Family Assessment Measure (FAM) and Process Model of Family Functioning

This paper provides an overview of twenty years' work in the development of the Family Assessment Measure (FAM), based on the Process Model of Family Functioning. The Process Model describes a conceptual framework for conducting family assessments according to seven key dimensions: task accomplishment, role performance, communication, affective expression, involvement, control, values and norms. The FAM provides measures of these dimensions at three levels: whole family system (general scale, fifty items), various dyadic relationships (dyadic scale, forty-two items) and individual functioning (self-rating scale, forty-two items). In addition, the general scale includes social desirability and defensiveness response style measures. Brief FAMs (fourteen items) are available for each scale as well. The measurement properties of FAM have been evaluated in a variety of clinical and non-clinical settings. Reliability estimates are very good in most contexts. FAM's validity has been supported using a number of techniques. Overall, the weight of the evidence is that FAM's effectively and efficiently assess family functioning and provide strong explanatory and predictive utility. This empirical evidence reinforces experiences of clinicians, indicating that FAM provides a rich source of information on family functioning.     

The momentary realist

Research suggests that people initially take their subjective experience of an object as an accurate reflection of the object's properties, and only subsequently, occasionally, and effortfully consider the possibility that their experience was influenced by extraneous factors. The two studies reported here demonstrate that this is true even when the extraneous factors are the person's own dispositions. Dispositionally happy and unhappy participants were falsely told that they had been subliminally primed with words that might have influenced their moods, and were then asked to identify those words. Dispositionally happy participants were more likely than dispositionally unhappy participants to conclude that they had been primed with positive words, but only when they made these judgments under time pressure. The results are discussed in terms of correction models of human judgment.     

Training and Stroop-like interference: evidence for a continuum of automaticity

Three experiments varied the extent of practice in an analog of the Stroop color-work task. Each experiment involved four phases: (a) baseline naming of four familiar colors, (b) training in consistently naming four novel shapes by using the names of the same four colors, (c) naming the colors when they appeared in the form of the shapes, and (d) naming the shapes when they appeared in color. In Experiment 1, with up to 2 hr of training in shape naming, colors were named much faster than shapes. Interference was observed only in Phase 4. In Experiment 2, with 5 hr of training, shape naming sped up, but was still slower than color naming. Nevertheless, there was symmetrical interference in Phases 3 and 4, and this persisted 3 months later without further training. Experiment 3 replicated this pattern and then extended practice to 20 hr, by which time shape and color naming were equally rapid. After 20 hr, interference appeared only in Phase 3, reversing the original asymmetry. The overall pattern is inconsistent with a simple speed of processing account of interference. The alternative idea of a continuum of automaticity--a direct consequence of training--remains plausible, and the implications of this perspective are considered.     

Time Past and Time Present: ;Linearities, Circularities and Life

In 1979 this journal published 'Psychodynamic and structural approaches to work with families', a paper reflecting my preoccupation at that time with the move from a psychodynamic model to a model that was not only systemic, but based on developmental principles of family life and family evolution. This paper considers some of the effects of social context, past and present, which relate to the social construction of myself as a woman therapist, and my relationship to changes in professional and gendered issues since 1979.     

Hormonal control of sexual attraction in pseudohermaphroditic female dogs

Groups of female dogs exposed to different degrees of androgenic stimulation during development and a control group of ovariectomized females were tested for their attraction to tethered male and female stimulus animals. Attraction to the male was measured before and after administration of estradiol, and attraction to an estrous female was tested before and after administration of testosterone propionate (TP). Time spent visiting the tethered male was approximately equal for all groups prior to hormone treatment, but after receiving estradiol, control females exhibited a pronounced increase in visiting time; the second longest visits were paid by females that had received moderate amounts of androgen before birth; more heavily androgenized females exhibited no increase in attraction to the male despite estradiol injections. Visits to the estrous female before administration of TP were longer for some groups than for others, but there was no relation between the degree of perinatal androgenization and mean visiting time. After injections to TP the most pronounced increase in visiting was shown by females that had received the largest amounts of androgen during development, and the second largest increase occurred in the prenatally androgenized group. Control females showed the smallest increase in visiting time.     

A method for studying the analysis of aspects of the patient's experience of the relationship in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy

We have described a coding scheme for obtaining an objective account of the analysis of resisted aspects of the patient's experience of the relationship with the therapist in single, audio-recorded sessions of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. The focus is on what is often regarded as an important first step in the analysis of transference: the identification and exploration of the preconscious points of attachment of transference ideas in the here-and-now. Related to the scheme is the view that there is generally a plausible basis in the here-and-now for the patient's ideas about the therapist. The implications of that view for the concept of transference are discussed. Future directions for research are noted, including improving the reliability of the scheme and testing various hypotheses regarding how the particular step in technique assessed by the method affects other aspects of the process and outcome.     

The prediction of group motor performance from individual member abilities

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the prediction of group performance on the motor-maze task from individual member abilities. In both experiments subjects performed 20 individual trials on the maze task in an initial session prior to the actual experiment. On the basis of these individual performance scores, two-person groups were formed so that the groups represented a range of average ability levels and a range of discrepancies in abilities between partners. In Experiment 1, all groups performed a cooperative and a noncooperative group task in separate sessions both involving competition with another group. Only the cooperative group task was used in Experiment 2, but all groups performed under both competitive and noncompetitive conditions. Multiple regression analyses yielded a moderate, positive relationship between member abilities and group performance in both experiments; group performance on the highly cooperative task was dominated by the lower-ability partner.