Do amnesics exhibit cognitive dissonance reduction? The role of explicit memory and attention in attitude change

In two studies, we investigated the roles of explicit memory and attentional resources in the process of behavior-induced attitude change. Although most theories of attitude change (cognitive dissonance and self-perception theories) assume an important role for both mechanisms, we propose that behavior-induced attitude change can be a relatively automatic process that does not require explicit memory for, or consciously controlled processing of, the discrepancy between attitude and behavior. Using a free-choice paradigm, we found that both amnesics and normal participants under cognitive load showed as much attitude change as did control participants.     

The Older Woman as Sage: The Satisfaction of Mentoring

Mentoring is important to the personal and professional lives of many developing professionals, but it is also beneficial in numerous ways to the mentor. This article focuses on the benefits of mentoring from the mentor's prospective, including satisfaction in seeing protégées succeed and empowerment of both the mentor and protégée. This article showcases the importance of being a mentor, the impact mentoring has on developing psychologists, and how mentoring sustains older women's connections and contributions to their field. The authors discuss what mentoring is, what mentors do, how to become a mentor, and the benefits of being a mentor. How one becomes a mentor in various work settings including academia is also discussed, as are concerns regarding inappropriate mentoring relationships and how to improve the quality of the mentoring relationship. The authors suggest that becoming a mentor can be empowering for women clients as well as therapists.     

A Review of: Growing Up With Autism: Working With School-Age Children and Adolescents With Autism,edited by Robin L. Gabriels and Dina E. Hill (Eds.).

The influence of adult presence, peer smiling, and peer praise on the unprogrammed generalization of physical sharing over time was investigated. During free play three groups of five preschool children were taught to share toys via a behavioral training package composed of instructions, modeling, behavior rehearsal, prompts, and praise. Immediately following free play the children were given art materials and observed in the presence of different adults. An ABA design with a manipulation of adult presence nested within east phase was used. For all three groups, regardless of the adult presence manipulation, treatment facilitated sharing in both settings. In addition, two groups continued to share in both settings after termination of the training. The presence of an adult was necessary for unprogrammed maintenance of treatment gains in both settings whereas peer smiling and peer praise were not. Observer presence suppressed physical sharing and smiling prior to, during, and after treatment. Implications for behavioral assessment and applied significance are discussed.     

The Auction Value of Certain Risky Situations

This study evaluated the characteristics of emergent leaders of problem-solving groups with use of semantic differential scales. Subjects were 64 American university undergraduates. Each subject rated all subjects in his group, self included, at each of five sessions. Persons selected as leaders were found by a Q factor analytic technique to cluster on the basis of the following common characteristics: higher than nonleaders in giving directions, formulating goals, and being self-assured; lower than nonleaders in being more quarrelsome and less sensible.

The qualities characteristic of emergent leaders are assigned to them early, remain relatively consistent, and seem independent of personality characteristics. Whether they can be taught to participants who will subsequently be perceived as leaders is currently under investigation.     

Problems in Integrating Traditional Group Therapies with New Group Forms

The authors describe a range of critical issues that are common within homogeneously composed groups for patients suffering from Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and AIDS Related Complex (ARC). They examine the need for these patients to understand their physical symptomatology, to reconsider life's priorities, and to confront their ethical and moral dilemmas. The authors also highlight special affects, unique group atmosphere and process, and the nature of the group contract that is essential for these patients.     

Infants and Young Children in Military Families: A Conceptual Model for Intervention

Infants and young children of parents in the military deserve special attention because the first years of life are pivotal in establishing trusting attachment relationships, which are based on the developmental expectation that parents will be reliably available and protective both physically and emotionally. For young children in military families, the stresses of extended absences of mothers and/or fathers as the result of deployment abroad, recurrent separations and reunions resulting from repeated deployments, or parents struggling with the emotional sequelae of their war experiences, and the traumatic impact of parental injury and death can strain and derail the normative expectation of parental availability and protectiveness. This article describes the key features of mental health in infancy and early childhood, the developmentally expectable early anxieties that all children experience in the first years of life across cultures and circumstances, and the ways in which these normative anxieties are exacerbated by the specific circumstances of military families. The article also describes interventions that may be helpful in supporting military families and their children with the specific challenges they face.     

