A naturalistic longitudinal evaluation of counselling in primary care

This study evaluated the effectiveness of generic counselling in a primary healthcare setting during three months of counselling and followed up the patients' progress after counselling had finished for the next twenty-one months. Questionnaires were completed by patients within the Dorset Primary Care counselling service on referral to counselling and at set points afterwards. A naturally occurring waiting-list group was compared with patients receiving counselling at baseline and three months. Measurements were taken of patients' psychiatric symptomatology, quality of life (QOL) and self-esteem. Patients who received counselling made highly significant improvements compared with those on the waiting list. These improvements were maintained throughout the long-term follow-up. This would indicate that generic counselling has positive effects that can be maintained for a long period of time after counselling has been completed.     

Boys' and girls' perceptions of parental discipline in transgression situations

Children's perceptions of parental discipline methods and their perceptions of child gender differences in their parents' choices of discipline methods were assessed. One hundred and seventy 8‐year‐old children (78 boys, 92 girls) in two‐parent families were asked about disciplinary behaviour in five transgression situations. The results pointed to gender differences when the children were talking about themselves. Boys believed that they would receive more physical punishment, milder requests and less induction than girls. Children also indicated that their parents would choose a different response if they (themselves) were of the other sex. Both boys and girls reported that their parents would treat boys more severely than they would girls. The results showed that the responses of those children with a sibling of the other sex did not reveal any gender‐differentiated experience of their parents' discipline strategies. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Validity of the Cognitive Representations of Hypertension Scales (CRHTN)1

Leventhal and Diefenbach's (1991) self‐regulatory theory is discussed in explaining the dynamic nature of “how” and “what” people think about hypertension and how this information is different according to severity of hypertension. Using a sample of hypertensive adults who had controlled and uncontrolled blood pressure (BP) status, the factor structure of the Cognitive Representations of Hypertension (CRHTN) scales, an instrument based on self‐regulatory theory of Leventhal & Diefenbach, is examined through exploratory, confirmatory, and multigroup factor analyses. Results indicate that a 5‐factor model is representative of theoretical constructs of disease label or symptoms, consequences, and controllability. The model accurately fits observed data for outpatients with controlled and uncontrolled BP status. Results provide support for an understanding of individuals’ cognitive structuring of disease‐specific attitudes, beliefs, and self‐management skills.     

Philosophy of Science: Interfaces between Logic and Knowledge Representation

Abstract

In this inaugural lecture I offer, against the background of a discussion of knowledge representation and its tools, an overview of my research in the philosophy of science. I defend a relational model-theoretic realism as being the appropriate meta-stance most congruent with the model-theoretic view of science as a form of human engagement with the world. Making use of logics with preferential semantics within a model-theoretic paradigm, I give an account of science as process and product. I demonstrate the power of the full-blown employment of this paradigm in the philosophy of science by discussing the main applications of model-theoretic realism to traditional problems in the philosophy of science.

I discuss my views of the nature of logic and of its role in the philosophy of science today. I also specifically offer a brief discussion on the future of cognitive philosophy in South Africa. My conclusion is a general look at the nature of philosophical inquiry and its significance for philosophers today.     

Now or Later? Attentional Processing and Intertemporal Choice

The tendency to discount future prospects in lieu of smaller immediate outcomes is known as temporal discounting. The current work used eye‐tracking methodology to examine attentional processing to different elements of choice during an intertemporal decision task. Our findings reveal that those who tend to prefer the immediate option demonstrate attentional biases that were predictive of choice. When losses were at stake, selective attention biases also predicted unique variance in self‐report measures of risk taking, impulsivity, and self‐control beyond what was accounted for by a discounting parameter (k), a typical method for summarizing intertemporal choice data. Overall, our findings suggest that eye‐tracking measures of selective attention may allow for a better theoretical understanding of the mechanisms and processes involved in intertemporal choice. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Clicking away at co-rumination: co-rumination correlates across different modalities of communication

Co-rumination is associated with positive friendship quality (thought to buffer against anxiety and depression) but paradoxically higher levels of anxiety and depression. With the increasing use of technology for communication among adults, there is little known about co-rumination effects across different modalities of communication. In the current study, we examined co-rumination through four methods (i.e. in person, phone calls, text messaging, and social media) in two separate samples - college students and participants from the community. Classic co-rumination effects were found for in-person communications, and we found that co-rumination by telephone as well as by texting, for a college student sample only, mirrors some of these findings for in-person co-rumination. In studies of co-rumination, evaluation of multiple modes of communication is warranted.     

Reflections on the Reflections

Pastoral Psychology -     

The Immune System as a Sensory System: Implications for Psychology

The brain and immune system form a bidirectional communication network in which the immune system operates as a sense organ to provide the brain with information about infection and injury, thereby allowing the brain to coordinate a defense. Activated immune cells release proteins called cytokines, which signal the brain by both blood and neural routes. Information that reaches the brain across this sensory channel produces large changes in neural activity, behavior, mood, and cognitive functioning. Appreciation of the functioning of this network may illuminate poorly understood aspects of stress, depression, and intraindividual variability in behavior, mood, and cognition.     

Hebb learning, verbal short-term memory, and the acquisition of phonological forms in children

Recent work using the Hebb effect as a marker for implicit long-term acquisition of serial order has demonstrated a functional equivalence across verbal and visuospatial short-term memory. The current study extends this observation to a sample of five- to six-year-olds using verbal and spatial immediate serial recall and also correlates the magnitude of Hebb learning with explicit measures of word and nonword paired-associate learning. Comparable Hebb effects were observed in both domains, but only nonword learning was significantly related to the magnitude of Hebb learning. Nonword learning was also independently related to individuals' general level of verbal serial recall. This suggests that vocabulary acquisition depends on both a domain-specific short-term memory system and a domain-general process of learning through repetition.