How i manage to be a rational rational emotive behavior therapist

This paper gives three important grandiose demands and absolutistic musts by which therapists and supervisors of therapy commonly disturb themselves and how the author manages to make himself aware of and to surrender these demands both inside and outside of the office.Paper presented at the 103rd Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, August14, 1995 in the Symposium, Leaving It at the Office—Preventing and Ameliorating Distress. Sponsored by Divisions, 17, 29, 30, & 42. New York Hilton Hotel Towers, Second Floor Gramercy Suite A.     

Recognition of Facial Expressions of Emotion by Children with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

Interpreting and responding appropriately to facial expressions of emotion are important aspects of social skills. Some children, adolescents, and adults with various psychological and psychiatric disorders recognize facial expressions less proficiently than their peers in the general population. We wished to determine if such deficits existed in a group of 133 children and adolescents with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). The subjects were receiving in-patient psychiatric services for at least one of substance-related disorders, adjustment disorders, anxiety disorders, mood disorders or disruptive behavior disorders. After being read stories describing various emotional reactions, all subjects were tested for their ability to recognize the 6 basic facial expressions of emotion depicted in Ekman and Friesen's (1976) normed photographs. Overall, they performed well on this task at levels comparable to those occurring in the general population. Accuracy increased with age, irrespective of gender, ethnicity, or clinical diagnosis. After adjusting for age effects, the subjects diagnosed with either adjustment disorders, mood disorders, or disruptive behavior disorders were significantly more accurate at identifying anger than those without those diagnoses. In addition, subjects with mood disorders identified sadness significantly more accurately than those without this diagnosis, although the effect was greatest with younger children.     

A multiple option observation system for experimental studies: MOOSES

The purpose of this article is to outline the development of the Multiple Option Observation System for Experimental Studies (MOOSES), a flexible data collection package for applied behavioral research. Several data collection options are available to users of MOOSES. Event-based recording, interaction-based recording, duration recording, and interval recording are available to the users and can be used individually or together, depending upon the research question. The collection program can incorporate any of the keys on the keyboard. Function keys on the top or side are used for toggle (duration states) type data collection. Types of analysis include frequency and duration of discrete events, frequency of general behavior states, frequency and duration of events within behavioral states, percent interval analysis, sequential analysis, and interobserver agreement. Data obtained from MOOSES is easily incorporated with other data for further statistical analysis with standard statistical packages or popular spreadsheet programs. Applications of MOOSES and its uses in social interaction research are presented. Comparisons with other similar systems are provided.     

Gender-sensitive participatory impact assessment: Useful lessons from the Caribbean

In this article, the writer draws on her extensive experience working in community development, with women in the Caribbean, and with using participatory methodology in training and research to examine the issues related to assessing the impact of development projects on men and women. She uses the example of training, research, and evaluation activities carried out with, and undertaken by, people in rural communities to illustrate how gender-sensitive impact assessment can be done.     

Depressive deficits in memory: processing initiative and resource allocation

Hertel and Hardin investigated the effects of depressed mood states on recognition memory in three experiments. They report that mood effects on memory depend on the subjects' awareness of the task. Four issues are considered in this article: natural and induced moods, processing initiative, initiative versus resource allocation, and strategies.     

Repetition priming and face processing: Priming occurs within the system that responds to the identity of a face

A familiar stimulus that has recently been recognized will be recognized a second time more quickly and more accurately than if it had not been primed by the earlier encounter. This is the phenomenon of “repetition priming”. Four experiments on repetition priming of face recognition suggest that repetition priming is a consequence of changes within the system that responds to the familiarity of a stimulus. In Experiment 1, classifying familiar faces by occupation facilitated subsequent responses to the same faces in a familiarity decision task (Is this face familiar or unfamiliar?) but not in an expression decision task (Is this face smiling or unsmiling?) or a sex decision task (Is this face male or female?). In Experiment 2, familiar faces showed repetition priming in a familiarity decision task, regardless of whether a familiarity judgment or an expression judgment had been required when the faces were first encountered. Expression decisions to familiar faces again failed to show repetition priming. In Experiment 3, familiar faces showed repetition priming in a familiarity decision task, regardless of whether a familiarity judgment or a sex judgment had been asked for when the faces were first encountered. Sex decisions to familiar faces again failed to show repetition priming. In Experiment 4, familiarity decisions continued to show repetition priming when a brief presentation time with encouragement to respond while the face was displayed reduced response latencies to speeds comparable to those for sex and expression judgments in Experiments 1 to 3. The results are problematic for theories that propose that repetition priming is mediated by episodic records of previous acts of stimulus encoding.     

