A method for measuring "primitive" and "advanced" elements in pleasures and aversions

Subjects were asked to list pleasures and aversions actually experienced, and pleasures and aversions based on their "innermost fantasies." A 7-point rating scale was developed to rate "primitive" and "advanced" elements in these pleasure-aversion responses. The "primitive" pole of the scale was keyed with the phrase "gut-level experiencing" and the "advanced" pole with "detached objective thinking." Reality Pleasure, Fantasy Pleasure, Reality Aversive, Fantasy Aversive, and Total scores were derived by having trained raters rate each subject's response with the 7-point rating scale. In Study 1, 25 females and 25 males provided pleasure-aversion responses and the data analyzed in a mixed 2 (male-female) x 2 (reality-fantasy) x 2 (pleasure-aversive) ANOVA. The most important finding was a highly significant reality-fantasy x pleasure-aversive interaction: subjects tended to "progress" (give more advanced responses) going from reality to fantasy in their pleasure responses, while exactly the opposite occurred with the aversive responses. Also, as predicted, reality aversive responses tended to be more "advanced" than reality pleasure responses. Study 2 was similar in design, but several additional personality measures were administered to assess the construct validity of the pleasure-aversion scores. As in Study l, the reality-fantasy x pleasure-aversive interaction was highly significant and again reflected a pattern of "progression" going from reality to fantasy for pleasure responses and "regression" for aversive responses. The correlation analysis also produced several interesting findings with sex serving as a major moderator variable.     

Long-term retention as a function of word concreteness under conditions of free recall

Acquisition and long-term retention of concrete (C) and abstract (A) words were investigated under conditions of multiple-trial free recall. Both unmixed and mixed lists were used in original learning. Retention was tested either 1 rain or 1 week after attainment of the learning criterion. Acquisition was faster and retention was higher for C than for A words. These differences were more pronounced for mixed than for unmixed lists.     

The perception of briefly exposed point-sources of light

Point-sources of light (dots) were exposed for 10 to 50 msec, before five dark-adapted subjects in a dimly illuminated room. During voluntary fixation with one eye, the target was exposed some 10° on the nasal side of the optic axis. The intensity X duration of all targets was 2 X threshold and they consisted of either a single dot, or a pair of dots separated by a distance that was less than that required for two-point discrimination. In two-thirds of trials both the single-dot and the two-dot targets were perceived as short thin lines of various orientation. Although individual percepts were unpredictable, there was a preferred or most likely orientation for responses to the single-dot target; this was near to the horizontal for all five subjects. There was no significant difference between the preferred orientations for single-dot targets tested at sites more than 1° apart in the visual field. When two single-dot targets, separated by about 1°, were exposed simultaneously, the orientations of the perceived lines sometimes differed by as much as 80°; occasionally, one target was reported as a dot while the other was seen as a thin line. If the single-dot was briefly exposed between two continuously visible and parallel straight lines, the target usually appeared as a thin line, parallel to the framing lines. Some of these results appear to be consistent with the hypothesis that the human visual cortex, like that of the cat and monkey, contains neurones that are orientation specific.     

Infertility as boundary ambiguity: one theoretical perspective

Infertility as a life event can be understood from a number of conceptual perspectives: a developmental crisis, a grief reaction, a disruption of marital contracts and roles, a crisis of identity, sexuality, and/or values, or a challenge of decision-making processes. Stress theory and the construct of boundary ambiguity can augment the understanding of the crisis of infertility by providing a different approach and unique perspective. It is the hypothesis of this article that the involuntarily childless couple may experience infertility as a stress of boundary ambiguity, that is, not knowing who is in and who is out of the family system. As infertile couples attempt to make the transition to parenthood they may experience the child they wish to have as a family member who is psychologically present but physically absent.     

