From scapegoating to thinking and finding a home: delivering therapeutic work in schools

This paper discusses how the child psychotherapist's core skills can be usefully applied in a school setting. It outlines some of the important policy changes that have necessitated a move towards delivering therapeutic work in community settings such as schools. It is argued that the role of the child psychotherapist in schools has much in common with the role played by the psychotherapist in a therapeutic community. The paper suggests that therapy in schools is in many ways less simple than therapy in clinic settings, and in particular it is often unclear who exactly the client is and at what level to intervene when a referral is made. The referred patient is not necessarily the ‘problem’, so that the child psychotherapist must be prepared to tackle issues in the system to ensure that splitting and projection are reduced, and systems around children can become more containing. Clinical vignettes and one main clinical illustration are used to try to illustrate these points.     

Strategic and automatic effects of visual working memory on attention in visual search

Previous research indicates that visual attention can be automatically captured by sensory inputs that match the contents of visual working memory. However, Woodman and Luck (2007) showed that information in working memory can be used flexibly as a template for either selection or rejection according to task demands. We report two experiments that extend their work. Participants performed a visual search task while maintaining items in visual working memory. Memory items were presented for either a short or long exposure duration immediately prior to the search task. Memory was tested by a change-detection task immediately afterwards. On a random half of trials items in memory matched either one distractor in the search task (Experiment 1) or three (Experiment 2). The main result was that matching distractors speeded or slowed target detection depending on whether memory items were presented for a long or short duration. These effects were more in evidence with three matching distractors than one. We conclude that the influence of visual working memory on visual search is indeed flexible but is not solely a function of task demands. Our results suggest that attentional capture by perceptual inputs matching information in visual working memory involves a fast automatic process that can be overridden by a slower top-down process of attentional avoidance.     

Early Stage Alzheimer's Disease Disrupts Encoding of Contextual Information

Two experiments examined whether impairments in recognition memory in early stage Alzheimer's disease (AD) were due to deficits in encoding contextual information. Normal elderly (NE) and patients diagnosed with mild stage AD learned one of two tasks. In Experiment 1 correct recognition memory required participants to remember not only what items they had experienced on a given trial but also when they had experienced them; Experiment 2 required that participants remember only what they had seen, not when they had seen it. Large recognition memory differences were found between the AD and NE groups in the experiment where time tagging was crucial for successful performance. An error analysis indicated that this was not due to the perseveration of previous learned responses. In Experiment 2, the only requisite for successful recognition was remembering what one had experienced; memory of the temporal record was not necessary for successful performance. In this instance, recognition memory for the NE and AD groups was identical. Taken together these results suggest that memory deficits found in early stage AD are partly due to impaired processing of contextual cues that provide crucial information about when events occur.     

Charting the progression in semantic dementia: Implications for the organisation of semantic memory

Abstract

A patient, JL, with the syndrome of semantic dementia was assessed longitudinally over a two-year period. The data presented here address the controversy concerning the hierarchical organisation of semantic memory. On a range of category fluency tests, when first tested JL was just within the normal range on the broadest categories of animals and household items, but was virtually unable to produce any instances of specific categories such as breeds of dog or musical instruments. Longitudinal fluency data for the animal category demonstrate that while JL continued to produce the most prototypical responses (cat, dog, horse), other animal labels dropped out early from his vocabulary. On the picture-sorting tests from our semantic memory test battery, JL's discrimination between living things and man-made objects was preserved for a substantial time in conjunction with a marked decline in his sorting ability for more specific categories, particularly features or attributes (e.g. size, foreign-ness, or ferocity of animals).

An analysis of naming responses to the 260 Snodgrass and Vanderwart pictures on four occasions suggests a progressive loss of the features of semantic representations that enable discrimination between specific category instances. There was a progressive decline in circumlocutory and category co-ordinate responses with a rise in broad superordinate and cross-category errors. The latter are of particular theoretical interest; on session I, all cross-category errors respected the living/man-made distinction, but by session IV almost half of such errors failed to respect this distinction. The emergence of category prototypes was another notable feature, particularly in the living domain: at one stage, land (or four-legged) animals were all named either cat, dog, or horse. By contrast, within the man-made domain, items were frequently described in terms of their broad use or function, until eventually no defining features were produced. These findings are discussed in the context of competing theories of semantic organisation.     