Countering perfectionism in research on clinical practice II: Retrospective analysis of treatment progress

A simple correlational study is described which has methodological advantages, when compared with an equivalent manipulative (i.e., quasiexperimental) research design, for examining exploratory questions about treatment outcome. These advantages stem from the fact that retrospective designs, when compared with prospective ones, are much less likely to involve ethical problems due to offering relatively ineffective or unnecessary treatment, and less likely to involve confounds from newly hypothesized differential expectations about treatment. Based on Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI) scale scores, clients with high levels of histrionic or narcissistic (and possibly also those with antisocial, compulsive and paranoid) personality traits seemed to profit more from RET than those without such traits. Clients with high levels of schizoid, avoidant, and schizotypal traits (and probably also clients with strong passive-aggressive traits, and possibly also clients with strong dependent and borderline traits) seemed to profit less from RET than those without such marked traits. We have previously shown that the relatively healthy personality traits and disorders are associated with global self-upping and the relatively sick ones with global self-downing, as well as contrasting patterns of positive and negative reactions to stressful events. Our findings here support the concept that clients who consistently handle life situations well will tend to progress most rapidly in therapy, and those who generally handle life situations badly will tend to progress slowly. Personality traits may be especially significant markers for therapeutic attention to problems stemming from global self-rating. Expectations based on the severity of global self-upping and/or self-downing may be good predictors of therapeutic progress. In contrast, expectations about RET outcomes based on severity of distress or neediness will probably be less accurate.Dr. Russell C. Leaf is Associate Professor of Psychology at Rutgers. He also directs a research project at the Institute for Rational-Emotive Therapy, in collaboration with the four other authors of this article, on the relationships between intake personality and mental health. He is an Institute Fellow and Supervisor, and previously served as a staff therapist and as the Institute's Director of Clinical Evaluation.Albert Ellis is President of the Institute for Rational-Emotive Therapy.Roslyn Mass is Professor at Middlesex County College. She is in charge of data processing and analysis for the collaborative research of this authorial team, and is a Fellow of and previously served as Administrative Director of the Institute for Rational-Emotive Therapy.Raymond DiGiuseppe is Associate Professor of Psychology at St. Johns and Director of Research and Director of Training at the Institute for Rational-Emotive Therapy.Diane Alington is Assistant Director and a member of the core faculty of the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research at Rutgers, where she conducts a research program on sex differences in adult development.     

Left hemisphere superiority for pronounceable nonwords,but not for unpronounceable letter strings

Right-handed adults were asked to identify bilaterally presented linguistic stimuli under three experimental conditions. In Condition A, stimuli were three-letter pronounceable nonwords (such as TUP), and subjects were asked to report them by naming them. In Condition B, stimuli were three-letter pronounceable nonwords, and subjects were asked to report them as strings of letters. In Condition C, stimuli were more or less unpronounceable letter strings (such as UTP) created by rearranging the letters of pronounceable nonwords, and subjects reported them as strings of letters. Pronounceable nonwords were found to be better identified from the right visual hemifield irrespective of the way in which they were reported. Unpronounceable letter strings did not produce any visual hemifield difference. Nonwords are of interest because they can be seen as potential words that lack both specific semantic properties and entries in the subject's internal lexicon. The results of the experiment are consistent with the view that both the left and right cerebral hemispheres are able to identify letters but the left hemisphere is more sensitive to the pronounceability of the nonwords. This may happen either because the left hemisphere can make better use of resemblances to real words or because it has access to spelling to sound correspondence rules.     

Repeated exposure to objects and peers in a play setting

Two hypotheses were contrasted. One posed a positive relationship between mere repeated exposure and preference for stimulus of concern; the other predicted that preference for stimuli would be modulated by their relative novelty and complexity. These hypotheses were tested within the context of a naturalistic play situation in which 40 4- to 5-year-old children were repeatedly exposed to and interacted with play settings differing in complexity. Overt preference for play objects declined with repeated exposure, the rate of decline being inversely determined by the complexity of the play stimuli. Preference for peers, however, increased as a function of repeated exposure, with the amount of increase being an inverse function of the complexity of the external setting.     

Fragmentation of fixated line stimuli as a function of gravitational orientation

The differential propensity of fixated line stimuli to fragment and disappear from view was studied as a function of the gravitational orientation of the stimuli. The propensity to fragment was measured in terms of three intercorrelated dependent variables: the number of fragmentations per fixation period, the total duration of fragmentation per fixation period, and the latency to the first fragmentation. Unlike some anisotropic visual phenomena, which may reflect orientation-independent aspects of pattern perception, the observed anisotropy of propensity to fragment can be attributed overwhelmingly to the retinal orientation of the stimuli. Accordingly, this property of fragmentation need nof be ascribed to higher order aspects of pattern perception.