Establishing Equivalence Relations Using a Respondent-Type Training Procedure III

The Psychological Record - In this study, 12 5-year-old normal functioning children were exposed to a respondent-type training procedure and tested for emergent conditional discriminations. During...     

Effects of Fatigue and Laterality on Fractionated Reaction Time

Surface EMG enabled fractionation of a simple hand grip total reaction time into peripheral and central processing components (motor time and premotor time, respectively). Changes in reaction time components were investigated in 12 female intercollegiate swimmers (bilateral athletes) and 12 female intercollegiate tennis players (unilateral athletes) following a 48% strength decrement induced by serial maximal voluntary isometric contractions (5 sec in duration). Despite significantly greater strength in the dominant arm than in the nondominant arm, there was no difference in fatigue effects between arms. Fatigue increased the premotor component of reaction time significantly, and indirectly the total reaction time, but the motor time remained essentially constant regardless of the type of previous athletic training. This indicated that fatigue impaired central nervous system or myoneural-junction operations rather than the intramuscular ability to initiate force.     

Early Adolescents' Values About Their Pets

The essays of adolescent boys and girls (N = 354) explaining their decisions to save a pet in the event of a fire were examined by content analysis for the adolescents' underlying value orientations. Hedonistic utility, a moral value characteristic of the second of Kohlberg's (1976) moral development stages, was the primary value underlying adolescents' choices.     

Hypermnesia for high-imagery words: The effects of interpolated tasks

The purpose of this study was to determine whether hypermnesia (improved net recall over time) can be differentially affected by manipulating the nature of tasks performed during the intervals between successive recall trials. In Experiment 1, all subjects were asked to imaginally encode separate words and were tested three times for recall. The control group (no interpolated task) produced the hypermnesia effect. Both groups performing interpolated tasks showed significantly lower recall. A second experiment was conducted in order to replicate these results and to examine the effects of intertest rehearsal on hypermnesia. In Experiment 2, subjects were asked to encode pairs of words using interactive-imagery instructions. Six different interpolated task conditions were employed, varying in the degree to which subsystems of working memory were used. Groups performing imaginal interpolated tasks showed no hypermnesia, whereas those performing nonimaginal tasks did. These findings suggest that access to working memory (see Baddeley, 1986) is not necessary for hypermnesia.     

Residues in the analyst of the patient's symbiotic connection at a somatic level: unrepresented states in the patient and analyst

This paper discusses the residues of a somatic countertransference that revealed its meaning several years after apparently successful analytic work had ended. Psychoanalytic and Jungian analytic ideas on primitive communication, dissociation and enactment are explored in the working through of a shared respiratory symptom between patient and analyst. Growth in the analyst was necessary so that the patient's communication at a somatic level could be understood. Bleger's concept that both the patient's and analyst's body are part of the setting was central in the working through.     

The Application of Behavior Change Theory to Family-Based Services: Improving Parent Empowerment in Children’s Mental Health

We describe the development of a parent empowerment program (PEP) using a community-based participatory research approach. In collaboration with a group of dedicated family advocates working with the Mental Health Association of New York City and state policy makers, academic researchers took an iterative approach to crafting and refining PEP to better prepare family advocates to help bridge the gaps in service access among children with emotional and behavioral problems. Despite the growth of family-led, family support programs nationally, research that demonstrates the positive benefits of such programs is scarce in the children’s mental health literature. The PEP model is based on research data about barriers families face in mental health service utilization (e.g., stigma, perceptions of providers, attitudes towards mental illness, service availability, etc.). PEP is premised on (a) the concept of empowerment as a process, (b) the need to engage parents in becoming active agents of change, and (c) the application of an integrated framework to empower parents, called the Parents as Agents of Change model. Our paper focuses on describing the application of a Unified Theory of Behavior Change as a theoretical framework to help activate parents as change agents in meeting their children’s mental health needs. Based on an integrated model of grassroots driven Principles of Parent Support and research-based Unified Theory of Behavior Change, PEP’s Parents as Agents of Change model provides a conceptual framework for testing the effectiveness of family support services in children’s mental health, a much-needed area for future research.