Depression and evaluative schemata

The evaluative tendencies of nondepressed, mildly depressed, and severely depressed individuals are examined in the areas of judgments of contingency, attributions of causality, expectancy estimates, and self-schemata/self-reference. The available empirical literature in these four areas indicates that nondepressed people tend to exhibit positivistic evaluative responses, whereas mildly depressed persons tend to display unbiased (neither positivistic nor negativistic) evaluative response patterns. The available evidence is suggestive of negativistic evaluative tendencies in severely depressed individuals, with this bias being most clearly manifested in the area of self-schemata/self-reference. These results are interpreted in terms of contemporary explanations of depression and recent advances in models of cognitive processing.     

Sequence-related changes in sensory-evoked potentials in the dentate gyrus: a mechanism for item-specific short-term information storage in the hippocampus

Sensory-evoked potentials were recorded from the dentate gyrus of the rat hippocampus during performance of a differential auditory discrimination task. The short latency (20 ms) component (N1) of the sensory-evoked potential showed systematic amplitude fluctuations dependent upon the sequence of positive and negative trials preceding the presentation of a given trial and did not depend on the associated reward values of the individual tone stimuli which evoked the potential. The amplitude fluctuations could be accurately depicted by a model which retained the sequence for the five preceding trials in a "buffer" with exponentially decaying influence as a function of time of trial occurrence within the sequence. The results provide evidence that the hippocampus encodes accurate short-lasting representations of sensory events which can provide the basis for storage of information pertaining to past experiences.     

Simulation in training family therapists: Process and outcome

This article reviews procedures for using simulated families in the training of novice-level family therapists. An evaluation of one training experience is described. The evaluation utilized a repeated measures analysis and found an increase in the student's observational and conceptual skill development.The authors would like to express appreciation to Douglas C. Breunlin, M.S.S.A. for helpful comments in the preparation of this article.     

Song repertoire development in male cowbirds (Molothrus ater): its relation to female assessment of song potency

Two studies were conducted to investigate the relation between the male cowbird's (Molothrus ater ater) development of a song repertoire and the female cowbird's assessment of song potency. Male development was assayed by vocal copying and female assessment by copulatory responsiveness to song playback. The results demonstrate that males do not copy most often the particular songs that females respond to most often. Whereas rank orderings of potency were highly correlated across two independent samples of playback females, male and female rank orderings were not significantly correlated. The data highlight the potential significance of social interactions between and across the sexes for repertoire development.     

Family processes,resourcefulness, coping,and stress: A prospective study

A review of the family therapy literature indicates that few studies have investigated the complex relationship among family processes, coping, and stress in understanding how people manage stressful events and conditions. The purpose of the present study was to utilize a prospective research design to systemically explore the impact of family processes on an individual's ability to use effective coping responses when faced with a stressful situation. The results did indicate that individuals experienced greater strain at Time 1 (awaiting exam). However, no differences were found between family process variables and an individual's coping responses between Time 1 and Time 2 (awaiting results). Suggestions for further research on intergenerational family systems theory and implications for family therapy practice are provided.