Application of a family systems approach to working with people affected by HIV disease – two case studies

HIV infection, with its particular modes of transmission, affects relationships, interrupts the normal life-cycle and brings different challenges to patients and their contacts as they pass through the asymptomatic and symptomatic phases to the terminal stages of illness. This paper describes a family systems approach to therapy with people affected by HIV disease, illustrated by two case examples.     

Development of the appearance-reality distinction

Young children can express conceptual difficulties with the appearance-reality distinction in two different ways: (1) by incorrectly reporting appearance when asked to report reality (“phenomenism”); (2) by incorrectly reporting reality when asked to report appearance (“intellectual realism”). Although both phenomenism errors and intellectual realism errors have been observed in previous studies of young children's cognition, the two have not been seen as conceptually related and only the former errors have been taken as a symptom of difficulties with the appearance-reality distinction. Three experiments investigated 3- to 5-year-old children's ability to distinguish between and correctly identify real versus apparent object properties (color, size, and shape), object identities, object presence-absence, and action identities. Even the 3-year-olds appeared to have some ability to make correct appearance-reality discriminations and this ability increased with age. Errors were frequent, however, and almost all children who erred made both kinds. Phenomenism errors predominated on tasks where the appearance versus reality of the three object properties were in question; intellectual realism errors predominated on the other three types of tasks. Possible reasons for this curious error pattern were advanced. It was also suggested that young children's problems with the appearance-reality distinction may be partly due to a specific metacognitive limitation, namely, a difficulty in analyzing the nature and source of their own mental representations.     

Condom Use on Spring-Break Vacation: The Influence of Intentions,Prior Use,and Context1

Triandis' theory of interpersonal behavior was used to analyze factors related to condom use among Canadian spring-break vacationers in Daytona Beach, Florida, who had engaged in coital activity with existing relationship partners (N= 46) or casual partners (N= 121). Intention to use condoms explained 36% of the variance in condom use with relationship partners, but only 10% with new partners. An additional 43% was explained by prior condom use and conditions facilitating condom use. Conditions facilitating condom use had the strongest influence on condom use, with new partners followed by prior condom use and intentions. The latter two variables exerted both direct and indirect influences on condom use.     

An analysis of speech perception in word deafness

A patient with a rather pure word deafness showed extreme suppression of right ear signals under dichotic conditions, suggesting that speech signals were being processed in the right hemisphere. Systematic errors in the identification and discrimination of natural and synthetic stop consonants further indicated that speech sounds were not being processed in the normal manner. Auditory comprehension improved considerably however, when the range of speech stimuli was limited by contextual constraints. Possible implications for the mechanism of word deafness are discussed.     

Fear of failure in males: A more salient factor than fear of success in females?

Sex differences in self-attributions following winning or losing in a highly competitive achievement-type situation were investigated. Subjects competed in same- or mixed-sex pairs on an anagram task which was prearranged in difficulty so that one subject would clearly defeat his/her partner. A significant sex of subject × outcome interaction emerged. Males were more likely to attribute their successes to skill and failures to luck. Females attributed both their successes and failures to a relatively equal amount of skill. This self-defensive bias in males was interpreted as indicating a greater fear of failure in males. The relatively rational and objective attributions of females did not support a female fear of success hypothesis. No significant interactions with sex of partner on this variable were found. Finally, subjects were asked to rate their opponents on a series of personality, attractiveness, and happiness dimensions. Neither males nor females were differentially evaluated as a function of winning or losing.The research reported here was partially supported by a grant to the first author from the California State University, Fresno Foundation.     

Choice Shifts In Political Decisionmaking: Federal Judges and Civil Liberties Cases

The purpose of this article is to investigate whether group-induced attitudinal shifts in decisionmaking take place outside the experimental laboratory and whether choice shift theory can be applied to the understanding of political behavior of actors engaged in socially relevant decisionmaking. A random sample of civil liberties decisions in Federal District Courts for the years 1963–1968 were examined. The hypothesis that there are systematic differences between single-judge and collegial court decisions was confirmed. Parties claiming a violation of constitutional rights increase the probability of successfully convincing a district judge when they are able to have their litigation heard by a three-judge court. The finding that judges are more likely to shift to a libertarian position when moving from the individual to the collegial decisionmaking condition holds when the data are examined in aggregate form as well as when the behavior of individual judges is studied under both decisionmaking settings.