Observed behaviors during clinical interviews predict improvement in depression

A considerable percentage of depressed patients do not respond to antidepressive treatment. Early indicators of prognosis are needed. The aims of this study are to examine (a) whether the interpersonal behavior of patients and psychiatrist, as assessed by means of direct observation of behavior during a baseline clinical interview, might have predictive value with respect to therapeutic outcome and (b) which predictive potency measures of psychomotor activation, as assessed by less refined methods, such as global clinical judgment, might have. In the analysis used, speech-pause behavior was taken as the basic structure of the interaction. The relations of other behaviors such as looking and hand and head movement with this structure were determined. Evidence is presented that in a group of 31 depressives, improvement after a period of 10 weeks was related to observed behaviors during a baseline interview. The behaviors of the patients are interpreted as relational or nonrelational. The relational behaviors (i.e., looking yesnodding, gesturing) occur less in patients who will improve, whereas the nonrelational behaviors (i.e., intensive body touching, head movements) occur more in these patients. The nonrelational behaviors are presumed to be indicative of the state of arousal. The predictive potency of these variables could not be explained by their relationship with the baseline severity of depression, which in itself also predicted improvement. Moreover, global clinical assessment of psychomotor activation (i.e., retardation and agitation) could not be related to outcome.     

Fallacies in pragma-dialectical perspective

In the pragma-dialectical approach, fallacies are considered incorrect moves in a discussion for which the goal is successful resolution of a dispute. Ten rules are given for effective conduct at the various stages of such a critical discussion (confrontation, opening, argumentation, concluding). Fallacies are discussed as violations of these rules, taking into account all speech acts which are traditionally recognized as fallacies. Special attention is paid to the role played by implicitness in fallacies in everyday language use. It is stressed that identifying and acknowledging fallacies in ordinary discussions always has a conditional character. Differences between the pragma-dialectical perspective, the Standard Treatment, and the formal logic approach to fallacy analysis are discussed.     

Time went by so slowly: Overestimation of event duration by males and females

In three experiments, 469 subjects watched a short videotape of a bank robbery and later estimated the duration of the tape. Subjects invariably overestimated the durations. Accuracy of time estimation was unrelated to amount of free recall (Experiment 1) or accuracy of memory (Experiment 2). Females overestimated to a greater degree than males (Experiments 2 and 3). A more stressful version of the event produced greater overestimates than a less stressful version (Experiment 3). The relationship between induced arousal and time estimation appears to be different for men and women.     

GENERALIZATION OF OBJECT NAMING AFTER TRAINING WITH PICTURE CARDS AND WITH OBJECTS

Generalization of four retarded children's object naming responses to stimuli in the natural environment was assessed after training with either objects or pictures of the objects. Generalization was typically greater after training with objects. In a second experiment, half of the stimuli that showed little generalization were retrained by alternating the original training object with an object that belonged to the same stimulus class as the training stimulus. The other half were simply retrained using the object. The alternating procedure resulted in substantial increases in generalization to untrained objects.     

EEG alpha asymmetry: task difficulty and hypnotizability

Parieto-occipital EEG alpha was recorded bilaterally, while 20 high- and 20 low-hypnotizable women performed one left-hemisphere and one right-hemisphere task of low difficulty and two other comparable tasks of high difficulty. Every task was performed twice, once with eyes open and once with eyes closed. All subjects were right-handed. The tasks were originally selected to be of high and low difficulty. The subjective rating of task-difficulty was also evaluated. The integrated amplitude alpha and the alpha ratio (R-L/R + L) were the dependent variables. The highly hypnotizable women showed significantly higher alpha amplitude in eyes-closed condition than the low scorers; this difference disappeared during task performance and in the eyes-open condition. The left-tasks showed lower alpha amplitude in both hemispheres than right-tasks and baseline. The right-hemisphere alpha amplitude was lower than left in all experimental conditions. On tasks of high and low difficulty there was different hemispheric behavior on right and left tasks. Performance reflecting the right and left hemispheres in the low-difficulty condition showed no changes between baseline, right- and left-tasks, while under high difficulty there was a decrease in alpha amplitude in the right and even more marked decrease in the left hemisphere during left-tasks. The pattern of task effects for ratio scores was the same as for alpha amplitude, however, despite the analysis of alpha scores, an interaction of hypnotizability X task-difficulty was detected. The highly hypnotizable women showed less negative alpha ratio during a task of low difficulty than during tasks of high difficulty; the reverse was true for the low-hypnotizable women. Finally, the highly hypnotizable subjects showed less subjective difficulty during performance than the low scorers.     

Book Reviews

The Psychological Record -     

From page to program: Some typographical and temporal variables in radio homilies

Punctuation in 20 radio homilies by four speakers accounted for 76% of pause time and 64% of pause number. Pause duration varied systematically according to punctuation type. Commas accounted for 82% of punctuated positionsnot used for pausing.RRelevance for theories of text unitization is discussed. Both typographical and temporal measures are compared with a similar corpus of German homilies.     

Response cost,reinforcement, and children's porteus maze qualitative performance

Sixty fourth-grade children were given two different series of the Porteus Maze Test. The first series was given as a baseline, and the second series was administered under one of four different experimental conditions: control, response cost, positive reinforcement, or negative verbal feedback. Response cost and positive reinforcement, but not negative verbal feedback, led to significant decreases in the number of all types of qualitative errors in relation to the control group. The reduction of nontargeted as well as targeted errors provides evidence for the generalized effects of response cost and positive reinforcement.