Family interventions in psychosis: a scale to measure therapist adherence

The efficacy of family interventions in psychosis is well documented. UK and USA schizophrenia treatment guidelines advocate the practice of family interventions within routine clinical services. However, less attention has been paid to the study of treatment fidelity and the tools used in its assessment. This study reports the inter-rater reliability of a new scale: Family Intervention in Psychosis-Adherence Scale (FIPAS). This measure is designed to assess therapist adherence to the Kuipers et al . (2002) family intervention in psychosis treatment manual. Reliability ratings were based on a sample of thirteen audiotapes drawn from a randomized controlled trial of family intervention. The results indicated that the majority of items of the FIPAS had acceptable levels of inter-rater reliability. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the training and monitoring of the effectiveness of practitioners for family interventions in psychosis.     

Gender differences in health anxiety: An investigation of the interpersonal model of health anxiety

Health anxiety (HA) involves persistent worry about one’s health and beliefs one has an illness or may contract a disease. In the present study, gender differences in Noyes et al.’s (2003) interpersonal model of health anxiety (IMHA) were examined. Using a sample of 950 undergraduates (674 women; 276 men), multigroup confirmatory factor analyses suggested the measurement model for key dimensions of the IMHA (i.e., reassurance-seeking, alienation, worry, and absorption) were invariant across gender. This suggests key dimensions of this model are applicable to and generalizable across women and men. Coefficients alpha for and bivariate correlations between these IMHA dimensions were also roughly comparable across women and men. As hypothesized, mean levels of reassurance-seeking and worry were significantly higher in women compared to men. No gender differences were observed in mean levels of alienation or absorption. Reassurance-seeking and worry appear salient in the interpersonal behavior and emotional life of women with HA. The present study helps to clarify gender differences in the IMHA and other HA models involving similar variables.     

Evidence for a contact-based explanation of the own-age bias in face recognition

Previous research has shown that we recognize faces similar in age to ourselves better than older or younger faces (e.g., Wright & Stroud, 2002). This study investigated whether this own-age bias could be explained by the contact hypothesis used to account for the own-race bias (see Meissner & Brigham, 2001). If the own-age bias stems from increased exposure to people of our own age, it should be reduced or absent in those with higher exposure to other age groups. Participants were asked to remember facial photographs of 8- to 11- and 20- to 25-year-olds. Undergraduates were faster and more accurate at recognizing faces of their own age. However, trainee teachers showed no such own-age bias; they recognized the children’s faces more quickly than own-age faces and with comparable accuracy. These results support a contact-based explanation of the own-age bias.     

Cooperation versus competition in a mass emergency evacuation: A new laboratory simulation and a new theoretical model

Virtual reality technology is argued to be suitable to the simulation study of mass evacuation behavior, because of the practical and ethical constraints in researching this field. This article describes three studies in which a new virtual reality paradigm was used, in which participants had to escape from a burning underground rail station. Study 1 was carried out in an immersion laboratory and demonstrated that collective identification in the crowd was enhanced by the (shared) threat embodied in emergency itself. In Study 2, high-identification participants were more helpful and pushed less than did low-identification participants. In Study 3, identification and group size were experimentally manipulated, and similar results were obtained. These results support a hypothesis according to which (emergent) collective identity motivates solidarity with strangers. It is concluded that the virtual reality technology developed here represents a promising start, although more can be done to embed it in a traditional psychology laboratory setting.     

The theoretical diagnosis of skepticism

Radical skepticism about the external implies that no belief about the external is even prima facie justified. A theoretical reply to skepticism has four stages. First, show which theories of epistemic justification support skeptical doubts (show which theories, given other reasonable assumptions, entail skepticism). Second, show which theories undermine skeptical doubts (show which theories, given other reasonable assumptions, do not support the skeptic’s conclusion). Third, show which of the latter theories (which non-skeptical theory) is correct, and in so doing show that all of the rival theories of justification, skeptical and non-skeptical alike, are mistaken. Fourth, explain why skeptical doubts are sometimes (or sometimes merely seem) intuitive, and thereby accommodate skeptical doubts without capitulation. Michael Williams has pioneered the very idea of a theoretical reply. A theoretical diagnosis consists in just the first two stages. An adequate reply, which is correct at each stage, would rebut the skeptic entirely. Williams’ own reply, I argue, is inadequate. I offer in its place an exhaustive and accurate diagnosis of skepticism. I distinguish four kinds of skepticism and five theories of justification. I then show which theories do, and which theories do not, support which kinds of skepticism.     

Diminutives facilitate word segmentation in natural speech: Cross-linguistic evidence

Final-syllable invariance is characteristic of diminutives (e.g., doggie), which are a pervasive feature of the child-directed speech registers of many languages. Invariance in word endings has been shown to facilitate word segmentation (Kempe, Brooks, & Gillis, 2005) in an incidental-learning paradigm in which synthesized Dutch pseudonouns were used. To broaden the cross-linguistic evidence for this invariance effect and to increase its ecological validity, adult English speakers (n=276) were exposed to naturally spoken Dutch or Russian pseudonouns presented in sentence contexts. A forced choice test was given to assess target recognition, with foils comprising unfamiliar syllable combinations in Experiments 1 and 2 and syllable combinations straddling word boundaries in Experiment 3. A control group (n=210) received the recognition test with no prior exposure to targets. Recognition performance improved with increasing final-syllable rhyme invariance, with larger increases for the experimental group. This confirms that word ending invariance is a valid segmentation cue in artificial, as well as naturalistic, speech and that diminutives may aid segmentation in a number of languages.     

Serial position effects in short-term visual memory: A SIMPLE explanation?

A version of Sternberg's (1966) short-term visual memory recognition paradigm with pictures of unfamiliar faces as stimuli was used in three experiments to assess the applicability of the distinctiveness-based SIMPLE model proposed by Brown, Neath, and Chater (2002). Initial simulations indicated that the amount of recency predicted increased as the parameter measuring the psychological distinctiveness of the stimulus material (c) increased and that the amount of primacy was dependent on the extent of proactive interference from previously presented stimuli. The data from Experiment 1, in which memory lists of four and five faces varying in visual similarity were used, confirmed the predicted extended recency effect. However, changes in visual similarity were not found to produce changes in c. In Experiments 2 and 3, the conditions that influence the magnitude of c were explored. These revealed that both the familiarity of the stimulus class before testing and changes in familiarity, due to perceptual learning, influenced distinctiveness, as indexed by the parameter c. Overall, the empirical data from all three experiments were well fit by SIMPLE.     

More than One Flaw: Reply to Millican

Millican (Mind 113(451):437–476, 2004) claims to have detected ‘the one fatal flaw in Anselm’s ontological argument.’ I argue that there is more than one important flaw in the position defended in Millican (Mind 113(451):437–476, 2004). First, Millican’s reconstruction of Anselm’s argument does serious violence to the original text. Second, Millican’s generalised objection fails to diagnose any flaw in a vast range of ontological arguments. Third, there are independent reasons for thinking that Millican’s generalised objection is unpersuasive.