Increasing false recognition rates with confirmatory feedback: a phenomenological analysis

During a simulated witness interrogation, participants were encouraged to confabulate an account consistent with false information concerning a videotaped event. The interviewer verbally affirmed some false responses. Previous research has shown that, a week later, participants often recognize confabulated events that were affirmed by the experimenter as being from the video. What is unclear is whether confirmatory feedback encouraged a change in the mental representation of the confabulated events to fit the original event or confirmation might have merely encouraged a change in beliefs about the event. To further understand the mechanisms that underlie the confirmatory feedback effect, participants were asked to judge the phenomenological experience associated with false recognition.     

Risk profiles of adolescent girls who were victims of dating violence

The prevalence of dating violence, as well as its relationship to potential risk factors, was examined among a nationally representative sample of 9th-through 12th-grade U.S. females (N = 7,824) who completed the 1999 Youth Risk Behavior Survey. The dependent variable was physical dating violence; the independent variables were violence, suicide, substance use, and sexual risk behavior. Unadjusted odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals were examined, and multivariate logistic regression analysis was conducted to identify the most significant risk factors. It was found that nearly one in ten of the adolescent girls reported dating violence. Twelfth-grade girls had the highest prevalence of dating violence. Girls who were victims of dating violence were more likely to be involved in other violent behaviors, to report extreme sadness and suicidal actions, to use illicit substances, and to engage in risky sexual behavior. Multivariate analysis revealed that dating violence was associated with sad/hopeless feelings (OR = 2.13), binge drinking (OR = 1.96), cocaine or inhalant use (OR = 2.90), multiple sex partners (OR = 2.38), nonuse of condoms (OR = 1.53), and ethnicity, specifically being Black (OR = 2.32) or Hispanic (OR = 1.82). These findings provide further evidence that there is a clustering of risk factors among certain adolescents, specifically girls who experience dating violence.     

A randomized trial of individual tutoring for elementary school children with reading and behavior difficulties

Children in Grades K-5, selected for reading and behavior problems, received individual tutoring in a program which aimed to detail a hierarchy of reading skills, locate the point on the hierarchy at which each child should work, and provide enthusiastic social reinforcement for successes. Children were randomly assigned to higher or lower frequency tutoring (one 45-min. session every 1.6 days vs every 8.3 days). The higher frequency group progressed significantly faster in reading than the lower frequency group. Both groups progressed much faster during the time of the intervention than they had before tutoring. Before tutoring, both groups had progressed at about 0.5 grade per year; during tutoring, the higher frequency group progressed at 1.5 grade per year and the lower frequency group at 1.1 grade per year. The subsets of children with verbal ability scores one or two standard deviations below the population mean, as assessed on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, still progressed at average rates of 1.2 grade per year during tutoring. The amount of work students accomplished on a sounding and blending drill predicted reading progress. The intervention cost an average of 1,156 dollars per student per year.     

Differential effects of arousal in positive and negative autobiographical memories

Autobiographical memories are characterised by a range of emotions and emotional reactions. Recent research has demonstrated that differences in emotional valence (positive vs. negative emotion) and arousal (the degree of emotional intensity) differentially influence the retrieved memory narrative. Although the mnemonic effects of valence and arousal have both been heavily studied, it is currently unclear whether the effects of emotional arousal are equivalent for positive and negative autobiographical events. In the current study, multilevel models were used to examine differential effects of emotional valence and arousal on the richness of autobiographical memory retrieval both between and within subjects. Thirty-four young adults were asked to retrieve personal autobiographical memories associated with popular musical cues and to rate the valence, arousal and richness of these events. The multilevel analyses identified independent influences of valence and intensity upon retrieval characteristics at the within- and between-subject levels. In addition, the within-subject interactions between valence and arousal highlighted differential effects of arousal for positive and negative memories. These findings have important implications for future studies of emotion and memory, highlighting the importance of considering both valence and arousal when examining the role emotion plays in the richness of memory representation.     

Will psychoanalysis fulfill its promise?

Although Freud had aspirations of a university structure for psychoanalytic education the sociopolitical structure of the Austro-Hungarian empire precluded this, and psychoanalysis developed by default in the central European heartland within a part-time, private-practice educational structure. With its rapid spread in the post-World-War-II United States, and its ready penetration of American academic psychiatry, a counter educational structure arose in some quarters: the department-of-psychiatry-affiliated institute within the medical school. This article outlines beyond these other, more ambitious, academic vistas (the David Shakow model, the Anna Freud model, the Menninger Foundation, Emory University (USA), AP de BA (Argentina)); conceptions even closer to the ideal (idealized) goal of full-time placement within the university, with strong links to medicine, to the behavioral sciences and to the humanities. The putative advantages of such a structure are presented.     

Toward a model for assessing level of personality functioning in DSM-5, part I: a review of theory and methods

Personality disorders are associated with fundamental disturbances of self and interpersonal relations, problems that vary in severity within and across disorders. This review surveyed clinician-rated measures of personality psychopathology that focus on self-other dimensions to explore the feasibility and utility of constructing a scale of severity of impairment in personality functioning for DSM-5. Robust elements of the instruments were considered in creating a continuum of personality functioning based on aspects of identity, self-direction, empathy, and intimacy. Building on preliminary findings (Morey et al., 2011 /this issue), the proposed Levels of Personality Functioning will be subjected to extensive empirical testing in the DSM-5 field trials and elsewhere. The resulting version of this severity measure is expected to have clinical utility in identifying personality psychopathology, planning treatment, building the therapeutic alliance, and studying treatment course and outcome.