Distortions of perceived visual out of pictures

Two experiments are reported examining judgments from 16 subjects who indicated the apparent direction of a photographed pointer that was rotated to different physical positions while being photographed. The photographs themselves were rotated about a vertical axis to several positions with respect to the subjects’ central viewing axis. The results replicate the well-known distortion in apparent direction associated with photographed pointers positioned to project directly out of the plane of the photograph. This effect has been described by Goldstein (1979) as the “differential rotation effect” because its magnitude is reduced as the depicted angle of the pointer becomes less orthogonal to the photograph. Analysis of the two-dimensional properties of the projected images shows that this differential rotation is related to projected angles on the surface of the photograph. This analysis may explain why circular objects often do not appear to be correctly drawn in the periphery of geometrically correct projections.     

Comments on R.M. Grieger's “contextual model of the ABCs of RET”

Grieger's (1985) contextual model of the ABCs of RET is examined and found to have many interesting and thought-provoking aspects. Its hypotheses in regard to emphasizing various therapeutic aspects of RET are evaluated and found to make good sense but sometimes to be stated in an extreme manner that may lead to questionable results.     

How to live with a neurotic man

If women are to live in a mated relationship with a male they have little choice but to live with a fairly neurotic one. This article shows them why and how men are usually neurotic, how to deal with their own neurotic demands about mating, how to help a man be less neurotic than he usually is, and how to live fairly happily with a neurotic man.     

Development of a tool to assess suicide risk factors in urban adolescents

Dramatic increases in the adolescent suicide rate over the past three decades have underscored the need for risk-assessment tools. The tools that do exist are oriented to older populations and their application to adolescents is questionable. A project was initiated at the University of Utah's Health Education Department to develop a pilot instrument to examine the differences between adolescents who have attempted suicide and other teenagers. Eighty-two subjects between the ages of 14 and 19 participated in the test of this instrument. Twenty-five subjects were identified by a physician or psychologist as having failed in a sincere suicide attempt within the previous 18 months. Fifty-seven nonsuicide attempters with similar demographic profiles served as a comparison group. An 86-item questionnaire was administered to both groups. Questions were generated from a review of the literature of the past three decades for problems associated with suicide in this population. Questions were sorted into three domains (family environment, social environment, and self-perceptions), with each domain having several subdomains. Statistical analysis revealed significant differences for each of the three domains and on 55 of 86 questions. The results were used to create a streamlined instrument for assessing suicide risk that can be administered in 20 minutes.     

Is rational-emotive therapy (RET) “rationalist” or “constructivist”?

Conclusion Mahoney, Guidano, and other modern constructivists and process-oriented therapists are partly on the right track and are making some interesting additions to traditional cognitive therapy. But they sometimes also revert to inefficient and side-tracking psychoanalytically-oriented methods of therapy. RET, in both its individual and family therapy approaches, attempts to use the most effective and hardheaded of the so-called rationalist methods—including active—directive changing of unrealistic and irrational Beliefs, skill training, problemsolving, bibliotherapy, in vivo desensitization, and reinforcement procedures-and it also employs many of the methods of the cognitive constructivists—including the disclosing of tacit philosophies; the achievement of a profound philosophical change in clients' attitudes toward themselves, toward others, and toward life situations; the use of the therapist's relationship with clients to show them how to unconditionally accept themselves; and the employment of many dramatic, emotive, and experiential exercises to change clients' feelings as well as their thoughts and behaviors. RET is particularly interested in effecting both individual and familial change as quickly and as efficiently as feasible. It is therefore rational (efficaciously hedonic)and emotive (energetically experiential). Or at least tries to be!Keynote address to World Congress of Cognitive Therapy, Oxford, England June 29, 1989     

Delinquency, sidedness, and sex

One hundred and thirty male and 213 female college students responded to a self-report delinquency and crime measure and to a scale of sidedness preferences. Consistent with most of the literature on official delinquency and crime, left handedness was positively associated with involvement in several forms of delinquency (including some degree of criminality) among males. Other measures of sidedness among males largely failed to correlate with delinquency, however. Among females, sidedness was much less systematically related to delinquency than among males.     

Beyond Abstinence: An Examination of Psychological Well-Being in Members of Narcotics Anonymous

While a growing body of literature supports the role of mutual help organizations in helping members achieve abstinence, fellowships other than Alcoholics Anonymous and outcomes beyond abstinence have been studied far less often. The current study examined recovery-related correlates of psychological well-being in a sample of Narcotics Anonymous (NA) members. Participants (N = 128) were self-identified NA members from across the United States who completed an online survey assessing an array of psychosocial outcomes. Hierarchical regression models assessed whether abstinence duration and other recovery-related variables accounted for significant incremental variance in psychological well-being, over and above several covariates. As a block, abstinence duration and the recovery predictors accounted for significant incremental variance in three of four psychological well-being domains. As a complement to studies on short-term benefits of mutual help organizations, these data suggest ongoing recovery involvement may be positively associated with subjective psychological well-being in NA members.     

Stay calm! Regulating emotional responses by implementation intentions: Assessing the impact on physiological and subjective arousal

Implementation intention (IMP) has recently been highlighted as an effective emotion regulatory strategy. Most studies examining the effectiveness of IMPs to regulate emotion have relied on self-report measures of emotional change. In two studies we employed electrodermal activity (EDA) and heart rate (HR) in addition to arousal ratings (AR) to assess the impact of an IMP on emotional responses. In Study 1, 60 participants viewed neutral and two types of negative pictures (weapon vs. non-weapon) under the IMP “If I see a weapon, then I will stay calm and relaxed!” or no self-regulatory instructions (Control). In Study 2, additionally to the Control and IMP conditions, participants completed the picture rating task either under goal intention (GI) to stay calm and relaxed or warning instructions highlighting that some pictures contain weapons. In both studies, participants showed lower EDA, reduced HR deceleration and lower AR to the weapon pictures compared to the non-weapon pictures. In Study 2, the IMP was associated with lower EDA compared to the GI condition for the weapon pictures, but not compared to the weapon pictures in the Warning condition. ARs were lower for IMP compared to GI and Warning conditions for the weapon pictures.     

Naming the Snodgrass and Vanderwart Pictures: Effects of Age of Acquisition, Frequency, and Name Agreement

Independent measures of age of acquisition (AoA), name agreement, and rated object familiarity were obtained from groups of British subjects for all items in the Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980) picture set with single names. Word frequency measures, both written and spoken, were taken from the Celex database (Centre for Lexical Information, 1993). The line drawings were presented to a separate groupof participants in an object naming task, and vocal naming latencies were recorded. A subset of 195 items was selected for analysis after excluding items with, for example, low name agreement. The major determinants of picture naming speed were the frequency of the name, the interaction between AoA and frequency, and name agreement. (The main effect of the AoA of the name and the effect of the rated image agreement of the picture were also significant on one-tailed tests.) Spoken name frequency affects object naming times mainly for items with later-acquired names.