Psychological aspects of scuba diving injuries: Suggestions for short-term treatment from a psychodynamic perspective

Dive medicine is described as an area of practice in which psychologists may choose to expand their clinical service and research activities. The author argues that most research studying risk behavior and sports take into account biological, behavioral or cognitive approaches, while ignoring unconscious conflict in risk-taking and injury management. The present paper uses a psychodynamically-oriented, interview-based approach to studying psychological reactions to decompression sickness in three experienced scuba divers. Brief interventions and their outcomes are described.     

The status of the concept of intelligence

Psychometric studies have shown that “general intelligence” should be broken down into the ability to apply learned solutions to new problems (crystallized intelligence) and the ability to deal with novel intellectual problems (fluid intelligence). This distinction has been amplified upon by studies of individual differences in information processing. Crystallized intelligence depends on the problem-solving schema that people have acquired and upon their efficiency in accessing information in long-term memory. Fluid intelligence is associated with the ability to access and manage relatively large amounts of information in working memory. Measures of fluid and crystallized intelligence are important predictors of objectively measured workplace performance. Studies of actual and simulated workplaces have shown that this is largely due to differences in people's ability to manage information and the speed with which the details of a job can be grasped.     

Modeling the Relationship Between Pay Level and Pay Satisfaction

The relationship between pay level and pay satisfaction was modeled in a field study with 456 employees of nursing departments in a large hospital. After controlling for person, job, and pay system characteristics, pay satisfaction variance was better explained by treating pay level as a power function rather than a linear function. This result was expected given the low wage rate relative to the market, the lack of a formal rewards system, and the high level of tenure in the workforce. Implications of this finding for theory, research, and practice were discussed.     

Laws: Projectability and uniformity

It is argued that the problem of the necessity and projectability of laws may be solved by distinguishing between the fact of necessity and explanations of its nature. This reduces the problem of necessity to that of induction, which in consequences must be solved without reference to necessity using ‘self‐supporting’ arguments. The consequences for the analysis of ‘counterfactual conditionals and the problem of language dependence is discussed.     

Semantic memory verification of binary statements by children at three academic levels

Ninety-six binary statements were administered to 120 children randomly selected from three academic levels. The children were to respond TRUE or FALSE to each statement. Error count and latency for correct responses were used as measures of performance. The Constituent Comparison Model (Carpenter, P., & Just, M. A., Psychological Review, 1975, 82, 45–73), which postulates that verification latency will increase linearly with a linear increase in the number of hypothesized constituent comparisons, accounts quite well for the results obtained in this study. Furthermore, the results suggest an increasing efficiency in semantic memory verification across the three academic levels as reflected by a decrease in variability of performance, a decrease in the time required to read and encode sentences, and a decrease in the time required per constituent comparison.     

Physiological and symptom responses to hyperventilation: A comparison of frequent and infrequent panickers

Ten subjects with panic disorder and ten subjects with infrequent panic attacks were assessed during 2 min of voluntary hyperventilation using four measures of physiological arousal (heart rate, upper trapezious EMG, skin conductance, and digital skin temperature). Immediately following hyperventilation, subjects were asked to rate their degree of distress on 13 panic symptoms, derived from DSM-III criteria for panic disorder. Results indicated that frequent panickers had significant overall elevations in trapezious EMG, relative to infrequent panickers, and demonstrated a slight increase in muscle tension following hyperventilation. In contrast, infrequent panickers showed a trend toward greater vasodilation preceding and during hyperventilation, with subsequent vasoconstriction upon resumption of normal breathing. Increases in skin conductance and heart rate were noted for both samples during hyperventilation, as reported in prior research. Symptom distress ratings indicated that the infrequent panickers reported significantly greater distress from dizziness and trembling in response to overbreathing, contrary to prediction. Implications of these findings are discussed in light of current accounts of cognitive and physiological factors in the etiology of panic attacks and panic disorder.This research was supported by Biomedical Research Support Grant #507RR07147, National Institutes of Health.