Case vignette: cybertherapy

Dr. Neuro Transmitter, a psychotherapist in Paramus, New Jersey, provides services through an online, real-time consultation service known as CyberShrink, Inc., of Dallas, Texas. He is paid by the hour for his consultation services to subscribers who are billed by credit card through CyberShrink. One afternoon he logs on and is connected via private "chat channel" to a new subscriber to the service. She is Ann Hedonia of Simi Valley, California. Ten minutes into the session, Dr Transmitter recognizes that Ms. Hedonia is seriously depressed with suicidal ideation and is feeling on the edge of her ability to cope. He gently suggests that perhaps she ought to think about hospitalization near her home. Ms. Hedonia replies, "Even you don't care about me! That's it. I'm going to do it!" and disconnects. Discussion questions: Is offering psychotherapy services online ethical? What are Dr. Transmitter's obligations in general and at this particular moment to Ms. Hedonia? Suppose Ms. Hedonia has a complaint about Dr. Transmitter. From whom can she seek a remedy? Which state's laws apply regarding professional practice, confidentiality, or licensing qualifications? Must Dr. Transmitter be licensed in any state to offer this service?     

The interactional perspective of pain behaviour in marriage

An attempt has been made in this paper to broaden the theoretical base of behavioural perspective of pain behaviour by incorporating the interactional dimension. A behavioural-interactional approach explains the functions of pain with greater clarity in the context of a marital dyad than does the behavioural approach. A distinction is made between learned pain behaviour and investment in maintaining pain behaviour. It is argued that when the patient and the spouse demonstrate an investment in maintaining pain behaviours, marital therapy is untenable. Case illustrations demonstrate the effects of learned and invested pain behaviours, on assessment and treatment.     

A developmental study of children's preferences for paintings

In order to study the influence of style and subject matter on the development of children's art preferences, 60 randomly selected subjects from three grade levels, with an equal number of males and females, were shown ten color slides of paintings representing five categories of subject matter and two broad categories of style. Results indicated that style was the dominant variable at each grade level, and consistently accounted for more of the overall variance than subject matter. Unexpectedly, no appreciable developmental differences were evident in preference judgments across grade levels observed in this study.     

An ecological study of the reliability of clinical judgment in executive appraisal

This research was a study of the reliability of clinical judgment findings (multitrait) across three different information sources (psychometric tests, structured interview, and psychometric tests and interview). Subjects (N = 74) were middle and senior executives of Western Canadian technical companies; clinicians (N = 3) were trained and experienced industrial psychologists. The study investigated the similarity of clinical evaluation of personological characteristics (based on an 18-factor multitrait paradigm) across the three different information sources. Subjects were independently rated by a single clinician on 18 criterion factors in each of the three information source categories. Test information source categories required the administration of approximately 12 hrs of standardized psychological assessment questionnaires to each of the 74 subjects. Interview source category involved a 1.5-hr structured interview per subject. Combined condition pooled both test and interview conditions. Generalizability of the findings was maximized by the undertaking of the experiment in a natural situation thus increasing ecological validity. Statistical treatments used were designed to assess the similarity of a clinician's evaluation of a subject based on the different category of information available about that client. Convergence (intrarater reliability) indexes range from a high of .64 to a low of .05. Results indicate a varying degree of convergence of multitrait clinical ratings dependent on clinician and trait being rated. Results are discussed in terms of implications for practitioners involved in executive personnel selection.     

SEVERE CLASSROOM BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS: TEACHERS OR COUNSELLORS

This experiment was designed to determine the relative effectiveness of teacher and counselling approaches in the reduction of disruptive or inappropriate classroom behavior. Inappropriate classroom behavior frequencies of 12 academically low achieving, seventh-grade, black male students, with a reported high rate of inappropriate classroom behavior, were recorded. Three groups, with nearly equal mean inappropriate behaviors, were randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions: behavioral counselling, client-centered counselling, or no counselling. Each counselling group received fifteen 30-minute counselling sessions, at a rate of two to three times a week. In addition to counselling, all students subsequently received teacher approval within the classroom. Results indicated that the teacher was able to reduce inappropriate behavior more than any counselling group. There were also indications that behavioral counselling, but not client-centered counselling, was moderately helpful in reducing inappropriate classroom behavior.     

Multiple-answer multiple-choice test items: Responding and scoring through bayes and minimax strategies

A multiple-answer multiple-choice test item has a certain number of alternatives,any number of which might be keyed. The examinee is also allowed to mark any number of alternatives. This increased flexibility over the one keyed alternative case is useful in practice but raises questions about appropriate scoring rules. In this article a certain class of item scoring rules called thebinary class is considered. The concepts ofstandard scoring rules and equivalence among these scoring rules are introduced in the misinformation model for which the traditional knowledge model is a special case. The examinee's strategy with respect to a scoring rule is examined. The critical role of a quantity called the scoring ratio is emphasized. In the case of examinee uncertainty about the number of correct alternatives on an item, a Bayes and a minimax strategy for the examinee are developed. Also an appropriate response for the examiner to the minimax strategy is outlined.Research partially supported under Grants N00014-67-A-0314-0022 from the Office of Naval Research and GS-32514 and MPS 75-07539 from the National Science Foundation.     

U-statistic hierarchical clustering

A monotone invariant method of hierarchical clustering based on the Mann-Whitney U-statistic is presented. The effectiveness of the complete-link, single-link, and U-statistic methods in recovering tree structures from error perturbed data are evaluated. The U-statistic method is found to be consistently more effective in recovering the original tree structures than either the single-link or complete-link methods.     

Selective attention and changes in clinical state

Thirty inpatients of a psychiatric unit were given the Mini-Mult and a series of auditory selective attention tasks in order to test the hypotheses that (1) impaired attention is related to degree of pathology, and (2) improvement in clinical state leads to improved ability to selectively attend. The results showed that the relationship between the Mini-Mult and the listening tasks is significant only when the subjects had to exclude irrelevant stimuli (interference condition). The results also indicated that the relationship between clinical changes and changes in attentional performance is significant. The findings were discussed in terms of a quantitative theory of attention.     

In defence of a ratio model for movement detection at threshold

Sutherland (1961) proposed that the detection of motion might depend upon the ratios of firings in cells sensitive to movement in opposite directions. Sekuler and his collaborators have argued that the notion of a ratio mechanism at threshold is wrong. The findings and arguments upon which this conclusion was based are challenged, an explicit model is described which provides an account of data previously held to be inconsistent with a ratio model, and an experiment is reported which provides unequivocal support for the ratio model and whose findings are inconsistent with the predictions from Sekuler's “independence” model.