Commentary on Three Articles on Self‐practice/Self‐reflection in Cognitive‐Behavioural Therapy

The commentary embraces three valuable contributions to the development of professional practice: (a) engagement with self‐practice/self‐reflection as a professional self‐development: the role of therapist beliefs; (b) spontaneous self‐practice of cognitive‐behavioural therapy (CBT) by aboriginal counsellors during and following CBT training: a retrospective analysis of the facilitating conditions and impact; (c) developing metacompetence in low intensity CBT interventions: evaluating a self‐practice/self‐reflection programme for experienced low intensity CBT practitioners. Each article provides different perspectives of the self‐practice and self‐reflection benefits for efficient therapy and their use as powerful resources in therapeutic training skills in general and CBT in particular. Conclusions of their contributions close the commentary.     

Text Comprehension Training for Disabled Readers: An Evaluation of Reciprocal Teaching and Text Analysis Training Programs

Forty-six reading disabled adolescents were randomly assigned to one of three 25-hr instructional programs. Two programs provided training in expository text comprehension, and a third offered training in academic problem solving and organizational and study skills (an alternative treatment control). One reading comprehension program was designed to remediate a deficient knowledge base, forcing disabled readers to elaborate and further process new text knowledge, focusing on both specific informational content in a text and knowledge of text structure per se. The second program was patterned after the Palincsar and Brown (1984) reciprocal teaching techniques and focused on training four text comprehension strategies used by skilled comprehenders. Both the “knowledge-base” and the “strategy” training approaches were associated with significant improvement in disabled readers' comprehension skills, although training effects did not generalize across all aspects of reading comprehension performance. Strategy-trained readers applied the trained strategies with equal success on instructed and uninstructed text materials, providing strong evidence of transfer of learning. Knowledge-base readers also demonstrated successful transfer of specifically trained procedures (semantic mapping, text analysis) to unfamiliar text. In both programs, the best outcomes were obtained when specific strategies and operations were targeted for training.     

Perception,belief, and the structure of physical objects and consciousness

Conclusion We have now provided an overall simple theoretical account of the structure of perceptual experience proto-philosophically examined in Part I. The next task is to find the proper logical machinery to formulatte those accounts rigorously.This essay is an abridgment of a monograph written while the author enjoyed both a 1975–76 sabbatical leave from Indiana University and a concurrent grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for doing research in metaphysics.     

Attending, ignoring, and repetition: on the relation between negative priming and inhibition of return

A series of spatial localization experiments is reported that addresses the relation between negative priming and inhibition of return. The results of Experiment 1 demonstrate that slowed responses to repeated location stimuli can be obscured by repetition priming effects involving stimulus dimensions other than spatial location. The results of Experiments 2, 3A, and 3B demonstrate that these repetition priming effects may occur only when participants are required to respond to the prime display. Together, these results suggest that differences between attended and ignored repetition effects in selective attention studies of spatial localization do not provide a basis for distinguishing between spatial negative priming and inhibition of return.     

The Close Relationship Context and HIV/AIDS Risk Reduction Among Mexican Americans

The purpose of this study was to determine, within a community sample of 115 Mexican Americans, the association of relationship variables to participants' HIV risk perception, use of condoms, and HIV-related communication with a relationship partner. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses with the total sample and within each gender separately revealed that intimacy and commitment were related to HIV risk perception, condom use, and HIV-related communication even after effects of age, gender, acculturation, marital status, and length of relationship were controlled. The pattern of significant correlates differs, however, in the total, women-only, and men-only samples. Results suggest that intimacy and commitment are important elements of the close relationship context that should be considered in HIV risk reduction efforts among Mexican Americans.     

The critical role of group studies in neuropsychology: comprehension regularities in Broca's aphasia

We reexamine the empirical record of the comprehension abilities of Broca's aphasic patients. We establish clear, commonly accepted, selection criteria and obtain a pool of results. We then subject these results to a detailed statistical analysis and show that these patients comprehend certain canonical sentences (actives, subject relatives, and clefts with agentive predicates) at above-chance levels, whereas comprehension of sentences that contain deviations from canonicity (passives, object-gap relatives, and clefts) is distinct and is at chance. That the latter is the case, and patients indeed guess at such structures, we show by comparing the distribution of individual results in passive comprehension to that of a model for such guessing-an analogous series of tosses of an unbiased coin. The two distributions are virtually identical. We conclude that the group's performance is stable, and well-delineated, despite intersubject variation whose source is now identified. This means that certain comprehension tests may not always be used for the diagnosis of individual patients, but they do characterize the group. It also means that group studies are not just a valid option in neuropsychology; they are a must, since demonstrations like ours indiciate very clearly that single-case studies may be misleading. As we show, the findings from any one patient, without the context of a group, may give a distorted picture of the pathological reality. Our conclusions thus promote studies of groups of brain-damaged patients as a central tool for the investigation of brain/behavior relations.     

Working models of attachment and reactions to different forms of caregiving from romantic partners

Inspired by attachment theory, the authors tested a series of theoretically derived predictions about connections between attachment working models (attachment to one's parents assessed by the Adult Attachment Interview; M. Main & R. Goldwyn, 1994) and the effectiveness of specific types of caregiving spontaneously displayed by dating partners during a stressful conflict-resolution discussion. Each partner first completed the Adult Attachment Interview. One week later, each couple was videotaped while they tried to resolve a current problem in their relationship. Trained observers then rated each interaction for the degree to which (a) emotional, instrumental, and physical caregiving behaviors were displayed; (b) care recipients appeared calmed by their partners' caregiving attempts; and (c) each partner appeared distressed during the discussion. Individuals who had more secure representations of their parents were rated as being more calmed if/when their partners provided greater emotional care, especially if they were rated as more distressed. Conversely, individuals who had more insecure (dismissive) representations of their parents reacted more favorably to instrumental caregiving behaviors from their partners, especially if they were more distressed. The broader theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Effects of prime task on affective priming by facial expressions of emotion

Priming of affective word evaluation by pictures of faces showing positive and negative emotional expressions was investigated in two experiments that used a double task procedure where participants were asked to respond to the prime or to the target on different trials. The experiments varied between-subjects the prime task assignment and the prime-target interval (SOA, stimulus onset asynchrony). Significant congruency effects (that is, faster word evaluation when prime and target had the same valence than when they were of opposite valence) were observed in both experiments. When the prime task oriented the subjects to an affectively irrelevant property of the faces (their gender), priming was observed at SOA 300 ms but not at SOA 1000 ms (Experiment 1). However, when the prime task assignment explicitly oriented the subjects to the valence of the face, priming was observed at both SOA durations (Experiment 2). These results show, first, that affective priming by pictures of facial emotion can be obtained even when the subject has an explicit goal to process a non-affective property of the prime. Second, sensitivity of the priming effect to SOA duration seems to depend on whether it is mediated by intentional or unintentional activation of the valence of the face prime.