identified by 51 clients post-session for a mean of 4.7 counselling sessions. Outcome was assessed by clients, through their perceptions of goal attainment and change in quality of life from pre-to post-counselling. Four-hundred-and-nine events were categorized by use of the Therapeutic Impact Content Analysis System (TICAS) and a content analysis system was created to categorize clients' goals. Results showed that ‘reassurance’, ‘problem solution ’, ‘insight’ and ‘involvement’ impacts were reported most frequently by clients. No category of significant events was related to change in quality of life. For 11 clients who set goals in the ‘expression’ category, more ‘reassurance’ and fewer ‘problem solution’ impacts were related to attainment of ‘expression’. Some suggestions are made for the lack of significant relationships with overall measures of outcome and it was suggested that more qualitative analysis of the process of outcome is needed.     

Book reviews

BLACKMAN, D. Operant Conditioning: An Experimental Analysis of Behaviour. London: Methuen. 1974. Pp. 248. £3.20.

Bower, G. H. (Ed.). the Psychology of Learning and Motivation: Advances in Research and Theory. Vol. 7. Academic Press: New York. 1973. Pp. 370. £.15.

Lehrman, D.S., Hinde, R. A. and Shaw, E. (Ed.). Advances in The Study of Behavior. Vol. 4. Academic Press: New York. 1972. Pp. 217. £4.70.

MARK, R. Memory and Nerve Cell Connections. Oxford University Press. 1974. Pp. 156. E2.95.

HABER, R. N. and HERSHENSON, M. The Psychology of Visual Perception. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 1973. Pp. 398.

ESSMAN, W. B. and NAKAJIMA, S. (Eds.). Current Biochemical Approaches to Learning and Memory. New York: Spectrum/Wiley. 1973. Pp. ix+205. £8.40.

GIBBS, M. E. and MARK, R. F. Inhibition of Memory Formation. New York and London: Plenum. 1973. Pp. x + 554. $29.00.

ZIPPEL, H. P. (Ed.). Memory and Transfer of Information. New York and London: Plenum. 1973. Pp. xxiv+582. $33.50.     

Fathers: The invisible parent

Viewing the family as a system of interdependent roles has frequently led to the assumption that fathers, in comparison with mothers, play highly restricted roles vis-à-vis their children. Much of the literature on fathers, in point of fact, stresses their absence, their disinterest, and lack of competence in child care. Reported here are findings from a sample of 231 families which suggest that this conception of fatherhood does an injustice to the empirical case. The evidence indicates that when the amount of time available to spend with children is considered, the father's involvement with his children is equal to that of the mother's. Under certain conditions, in fact, father-child involvement exceeds the child-related activities performed by mothers.     

Proneness to psychosis and selection of objects of visual attention: individual differences in visual marking

Deficits in early visual attention and perceptual organisation have frequently been shown to associate with both poor pre-morbid schizophrenia and those at a greater putative risk of psychosis. The nature of the deficit is unclear. The present study investigated the relationship between speed of visual marking and proneness to psychosis. 20 males and 20 females completed several tasks assessing speed of selection and de-selection of visual objects. As predicted, negative schizotypy was associated with poorer marking in males, but socially desirable responding potentially confounded this result. In addition, impulsive non-conformity swas associated with poorer visual marking, more prominently in females. These results are discussed in relation to possible mechanisms by which psychosis-proneness and impulsivity may restrict the top–down influences operating on early visual attention.     

Development of Lexical and Sentence Level Context Effects for Dominant and Subordinate Word Meanings of Homonyms

Nine-ten-and twelve-year-old children (N = 75) read aloud dominant, subordinate or ambiguous bias sentences (N = 120) that ended in a homonym (BALL). After the sentence (1,000 ms), children read aloud targets that were related to the dominant (BAT) or subordinate (DANCE) meaning of the homonym or control targets. Participants were also divided into three reading skill groups based on an independent measure of single word oral reading accuracy. There were three main developmental and reading skill findings. First, 9-year-olds and low skill readers showed lexical level facilitation in accuracy. Second, 9- and 10-year-olds or low and moderate skill readers showed lexical level facilitation in reaction time. Third, 12-year-olds or high skill readers showed sentence level facilitation in reaction time with high skill readers additionally showing sentence level inhibition in reaction time. These results show that lexical level context effects decreased and that sentence level context effects increased with development and skill. These results are discussed in terms of connectionist models of visual word recognition that incorporate distributed attractor principles.     

Testosterone and dominance in men

In men, high levels of endogenous testosterone (T) seem to encourage behavior intended to dominate--to enhance one's status over--other people. Sometimes dominant behavior is aggressive, its apparent intent being to inflict harm on another person, but often dominance is expressed nonaggressively. Sometimes dominant behavior takes the form of antisocial behavior, including rebellion against authority and low breaking. Measurement of T at a single point in time, presumably indicative of a man's basal T level, predicts many of these dominant or antisocial behaviors. T not only affects behavior but also responds to it. The act of competing for dominant status affects male T levels in two ways. First, T rises in the face of a challenge, as if it were an anticipatory response to impending competition. Second, after the competition, T rises in winners and declines in losers. Thus, there is a reciprocity between T and dominance behavior, each affecting the other. We contrast a reciprocal model, in which T level is variable, acting as both a cause and effect of behavior, with a basal model, in which T level is assumed to be a persistent trait that influences behavior. An unusual data set on Air Force veterans, in which data were collected four times over a decade, enables us to compare the basal and reciprocal models as explanations for the relationship between T and divorce. We discuss sociological implications of these models.     

The User Interface in Computer-based Selection and Assessment: Applied and Theoretical Problematics of an Evolving Technology

Although its central role in human-computer interaction is recognized by industry, the user interface (UI) has received scant attention in the computer-based testing (CBT) literature. Industrial and European Community ergonomic directives have been established regarding UI design issues, however, which may significantly impact upon CBT. Accordingly, the UI’s CBT role is discussed regarding central CBT/UI constructs and dynamics. On the basis of one CBT UI design issue (here: paging) it is shown that many ergonomic regulatory definitional traps exist for the unwary CBT practitioner and UI designer. Newer UI developments in windowing technology and computer-based UI ergonomic regulation conformance analysis are described. Finally, open issues regarding CBT UI problematics are discussed, showing that, rather than continuing to lead a shadowed existence, the UI is deserving of considerably increased research effort regarding its CBT impact.