Holding true and holding as true

Our thanks go to Jonathan Malino. We also wish to express our gratitude to the reviewers of Synthese for their exacting and valuable comments.     

Terrorism research and the diffusion of ideas

The diffusion of ideas about contemporary terrorism is analyzed using a sociology of science methodology. One of the most common means of creating understandings of a phenomenon is the development and diffusion of ideas that influence the positions adopted by a wide range of actors, including government bureaucrats and decision makers, legislative and corporate bodies, and the public. How did terrorism researchers interact with these actors to construct, maintain, and modify the development and perception of contemporary terrorism? How were the ideas diffused and what impact did they have on policymakers? Did the invisible college of terrorism researchers function as an epistemic community? These questions are analyzed using an integrated research strategy that employs a number of techniques and data sources such as bibliometrics, content analysis, and citation analysis of selected terrorism research publications, biographies, and conferences, and on-line tracing of researchers’ affiliations, participations, and collaborations.     

Habituation of subjective anxiety during flooding in imagery

Patterns of habituation of subjective anxiety during flooding in fantasy are delineated for eleven obsessive-compulsive and six agoraphobic patients. The majority showed a curvilinear pattern of subjective anxiety response, while three patients showed a linear decelerating pattern. Habituation was found both within and across sessions. The results are compared with habituation patterns in physiological responses during flooding in fantasy and in vivo.     

Interpretation bias in social anxiety as detected by event-related brain potentials

Little is known about psychophysiological correlates of interpretation bias in social anxiety. To address this issue, the authors measured event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in high and low socially anxious individuals during a task wherein ambiguous scenarios were resolved with either a positive or negative ending. Specifically, the authors examined modulations of the P600, an ERP that peaks approximately 600 ms following stimulus onset and indexes violations of expectancy. Low-anxious individuals were characterized by an increased P600 to negative in comparison with positive sentence endings, suggesting a positive interpretation bias. In contrast, the high-anxious group evidenced equivalent P600 magnitude for negative and positive sentence endings, suggesting a lack of positive interpretation bias. Similar, but less reliable results emerged in earlier time windows, that is, 200-500 ms poststimulus. Reaction time, occurring around 900 ms poststimulus, failed to show a reliable interpretation bias. Results suggest that ERPs can detect interpretation biases in social anxiety before the emission of behavioral responses.     

“We have answered their prayer”: American Jewish old age homes as guardians of religious tradition

ABSTRACT

The old age home was the major American Jewish communal response to aged poverty during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first homes offered a self-conscious projection of their sponsors as socially progressive and compassionate in a new landscape. For a religious community increasingly distanced from formal hierarchies of traditional religious practice, the highly visible performance of good deeds under explicitly Jewish auspices became central to its communal identity. Acting on a combination of compassion and the perceived moral imperative of providing a Jewish environment, the founders and supporters of these homes recast Judaism and Jewish identity through an idealized image of aged piety.     

Directed forgetting following mood induction in chronic posttraumatic stress disorder patients

Current research of posttrauma sequelae suggests that intrusive rather than avoidant-dissociative models more accurately represent the encoding processes of trauma cues. However, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is often conceptualized as a phasic phenomenon, altering between arousal and avoidance states. The failure to support a relationship between avoidant encoding style and PTSD may reflect this alteration. To explore this hypothesis, participants with PTSD and controls (no PTSD) completed an item-cued directed-forgetting task, following either a dissociative or a serenity (control) mood induction. Results suggested that, following the serenity induction, a standard directed-forgetting effect was observed. However, following the dissociation induction, this effect was not observed. The role of dissociation in impairing encoding via lack of selective rehearsal or source discrimination is discussed.     

Long-term efficacy of exposure and ritual prevention therapy and serotonergic medications for obsessive-compulsive disorder

What is the long-term outcome of patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) who are treated with exposure and response (ritual) prevention (EX/RP) alone, serotonergic medications alone, or their combination? How is the long-term outcome of these patients affected by the discontinuation? Follow-up assessments were conducted with 62 patients treated for OCD an average of 17 months posttreatment (range: 6-43 months). Patients received one of three treatments: serotonergic medications (fluvoxamine or clomipramine), intensive behavior therapy involving EX/RP, or intensive EX/RP with concurrent antidepressant medication. At follow-up, no differences in OCD symptom severity were found among the three treatment groups. However, when current medication use was taken into consideration, differences among the three treatment groups emerged. Among patients who were medication-free at the time of follow-up assessment (n=37), those in the EX/RP-alone and EX/RP-with-medication groups had lower symptom severity ratings than those in the medication-only group on 4 out of 6 measures. There were no differences in OCD severity ratings among patients taking medications at follow-up (n=25). Although these findings are interpreted with caution due to the uncontrolled nature of the study, results suggested that long-term outcome may be superior following EX/RP than following serotonergic medications, after discontinuation. For patients who remain on medications, the treatment produced benefits equivalent to EX/RP.     

Victim-centric diversion? The electronic monitoring of domestic violence cases

This article discusses the electronic monitoring of domestic violence cases as a form of diversion. The data derive from a two and a half year study of two "bilateral" electronic monitoring programs geared towards domestic violence offenders, mostly defendants, and their former or current intimate partners. Analysis consists of an examination of how the programs under study manifest the aims and tensions of diversion, and highlights how a victim-centered approach to diversion can amplify the tensions of diversion.     

Directed forgetting in obsessive-compulsive disorder: replication and extension

Previous research indicates that patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) show impaired ability to forget negative material (Behav Res Ther 34 (1996) 633). The present study was intended to replicate and extend these findings by separating emotional valence from personal relevance, using idiographic stimulus selection to control for heterogeneity of OCD concerns, and the addition of an anxious control group. We used a directed forgetting paradigm, in which participants were instructed to either remember or forget a series of words. No differences in impairment were found among the groups during a free recall test, in which they were asked to recall both "remember" and "forget" words. However, during a recognition test, OCD patients showed greater impaired forgetting for OCD-relevant words than did nonanxious and anxious controls. Valence of words did not emerge as a contributing factor to impaired forgetting.     

Treatment outcome for chronic PTSD among female assault victims with borderline personality characteristics: a preliminary examination

The present study examined the effect of the presence of borderline personality disorder characteristics (BPC) on patients' responses to cognitive behavioral treatment for chronic PTSD. Seventy-two female victims of sexual and non-sexual assault were randomly assigned to one of four treatment conditions: prolonged exposure (PE), stress inoculation training (SIT), combined treatment (PE/SIT), and wait list control (WL). Treatment consisted of nine bi-weekly individual sessions. Seventeen percent of the patients met full (10%) or partial criteria (7%) for borderline personality disorder. A greater number of patients with BPC reported sexual assault in childhood compared to those without the symptomatology. Patients with BPC also reported more pre-treatment anger. In general, those with BPC benefited significantly from treatment, although at post-treatment, they were less likely to achieve good end-state functioning than those without such symptomatology. The relationship between BPC and treatment response will be discussed.