Family-expressed emotion,childhood-onset depression,and childhood-onset schizophrenia spectrum disorders: Is expressed emotion a nonspecific correlate of child psychopathology or a specific risk factor for depression?

Expressed emotion (EE) was examined, using the brief Five Minute Speech Sample measure, in families of (1) children with depressive disorders, (2) children with schizophrenia spectrum disorders, and (3) normal controls screened for the absence of psychiatric disorder. Consistent with the hypothesis of some specificity in the association between EE and the form of child disorder, rates of EE were significantly higher among families of depressed children compared to families of normal controls and families of children with schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Within the depressed group, the presence of a comorbid disruptive behavior disorder was associated with high levels of critical EE, underscoring the need to attend to comorbid patterns and subtypes of EE in future research.This research was supported by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation as part of their Network on Risk and Protective Factors in the Major Mental Disorders. The authors wish to express their appreciation to Sybil Zaden and Ana Magana-Amato for their assistance coding the FMSS-EE data, to Gwen Gordon for her assistance with data analysis, and to the families participating in the project.     

MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD SEXUAL ABUSE

Women involved in out-patient treatment for substance abuse were interviewed to examine their recollections of childhood sexual abuse. Overall, 54% of the 105 women reported a history of childhood sexual abuse. Of these, the majority (81 %) remembered all or part of the abuse their whole lives; 19% reported they forgot the abuse for a period of time, and later the memory returned. Women who remembered the abuse their whole lives reported a clearer memory, with a more detailed picture. They also reported greater intensity of feelings at the time the abuse happened. Women who remembered the abuse their whole lives did not differ from others in terms of the violence of the abuse or whether the violence was incestuous. These data bear on current discussions concerning the extent to which repression is a common way of coping with childhood sexual abuse trauma, and also bear on some widely held beliefs about the correlates of repression.     

Overseeing the Overseer: Contextualizing Training in Supervision

In responding to the Ellis and Douce article (this issue), the author of this article attempts to explain how the trainer of a consultative group in supervision might distinguish among the three relational contexts to assist the supervisor in understanding the source of supervisory dilemmas and in turn devise strategies that might be directed to the appropriate context. Furthermore, she presents a larger context for discussing the elements of supervision and their interrelationship. The map is a heuristic tool for developing a common language for understanding and analyzing the supervisory situation.     

RECONFIRMATION OF THE SHORT-TERM STORAGE CONCEPT

Abstract— Recent research questions the existence of a short-term storage mechanism capable of holding limited information temporarily Specifically, serial-recall results with a through-list distractor (TLD) procedure, in which a distracting task is interposed between list Items as well as between the list and recall period, generally resemble the results of immediate-recall procedures The present study, however, reconfirms the utility of short-term storage by demonstrating an important difference between immediate and TLD recall A word-length effect, or advantage for lists of shorter words (which minimize short-term forgetting during spoken recall), did not occur with a TLD procedure.     

A bridge of knowing: The scholar-practitioner of supervision

This essay is the text of a speech given on the connection between empirical and practice knowledge is supervision. It includes a framework for the conceptualization of the various factors that are relevant to the supervisory process and a series of brief stories that depict the speaker's involvement with supervision through her years of research and practice.     

The role of three-dimensional depth cues in infants' perception of partly occluded objects

Newborn infants were familiarized to a three dimensional display consisting of a rod which moved behind a central occluder, so that only the top and bottom of the rod were visible. The infants' eyes were 38 cm from the rod and the occluder was 15 cm in front of the rod, a separation intended to ensure that the gap between the two was detected by the infants. On subsequent test trials the infants looked longer at a complete rod than at two rod pieces, suggesting that the hidden unity, or completeness of the rod had not been perceived. In a study by Johnson and Náñez (in press), using computer. generated stimuli, 4 month olds perceived the hidden unity of a similar display presented on a VDU in the complete absence of three. dimensional depth cues. Taken together, these findings suggest that, for these displays, perception of three. dimensional depth cues is not necessary for the detection of the unity of partially hidden objects. It is suggested that age changes in early infancy in the perception of occluded objects may result either from the emergence of abilities to perceive objects from kinematic information or from the emergence of sensitivity to that information itself.     

Subjective familiarity of English word/name homophones

The subjective familiarity of 40 homophone pairs was examined. The homophones consisted of monosyllabic English words (on one reading) and male first names (on the other)—for example,art andArt. Subjects heard these homophones embedded in two kinds of lists, one with 40 unambiguous words and one with 40 unambiguous names. Ratings were made for familiarity as words and as names. These correlated significantly with the log of printed frequency (.63 for words, .53 for names). In a final task, just the homophones were presented, and the subjects were asked for a comparative rating of whether the word usage or the name usage was more familiar. This direct comparison correlated well (.91) with the difference between the ratings for the name and word familiarities, but less well (.55) with the differences between the printed frequencies of the word and name meanings. This indicates either consistent biases in the judgments or true differences between printed frequencies and subjective familiarity.     

The impact of career exploration and interview readiness on interview performance and outcomes

In a longitudinal study of 78 graduate business students, three aspects of career exploration—environment exploration, self-exploration, and the amount of information acquired—were examined as predictors of interview performance (interview rating and self-rating) and outcomes (call-back interviews and job offers). Environment exploration and the amount of information acquired related significantly with the recruiter's rating of interview performance and interview outcomes; self-exploration correlated with the recruiter's rating of interview performance. Interview readiness variables (perceived past performance, verbal persuasion, and feelings of self-efficacy) correlated modestly with career exploration variables, interview performance ratings, and interview outcomes.     

The Effect of Mood and Social Outlook on Hypothetical Juridic Decisions1

Data are reported for a laboratory experiment which examines both the impact of information about remote social events on judgments of defendants' guilt or innocence in two court cases and the roles of cognitive and affective elements in mediating these judgments. Subjects were exposed to one of four pretested news bulletins which covaried cognitive factors (positive or negative social information) and affective ones (positive or negative mood stimuli). In accord with previous findings, the results indicate that social information and the changes in social outlook that it caused were of primary importance in altering subjects' judgments about defendants. Subjects who heard positive social information in radio newscasts were more lenient in their judgments of defendants than were those who heard negative social information. Additional findings pertaining to the mediators of this effect suggest that positive mood amplified the impact of social information whatever its direction, while negative mood attenuated it.     

Learning about water by hungry rats

In Experiments 1 and 2 hungry rats were trained in a straight alley with consistent food reward (FF), food and nonreward trials intermixed (FN), or food and water trials intermixed (FW). In Experiment 1 rats were tested with nonrewarded trials (extinction) and Groups FN and FW did not differ, both running faster then Group FF. In Experiment 2 rats were tested with consistent water reward, and Group FW ran faster then Group FN, which was superior to Group FF. In Experiment 3, one group of hungry rats was trained on a single alternating schedule of food and water in Phase 1 and was shifted to a single alternating schedule of food and nonreward in Phase 2 (Group FW); the second group (Group FN) received a single alternating schedule of food and nonreward in both phases. When Group FW was shifted to nonreward from water, performance to nonreward was temporarily disrupted. These results indicate that, contrary to previous conclusions, hungry rats can learn about water when drive is strong and food is received in the situation.