Commentary on “Transformations in hallucinosis and the receptivity of the analyst” by Civitarese

After summarizing Civitareses complex and stimulating thoughts, merits of his conceptualization are emphazised firstly before coming to drawbacks of it. As a supplementary perspective on the conceptualisation (TH) of Civitares the commentary is focused on a slightly different approach. Transformation into hallucinosis is linked to excessive forms of projective identification., which can have massive influence on the analyst, thus pressing him into (behavioral) patterns similar to what was phantazised, or hallucinated or deluded by the patient about the relationsship. If the analyst is after a shorter or longer period able to recognize, how near he is or was to the Patient's deluded or hallucinated Constructions of his world, this will give him a further source to sense and to examine the patients experience.     

Marked referential communicative behaviours,but no differentiation of the “knowledge state” of humans in untrained pet dogs versus 1-year-old infants

The study examines whether untrained dogs and infants take their caregiver’s visual experience into account when communicating with them. Fifteen adult dogs and 15 one-year-old infants were brought into play with their caregivers with one of their own toys. The caregiver gave the toy to the experimenter, who, in different conditions, placed it either above or under one of two containers, with both the infant or dog and the caregiver witnessing the positioning; in a third condition, the caregiver left the room before the toy was placed under one of the two containers and later returned. Afterwards, for each condition, the caregiver asked the participant to indicate the location of the toy. Neither dogs nor infants—untrained to the use of the partner’s knowledge state—showed much difference of behaviour between the three conditions. However, dogs showed more persistence for most behaviours (gaze at the owner, gaze at the toy and gaze alternation) and conditions, suggesting that the situation made more demands on dogs’ communicative behaviours than on those of infants. When all deictic behaviours of infants (arm points towards the toy and gaze at the toy) were taken into account, dogs and infants did not differ. Phylogeny, early experience and ontogeny may all play a role in the ways that both species communicate with adult humans.     

Randomized controlled trial of expressive writing for psychological and physical health: the moderating role of emotional expressivity

The current study assessed main effects and moderators (including emotional expressiveness, emotional processing, and ambivalence over emotional expression) of the effects of expressive writing in a sample of healthy adults. Young adult participants (N=116) were randomly assigned to write for 20 minutes on four occasions about deepest thoughts and feelings regarding their most stressful/traumatic event in the past five years (expressive writing) or about a control topic (control). Dependent variables were indicators of anxiety, depression, and physical symptoms. No significant effects of writing condition were evident on anxiety, depressive symptoms, or physical symptoms. Emotional expressiveness emerged as a significant moderator of anxiety outcomes, however. Within the expressive writing group, participants high in expressiveness evidenced a significant reduction in anxiety at three-month follow-up, and participants low in expressiveness showed a significant increase in anxiety. Expressiveness did not predict change in anxiety in the control group. These findings on anxiety are consistent with the matching hypothesis, which suggests that matching a person's naturally elected coping approach with an assigned intervention is beneficial. These findings also suggest that expressive writing about a stressful event may be contraindicated for individuals who do not typically express emotions.     

Metadehumanization and Self-dehumanization are Linked to Reduced Drinking Refusal Self-Efficacy and Increased Anxiety and Depression Symptoms in Patients with Severe Alcohol Use Disorder

Metadehumanization, the perception of being treated as less than a human by others, is a pervasive phenomenon in intergroup relations. It is dissociated from stigmatization or stereotypes, and it has been recently identified as a critical process in severe alcohol use disorders (SAUD). Metadehumanization is associated with a wide array of negative consequences for the victim, including negative emotions, aversive self-awareness, cognitive deconstruction, and psychosomatic strains, which are related to anxiety and depression. This study aims to investigate if metadehumanization occurring among patients with SAUD is associated with clinical factors involved in the maintenance of the disease, namely symptoms of depression or anxiety and drinking refusal self-efficacy. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 120 patients with SAUD. Self-reported questionnaires measured metadehumanization, self-dehumanization (i.e., the feeling of being less than a human), anxiety, depression, drinking refusal self-efficacy, and demographics. Metadehumanization was significantly associated with self-dehumanization, anxiety, depression, and drinking refusal self-efficacy. Additionally, path analyses showed that self-dehumanization mediated the links between metadehumanization and clinical variables. These results indicate that metadehumanization and self-dehumanization could be essential factors to consider during SAUD treatment, as they are associated with increased psychiatric symptoms and reduced drinking refusal self-efficacy.