Contrasting speech patterns in apraxia of speech and phonemic paraphasia

This study was designed to determine if perceptual phonological analysis would reveal distinctions between patients with apraxia of speech and patients with phonemic paraphasic speech. Test findings from 10 Broca's aphasics with apraxia of speech were compared to findings from 10 paraphasic speakers (5 conduction and 5 Wernicke's aphasics). Several marked differences were revealed. Predominant locus of errors and relative difficulty of different classes of phonemic segments were significant discriminators. There was a nonsignificant trend for substituted phonemes to be further from target phonetically in the paraphasic patients. In addition, the two groups showed certain consistent differences in the types of errors they produced. Apraxic patients produced many errors of transitionalization, while sequencing errors were more typical of the patients with phonemic paraphasia. The findings are interpreted in relation to a neuropsychological model of speech. It is suggested that phonemic paraphasia represents a breakdown mainly in the retrieval of phonological word patterns, while apraxia of speech is characterized predominantly by a disturbance in encoding phonological patterns into appropriate speech movements.     

Beyond the reactive‐proactive dichotomy: Rage,revenge, reward,and recreational aggression predict early high school bully and bully/victim status

The role of reactive and proactive aggression in school bullying perpetration remains unclear. In this study, we explore the predictive value of an expanded model of aggression motives based on the Quadripartite Violence Typology (QVT), which distinguishes between motivational valence (appetitive or aversive) and recruitment of deliberative self‐control to derive four classes of motives: Rage, Revenge, Reward, and Recreation. With a sample of 1,802 students from grades 7–9, we assessed aggression motives via self‐report, along with self‐report of bullying perpetration and victimization, which were used to assign students into categories of Pure Bully, Bully/Victim (B/V), Pure Victim, and Uninvolved. Two structural models were computed to examine the relationship between these four categories of bullying involvement and aggression motives, using conservative and liberal bullying cutoffs. As predicted, B/V status was more strongly related to Rage and Revenge motives. However, B/Vs had higher scores than Pure Bullies for almost all aggression motives, including Recreation. We discuss the implications of addressing Revenge and Recreation, as well as Reward and Rage (which map most clearly to proactive and reactive aggression, respectively) aggression motives, for bullying prevention and intervention strategies, especially among adolescents for whom extant bullying prevention strategies may be ineffective or counterproductive.

     

A case-controlled field study evaluating ICD-11 proposals for relational problems and intimate partner violence

Background/Objective: Intimate partner relationship problems and intimate partner abuse and neglect — referred to in this paper as “relational problems and maltreatment” — have substantial and well-documented impact on both physical and mental health. However, classification guidelines, such as those found in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10), are vague and unlikely to support consistent application. Revised guidelines proposed for ICD-11 are much more operationalized. We used standardized clinical vignette conditions with an international panel of clinicians to test if ICD-11 changes resulted in improved classification accuracy. Method: English-speaking mental health professionals (N = 738) from 65 nations applied ICD-10 or ICD-11 (proposed) guidelines with experimentally manipulated case presentations of presence or absence of (a) individual mental health diagnoses and (b) relational problems or maltreatment. Results: ICD-11, compared with ICD-10, guidelines resulted in significantly better classification accuracy, although only in the presence of co-morbid mental health problems. Clinician factors (e. g., gender, language, world region) largely did not impact classification performance. Conclusions: Despite being considerably more explicated, raters’ performance with ICD-11 guidelines reveals training issues that should be addressed prior to the release of ICD-11 in 2018 (e. g., overriding the guidelines with pre-existing archetypes for relationship problems and physical and psychological abuse).     

Sedation threshold and Archimedes spiral after-effect: A follow-up of their use with civilian psychiatric patients

In the study reported here an attempt was made to confirm, on a more heterogeneous group of civilian patients, some previous work on sedation threshold and spiral after-effect in young military patients. Sedation threshold and spiral after-effect data were collected in thirty-eight neurotic and nine psychotic patients. The main findings of the study were as follows: (1) The practicability and reliability of the sedation threshold technique used is not restricted to the experimental setting in which it was originally devised. The method can on the contrary be applied under a variety of clinical conditions. (2) No significant differences were found in the uniformly high sedation threshold and spiral aftereffect scores of patients suffering from neurotic depression, obsessional neurosis, and chronic anxiety. Further, civilian dysthymics as a whole did not differ significantly on either test from military dysthymics. The previous work on neurotics was thus confirmed. (3) Previous findings (with military psychotics) of a significant negative correlation between sedation threshold and spiral after-effect were confirmed in the present group of schizophrenic patients.

The advantages of a psychophysiological approach to personality were reaffirmed and the possible usefulness of the sedation threshold and spiral after-effect as tools for differential diagnosis was discussed.