Group therapists and AIDS groups: An exploration of traumatic stress reactions

As the AIDS epidemic continues unabated, there is growing clinical evidence that the catastrophic nature of this disease is creating a second category of trauma casualties. They are the health care practitioners who witness the narratives of those who are living with and dying from AIDS. This article examines how multiple AIDS-related deaths of group members exert a traumatizing effect on group therapists, creating vicarious traumatization. Vignettes are presented that illustrate reactions associated with traumatic stress, including death images, survivors' guilt, psychic numbing, suspicion of counterfeit nurturance, and struggle for meaning. Possible therapeutic interventions for group therapists coping with multiple deaths are also explored.The author wishes to acknowledge the endeavors of the volunteer group therapists and the Clinical Group Services staff of the Gay Men's Health Crisis of New York City, who provide group therapy to over 900 clients a week. This article is written in admiration of their extraordinary effort and dedication.     

Production deficits in aphasia: A voice-onset time analysis

An experimental study was conducted to examine phonetic and phonemic deficits in the speech production of aphasics. Subjects included four Broca's aphasics, four Conduction aphasics, five Wernicke's aphasics, one nonaphasic dysarthric patient, and four normal controls. The subjects read a list of words containing word-initial stop consonants which were subsequently measured acoustically for voice-onset time. The results showed that Broca's aphasics exhibit a more severe production disorder than Conduction aphasics who in turn exhibit a more severe disorder than Wernicke's aphasics, in accord with clinical observations. In addition, although Broca's aphasics produced both phonetic and phonemic errors, the results showed that they have a pervasive phonetic disorder which affects their correct target productions as well as the total number of phonetic errors produced. This deficit however seems to be a speech deficit rather than a low-level motor control problem. In contrast, the Wernicke's aphasics show a deficit characterized by isolated phonemic mistargeting errors. Finally, the pattern of productions for the Conduction aphasics indicates that some patients show a predominantly phonetic disorder similar to the Broca's aphasics and others show predominantly a phonemic disorder similar to the Wernicke's aphasics.     

Directional errors of movement and their correction in a discrete tracking task

Many studies have shown that subjects can correct their own errors of movement more quickly than they can react to external stimuli. In the control of movements, three general categories of feedback have been defined as follows: (a) knowledge of results, primarily visually mediated, (b) proprioceptive or kinesthetic, such as from muscle spindles and joint receptors, and (c) corollary discharge or efference copy within the central nervous system. Experiments were conducted on eight normal human subjects to study the effects of these feedbacks on simple RT, choice RT, and error correction time. The movement used was plantarflexion and dorsiflexion of the ankle joint. The feedback loops were modified (a) by inverting the visual display to alter the subject's perception of results and (b) by applying a 100-Hz vibration simultaneously to both flexor and extensor muscles of the ankle joint. Central processing was altered by giving the subjects moderated doses of alcohol (blood-alcohol concentration levels of up to.10%). Vibration and alcohol increased both simple and choice RT but not the error correction time. These data reinforce the concept that there is a central pathway which can mediate error correcting responses.     

Team Semantics for Interventionist Counterfactuals: Observations vs. Interventions

Journal of Philosophical Logic - Team semantics is a highly general framework for logics which describe dependencies and independencies among variables. Typically, the (in)dependencies considered...     

Elusive Propositions

Journal of Philosophical Logic - David Kaplan observed in Kaplan (1995) that the principle $\forall p \Diamond \forall q (Qq \leftrightarrow q = p)$ cannot be verified at a world in a standard...