A Routley-Meyer Type Semantics for Relevant Logics Including B<Subscript>r</Subscript> Plus the Disjunctive Syllogism

Routley-Meyer type ternary relational semantics are defined for relevant logics including Routley and Meyer’s basic logic B plus the reductio rule \( \vdash A\rightarrow \lnot A\Rightarrow \vdash \lnot A\) and the disjunctive syllogism. Standard relevant logics such as E and R (plus γ) and Ackermann’s logics of ‘strenge Implikation’ Π and Π^′ are among the logics considered.     

Positive procedures and generalized self-choking

In two studies, self-choking by a middle-aged man with mental retardation was controlled both directly and indirectly by positive procedures. In the first study, paced eating procedures were employed to control postmealtime rumination. The frequency of generalized self-choking increased from periods where meals were paced to periods in which meals were not paced and vice versa. In the second study, redirection of self-choking and reinforcement for responses other than self-choking (DRO) reduced the frequency of self-choking, with the procedures applied successively to a number of different environments, trainers, distances from the client, and DRO parameters. These procedures related to a substantial reduction in generalized self-choking measured in other environments at other times.     

Ethical and Legal Guidance for Mental Health Practitioners Who Wish to Conduct Research in a Private Practice Setting

Mental health practitioners, even when they have research training, rarely contribute to the scientific literature. One reason for this may be that they need help addressing the ethical and legal issues they encounter as they contemplate undertaking research in a clinical practice setting. To address that need, we offer several types of guidance for conducting research in a private practice setting in a way that meets high ethical and legal standards. We describe the situations in which ethical review of a research proposal by a federally registered institutional review board (IRB) is legally required, and identify alternate mechanisms that practitioners can use to obtain an ethical review when a formal IRB review is not required by law. We discuss legal and ethical requirements of conducting single-case studies in a practice setting. We provide a rationale, and free and inexpensive options, for obtaining a formal certificate of training in human subjects research. And we offer guidance for obtaining informed consent and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) authorization from research participants. We conclude with a brief discussion of other legal and professional issues to consider when conducting research in private practice.     

Targeting Co-Sleeping in Children With Anxiety Disorders Using a Modified Bedtime Pass Intervention: A Case Series Using a Changing Criterion Design

Children with anxiety disorders experience high rates of sleep-related problems, with co-sleeping and resistance to sleeping independently being among the more frequent problems reported. Although extinction-based behavioral sleep interventions have repeatedly been shown to be highly effective for treating bedtime resistance, the primary obstacle to their implementation is parent discomfort with these procedures. The bedtime pass intervention was developed to minimize extinction bursts when implementing extinction procedures for childhood sleep problems. Several studies have found this intervention to be effective for treating bedtime resistance behaviors, but not co-sleeping specifically, in nonclinical samples of children. The current paper describes the use of a modified bedtime pass procedure to target problematic co-sleeping and related bedtime resistance behaviors in two children with anxiety disorders who presented for treatment at an outpatient pediatric anxiety specialty clinic. A changing criterion, single subject methodology was used to evaluate the effectiveness of this procedure. Data indicate that both children were able to transition from co-sleeping with parents every night, to sleeping independently, with relatively limited need for contact with parents at night during the intervention. These findings extend the data for the bedtime pass procedure to both co-sleeping and children with anxiety disorders. Clinical implications of these findings are discussed given the limited guidance for treating comorbid sleep problems in anxious children. Strengths and limitations of the data being drawn from a clinical treatment setting are also discussed.     

An Imperfect Match? Crime‐related Context Influences Fingerprint Decisions

Research suggests that fingerprint interpretation is vulnerable to contextual influence. Specifically, as contextual information increases in emotional intensity, people appear to increase the rate at which they deem fingerprint pairs to share the same source. We investigated three alternative explanations for this finding: (i) that participants who complete multitrial experiments might make more matches over time; (ii) that the provision of any additional information could influence decision‐making; and (iii) that the effect could be limited to dichotomous response options. In Experiment 1, participants forced to make a match or non‐match decision on 96 fingerprint pairs made more matches when pairs were preceded by crime‐related photographs, relative to neutral photographs or no photographs. In Experiment 2, where an ‘unsure’ option was available, crime‐related context did not influence matches but decreased non‐matches. Further research is necessary to determine the relative contributions of emotionality and motivation to these effects. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Christian Commitment and Personal Well Being: Exploring the Connection Between Religious Affect and Global Happiness Among Young Churchgoers in Australia

Drawing on data from the 2011 Australian National Church Life Survey, this study was designed to assess the connection between religious affect (as a measure of Christian commitment) and global happiness (as a measure of personal well being) among a sample of 6,194 young churchgoers in Australia between the ages of 8 and 14 years, attending a range of denominations, including Catholic, Anglican, Uniting, Pentecostal, and other Protestant churches. Employing the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity and the Powell Index of Global Happiness, the data demonstrate a significant positive correlation between religious affect and global happiness, after controlling for individual differences in sex and age.     

Children’s competitive peer aggression during reward and punishment

Behavior‐disordered children (N = 65) competed with a presumed unknown peer on consecutive administrations of an analogue aggression task of instrumental aggression (blocking the opponent’s game) and hostile aggression (sending the opponent a noise). The first administration as a reward‐only, nonpunishment condition. The second administration contained both reward and punishment conditions. Results indicated clear differences on aggressive responding during conditions of reward and punishment. Significant correlations were found between instrumental aggression during reward across the two administrations, whereas correlations between aggression during reward and aggression during punishment were nonsignificant. Teacher ratings of Covert‐Proactive Aggression correlated with analogue task instrumental aggression but not with hostile aggression on both administrations. Aggression during punishment was significantly correlated with Continuous Performance Test inattention and impulsivity scores, suggesting that impulsivity and inattention may play an important role in children’s ability to inhibit aggression during cues for punishment. These data indicate the utility of a laboratory analogue procedure to assess conditions associated with childhood aggression and to further our understanding of childhood aggression subtypes. Aggr. Behav. 27:1–13, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

THE DREAM'S NAVEL BETWEEN CHAOS AND THOUGHT3

The authors begin by drawing attention to the problem of the transition from the biological to the psychic, noting that Freud himself, with his background in the neurosciences, grappled with it throughout his career. Certain recent paradigms more commonly applied to the natural sciences, such as in particular chaos and complexity theory, can in their view prove fruitful in psychoanalysis too, and it is shown how these notions are inherent in some of Freud's conceptions. The unconscious is stated to operate like a neural network, performing the kind of parallel processing used in the computing of highly complex situations, whereas the conscious mind is sequential. Dreams, in the authors' opinion, are organisers of the mind, imparting order to the turbulence of the underlying wishes and unconscious fantasies and structuring them through the dream work. Through dreams, the structured linearity of conscious thought can emerge out of the non‐linear chaos of the drives. The dream's navel can be seen as the chaotic link, or interface, between the unconscious wish, which constitutes an attractor, and the conscious thought. The attractor may be visualised as having an hourglass or clepsydra shape, the narrow section being the dream's navel, and, being the same at any scale of observation, has the property of fractality.