Family Ritual and Routine: Comparison of Clinical and Non-Clinical Families

Research demonstrates that the constructive use of family rituals is reliably linked to family health and to psychosocial adjustment. This study explores the relationship between family rituals and child well-being. Two samples participated: 21 families whose adolescent was receiving psychiatric treatment and 21 families in which the adolescent was a public school student. A parent and the adolescent were individually interviewed regarding family rituals and completed standardized measures of adolescent and family functioning. Analyses demonstrated that, in addition to significant sample differences in the expected direction on measures of functioning, the non-clinical families scored significantly higher on the index of family rituality than did the treatment families; this is additional evidence that family rituals are a correlate of child well-being. Further analysis of the data pointed to “people resources” as a robust dimension in its association to adolescent functioning. The role family ritual and routine plays in defining family relationships, both within the nuclear family and with other important adults, was significantly related to clinical status. This work may point to an important, yet overlooked, dimension of family ritual life, the relational qualities of rituals and routines.     

The ecological validity of the “who said what?” technique: An examination of the role of self‐involvement,cognitive interference and acquaintanceship

Questions are raised about the possible ecological invalidity of the traditional “who said what?” (WSW) procedure. Three studies are reported which use a modified, quasi‐naturalistic version of the WSW technique, in which rather than being passive recipients of presented information, participants instead play an active role in the production of such information in an interactive context. Data are presented that demonstrate that the social categorization effect typically obtained through the traditional WSW procedure generalizes beyond the circumstances in which it was initially demonstrated. Thus, in Study 1 it was established that social categories (gender, in this case) are cognitively used in real interactions between participants in order to organize information. Moreover, Study 2 demonstrated that the use of categories is accentuated when, as is typical in real world situations, recollections are not made immediately after the perception of the relevant stimuli but following a period of intervening cognitive activity. The findings of Study 3, however, suggest that the WSW technique may not inevitably lead to social categorization effects: typical effects did not appear when participants knew each other well, and therefore saw one another as unique, idiosyncratic individuals, rather than as category members.     

Size scaling: retinal or environmental frame of reference?

Previous studies have reported that when subjects are presented with two forms in a same-different task, their reaction times increase with the size ratio. This suggests a "mental scaling" transformation analogous to the "mental rotation" used to compensate for differently oriented forms in similar tasks. However, since the stimuli were presented in isolation, retinal and environmental size ratios were confounded. The present study varied both retinal and environmental size ratios in a same-different simultaneous matching task. In one experiment, random forms were placed at different distances along a textured hallway. A second experiment varied the monocular size information: In one condition the forms were displayed in a textured hallway; a second condition added cast shadows; and a third condition displayed the forms against a frontal wall of indeterminate distance. The results suggest that environmental size is determined prior to mental scaling and form matching.     

Socially induced delayed reproduction in female Mongolian gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus): is there anything special about dominant females?

In 4 experiments, the authors explored effects of interaction with both sexually active adult female and unfamiliar adult male Mongolian gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus) on young female gerbils' ages at first parturition. Presence of a natural mother retarded development of her daughters. However, presence of a natural mother had no greater effect on her daughters' development than did presence of any other familiar animal, either male or female. Further, exposing young female gerbils to an unfamiliar male accelerated their development even when their reproductively active mothers were present. The data indicate that maintaining young female gerbils in stable family groups results in both inhibition of sexual maturation (caused by exposure to familiar individuals) and failure to activate sexual development (caused by lack of exposure to unfamiliar males).     

Architectural design of a secure forensic state psychiatric hospital

This article describes the architectural design of a secure forensic state psychiatric hospital. The project combined input from staff at all levels of the client organization, outside consultants, and a team of experienced architects. The design team was able to create a design that maximized patient dignity and privacy on one hand, and the ability of staff to observe all patient activity on the other. The design centers around 24-bed units, broken into smaller living wings of eight beds each. Each eight-bed living wing has its own private bathrooms (two) and showers (two), as well as a small living area solely reserved for these eight patients and their guests. An indoor-outdoor dayroom allows patients to go outside whenever they choose, while allowing staff to continue observing them. The heart of the facility is a large treatment mall, designed to foster the acquisition of social, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral skills that will help patients to safely return to their communities.     

Aging effects on memory encoding in the frontal lobes

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to compare frontal-lobe activation in younger and older adults during encoding of words into memory. Participants made semantic or nonsemantic judgments about words. Younger adults exhibited greater activation for semantic relative to nonsemantic judgments in several regions, with the largest activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus. Older adults exhibited greater activation for semantic judgments in the same regions. but the extent of activation was reduced in left prefrontal regions. In older adults, there was a significant association between behavioral tests of declarative and working memory and extent of frontal activation. These results suggest that age-associated decreases in memory ability may be due to decreased frontal-lobe contributions to the initial encoding of experience.     

Directed Convergence in Stable Percept Acquisition

We view a perceptual capacity as a nondeductive inference, represented as a function from a set of premises to a set of conclusions. The application of the function to a single premise to produce a single conclusion is called a "percept" or "instantaneous percept." We define a stable percept as a convergent sequence of instantaneous percepts. Assuming that the sets of premises and conclusions are metric spaces, we introduce a strategy for acquiring stable percepts, called directed convergence. We consider probabilistic inferences, where the premise and conclusion sets are spaces of probability measures, and in this context we study Bayesian probabilistic/recursive inference. In this type of Bayesian inference the premises are probability measures, and the prior as well as the posterior is updated nontrivially at each iteration. This type of Bayesian inference is distinguished from classical Bayesian statistical inference where the prior remains fixed, and the posterior evolves by conditioning on successively more punctual premises. We indicate how the directed convergence procedure may be implemented in the context of Bayesian probabilistic/recursive inference. We discuss how the L(infinity) metric can be used to give numerical control of this type of Bayesian directed convergence. Copyright 2001 Academic Press.     

Pastoral care in psychiatric crisis

Pastoral Psychology -     

Mechanical perturbation of the wrist during one-handed catching

In the present study, the co-ordination of grasp and transport components of one-handed catching was examined following mechanical perturbations applied to the wrist. Six skilled catchers (mean age = 27.5 years) performed 64 trials in which tennis balls were projected at approximately 8 ms-1. The trial blocks consisted of 10 non-perturbed trials (NPTs) (baseline), and a block of 54 trials of which 20 trials were perturbed. The perturbation was in the form of a resistive force (12 N) applied via a piece of cord attached to a mechanical brake. In baseline trials participants reached maximal wrist velocity closer to the time of hand-ball contact (237 ms +/- 68) than in the perturbed (309 ms +/- 61) condition. Furthermore the wrist velocity profile of five out of six participants exhibited a double peak immediately after a perturbation. However, aperture variables such as the relative moment of final hand closure (approximately 70% of overall movement time) were not typically affected. The stability of grasp and transport coupling for one-handed catching was shown to vary from trial to trial. Skilled performers exploited redundant degrees of freedom in the motor system when faced with a sudden, unexpected change in task constraints.