Participant self-disclosure in group therapy

Thirty-nine adult hospitalized psychiatric patients, 18 men and 21 women, participated in a study aimed at investigating the relationship between participant self-disclosure in a therapy group and personality and therapy outcome. The results showed that in this type of sample the more disturbed patients disclosed more, which is contrary to results usually obtained among normals and neurotics. Similarly, for some patients, higher degrees of disclosure were related to worse therapy outcomes. These results indicate that the indiscriminate insistence of some therapists on selfdisclosure is inappropriate with hospitalized patients. Improving self-esteem by encouraging positively toned self-disclosures appears more promising.Barbara Polikoff, formerly a Research Assistant at Friends Hospital. The authors want to express their appreciation to Dr. Paul Curnow and Michael Bopp who conducted the groups under study and to Joseph Sillitti for his assistance in the data analysis.     

Investigating Emotional Body Posture Recognition in Adolescents with Conduct Disorder Using Eye-Tracking Methods

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - Adolescents with Conduct Disorder (CD) show deficits in recognizing facial expressions of emotion, but it is not known whether these difficulties...     

Neuroimaging evidence for agenda-dependent monitoring of different features during short-term source memory tests

A short-term source monitoring procedure with functional magnetic resonance imaging assessed neural activity when participants made judgments about the format of 1 of 4 studied items (picture, word), the encoding task performed (cost, place), or whether an item was old or new. The results support findings from long-term memory studies showing that left anterior ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) is engaged when people make source attributions about reflectively generated information (cognitive operations, conceptual features). The findings also point to a role for right lateral PFC in attention to perceptual features and/or familiarity in making source decisions. Activity in posterior regions also differed depending on what was evaluated. These results provide neuroimaging evidence for theoretical approaches emphasizing that agendas influence which features are monitored during remembering (e.g., M. K. Johnson, S. Hashtroudi, & D. S. Lindsay, 1993). They also support the hypothesis that some of the activity in left lateral PFC and posterior regions associated with remembering specific information is not unique to long-term memory but rather is associated with agenda-driven source monitoring processes common to working memory and long-term memory.     

A study of the test of supervisory skills

In supervisory selection and development it is important to assess individuals' supervisory competencies. In a field study, the Test of Supervisory Skills was validated against a surrogate criterion of supervisory performance, based upon position classification and supervisory experience. Subjects (N=2406), workers and applicants of both sexes, were recruited from multiple sources, tested, and the data analyzed to evaluate the usefulness of the test in human resource management applications. Both the current and prior results show significant relationships between scores on this test and various criteria of supervisory performance.     

Auditory negative priming in younger and older adults

Two experiments are reported in which performance of old and young adults in an auditory negative priming task was compared. Auditory negative priming was not smaller in old than in young adults. This result was independent of whether or not conditions were present that had previously been assumed to favour episodic retrieval, as opposed to inhibitory processes, as a basis of the negative priming phenomenon. The data from the present auditory negative priming experiments are incompatible with the global assumption that the efficiency of inhibitory attentional processes in general diminishes across the adult life span.     

Why don't they stay at home? Prejudices against ethnic minorities in Italy

This study was conducted in Bologna, Italy, to analyse attitudes concerning ethnic minorities and emotions experienced in intergroup relations. Stereotypes of North African immigrants were investigated as a function of 'geographical' proximity with black people (living in the neighbourhood of black immigrants versus living in districts without immigrants) and origin (natives of Bologna versus residents who moved from Southern Italy to Bologna). It was predicted that the most positive stereotypes would be found among natives of Bologna living in the same neighbourhoods as North Africans, while the most negative prejudices would occur among the South Italians who do not live in the same districts as black people. Results indicate that neighbourhood has a central importance but effects of respondents' origins are more mixed.     

Kant,health care and justification

An argument based on Kant for access to health-care for all is a most helpful addition to prior discussions. My paper argues that while such a point of view is helpful it fails to be persuasive. What is needed, in addition to a notion of the legislative will, is a viewpoint of community which sees justice as originating not merely from considerations of reason alone but from a notion of community and from a framework of common human experiences and capabilities.