The “Longing for Interpersonal Touch Picture Questionnaire”: Development of a new measurement for touch perception

Touch is a crucial factor of physiological and psychological health in humans. A lack of touch in contrast is associated with adverse implications on mental health. A new “Longing for Interpersonal Touch Picture Questionnaire (LITPQ)” was developed and tested for its concurrent, predictive, discriminant and face validity as well as its relation to psychological distress. Six different types of touch were depicted and touch frequency and touch wish concerning different interaction partners assessed. A sample of 110 participants aged 18–56 years completed the LITPQ as well as an existing touch deprivation questionnaire and a questionnaire on mental health. Frequency and wish for touch were higher for close interaction partners than for strangers. For 72.7% of the participants, their touch wish exceeded the reported touch frequency. The LITPQ correlated moderately with the existing questionnaire for touch deprivation and was independent of relationship status or gender but positively correlated with depressiveness, anxiety and somatization. Measuring longing for touch is a very complex task considering the many aspects of subjective touch perception and confounds in the method of self-report of touch. In our view, the LITPQ provides promising insights into this matter.     

Patientensuizid im psychiatrischen Fachkrankenhaus

Suicide prevention especially with psychiatric inpatients is traditionally a very important aspect of psychiatric treatment. During the 1970s and 1980s there was a noticeable increase in so-called hospital suicides in Germany, especially suicides of schizophrenic inpatients. The number of psychiatric inpatient suicides has currently decreased again and a shift to more depressive suicides has also been observed. Furthermore questions which are asked in court are presented and discussed.     

Use of Integrity Tests May Reduce Workers’ Compensation Losses

Purpose  

The purpose of this study was to examine whether the use of integrity tests in personnel selection would reduce the cost of worker’s compensation claims in organizations representing four different industries.     

CAML—Maximum likelihood consensus analysis

Consensus analysis enables estimation of individual differences in competencies and response tendencies when answer keys to dichotomous forced-choice questions are unknown. CAML, a set of functions written in R, implements maximum likelihood estimation for the general Condorcet model that underlies consensus analysis. CAML avoids problems of alternative approaches that have often rendered consensus analysis impractical or unfeasible in the past. It provides (1) measures of model fit, (2) a measure of consensus, (3) point and interval estimates of competencies and response tendencies, and (4) an estimate of the unknown answer key. The present article describes the general Condorcet model, the CAML algorithms, and the handling of the software. In addition, the validity of CAML results is tested in a recognition memory study using selective experimental manipulations of the parameters. The results show that CAML works very well in practice and provides valid estimates of competencies, response tendencies, and answer keys.     

Preferential Semantics using Non-smooth Preference Relations

This paper studies the properties of eight semantic consequence relations defined from a Tarski-logic L and a preference relation ? . They are equivalent to Shoham’s so-called preferential entailment for smooth model structures, but avoid certain problems of the latter in non-smooth configurations. Each of the logics can be characterized in terms of what we call multi-selection semantics. After discussing this type of semantics, we focus on some concrete proposals from the literature, checking a number of meta-theoretic properties and elaborating on their intuitive motivation. As it turns out, many of their meta-properties only hold in case ? is transitive. To tackle this problem, we propose slight modifications of each of the systems, showing the resulting logics to behave better at the intuitive level and in metatheoretic terms, for arbitrary ? .     

The Trophy Effect

By extending a typical endowment effect experiment with the possibility of winning the endowment in a real effort contest, we found two reinforcing effects that led to a complete market failure. Subjects who won the item in the effortful competition had a very high willingness to accept (trophy winner effect). By contrast, subjects who were not successful had an extremely low willingness to pay for the same item (trophy loser effect). We disentangle different components of these effects and investigate the underlying emotional responses. Further, we analyze the duration of the effects and discuss economic implications. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Benefits and Interindividual Differences in Children's Responses to Extended and Intensified Relaxation Training

The present study investigates whether extended and intensified systematic relaxation training techniques lead to increased short-term and prolonged effects in settings of stress prevention. One hundred and twenty-eight fourth- and sixth-graders (aged 9.6 and 11.6 years, respectively) participated in Imagination or Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR). Extension consisted of a varying number of training sessions (five versus ten), while intensified training contained additional training elements to enhance the transfer to the children's daily life (yes versus no). Age, gender, anxiety, activity level and suggestibility were included as additional variables that were assumed to moderate the effects of the training. Dependent variables indicating short-term training effects included physiological parameters (heart rate, skin conductance level, skin temperature) as well as subjective ratings (mood, physical well-being, training evaluations). Medium-term training effects, measured 1 week and 2 months after the training, were related to stress experiences, somatic stress symptoms, and coping strategies reported by the children. The results do not show considerable short- or medium-term effects of extended or intensified training. In addition, no clear moderator effects were found in the present sample.     

Mangelnde Eignung bei angehenden Psychotherapeuten

Background

Psychotherapy research has shown that some therapists have systematically more negative outcomes than their colleagues. Many attempts have been made to answer the question of whether these unsuccessful therapists have specific features but as yet no consensus has been reached. Particularly in the field of psychotherapy training this issue has rarely been discussed.

Aims

This study focused on the following questions: how many trainees are incompetent, what characteristics do they have and how to deal with them? How are trainees selected?

Material and methods

In a research expertise on psychotherapy training for the German Ministry of Health, directors of training institutions were interviewed and 129 responses were analyzed using, for example content analysis.

Results

A total of 4–5?% of trainees were judged as being not sufficiently competent to become a psychotherapist. Relevant criteria were mainly the lack of personal and interpersonal competencies.

Conclusions

Future psychotherapy training should focus more and earlier on recognizing and intervening regarding incompetence in the given areas.     

Reply to my Critics

In response to critical discussion of my book, A Tear Is an Intellectual Thing: The Meanings of Emotion, I clarify and develop various aspects of my analysis of jealousy in particular and affectivity in general. In relation to jealousy, I explore the nature of pathology, the role of fantasy and of the rival, and the place of examples and of evolutionary theory. In relation to affectivity, I emphasize the difference between distinguishing emotions from other psychological states and distinguishing among, within and between, particular emotions (where affectivity may not be central). In addition, I emphasize the dangers of a version of G.E. Moore's error in demanding a nonreductive analysis of good in parallel demands for a nonreductive analysis of affectivity.