Intrusive and non‐intrusive memories in a non‐clinical sample: The effects of mood and affect on imagery vividness

We studied the number, valence, and vividness of intrusive and non‐intrusive memories in two groups (N = 20) of pre‐screened non‐depressed mood and depressed mood undergraduate participants. They were asked to generate as many intrusive memories (IMs) as possible from the prior 2 weeks, together with pleasant and unpleasant non‐intrusive memories from the same period. They subsequently formed images of these memories and rated them on measures of vividness, valence, arousal, and overall affect, while having their heart rate, skin conductance, and electromyogram monitored. IMs were common, with participants generating a mean of 1.15 pleasant IMs and 1.60 unpleasant IMs, and there was some evidence that they were mood‐congruent. IMs were more vivid than non‐intrusive memories, a difference not due to either valence or arousal. We conclude that IMs are a general feature of human memory rather than just a symptom of certain clinical disorders.     

Organizational Size and Salesforce Evaluation Practices

This study examines the relationship between organizational size and salesforce evaluation practices of two hundred and sixteen industrial goods organizations. Eight propositions derived from the organizational behaviour and economics literature were tested. The results demonstrate that some managerial activities change in a manner which is consistent with organizational theory. Large organizations use a wider range of quantitative criteria, use more formalized methods of evaluation, and make greater use of pre-determined performance standards than small organizations. The results suggest that attempts to determine theories of sales management practice should include organizational size as a candidate explanatory variable.     

Taking the Bull by the Horns: A Family Therapy Case of an East Indian Adolescent Substance Abuser

The cultural clash between traditional East Indian cultural values and US values often leads to parent–child conflicts, which increases East Indian adolescents’ risk for substance abuse. This is demonstrated in theory and through a case presentation of an East Indian adolescent substance abuser who was treated through an approach that coincided with the core principles of multi-dimensional family therapy. Family therapy interventions that coincided with East Indian cultural values were generally effective and resulted in decreased parental substance abuse, decreased family conflict, and improved parenting skills. Family therapy interventions that conflicted with East Indian cultural values were not effective. Further study is needed to ascertain the extent of parental and adolescent substance abuse in East Indian immigrant families and the effectiveness of a multi-dimensional family therapeutic approach to treatment.     

Definition Inclosed: A Reply to Zhong

In ‘Definability and the Structure of Logical Paradoxes’ (Australasian Journal of Philosophy, this issue) Haixia Zhong takes issue with an account of the paradoxes of self-reference to be found in Beyond the Limits of Thought [Priest 1995. The point of this note is to explain why the critique does not succeed. The criterion for distinguishing between the set-theoretic and the semantic paradoxes offered does not get the division right; the semantic paradoxes are not given a uniform solution; no reason is provided as to why the naïve denotation relation is ‘indefinite’ (other than that its definiteness leads to contradiction); and the account of the denotation relation given clearly misses the mark, even by consistent standards.     

Respect for the Dignity of People: What Does This Principle Mean in Practice?

Researchers have found that disrespectful behaviour can have a notable psychological impact on victims and observers thereof. It is not surprising, therefore, that law and all the major psychology codes of ethics acknowledge the principle of respect for the dignity of persons. The practical implications of this principle, however, are not clear. In this article we argue, with reference to the philosophical roots of the principle, that there are rules of manners in all societies that describe how people should demonstrate respect for persons. Generally, the profession cannot require psychologists to adhere to the rules of manners, not even those that demonstrate respect for persons, but it can, and does, prescribe to psychologists how they should act while they practice as psychologists. We proceed to examine the principles and standards of the Australian Psychology Society's Code of Ethics (2007) that require psychologists to demonstrate respect for persons while acting as psychologists.