REFLECTIONS ON THE FAILURE OF THE LOVERS OF ZION

This article considers the important role of archival photographs in the work of historians, artists and writers of the generation after the Holocaust. Powerful “points of memory” linking past and present, memory and postmemory, individual remembrance and cultural recall, photographs can offer evidence of past crimes and function as haunting specters that enable an affective visceral connection to the past. And yet, photographs may also be limited and flawed historical documents, promising more than they can actually reveal. The article argues that such ambiguous evidence may be a resource for historians seeking to grasp and transmit the past's emotional truth.     

“Too Blessed to be Stressed”: A Rural Faith Community’s Views of African-American Males and Depression

Among African-Americans, the faith community has a long history of providing support to its members. Because African-American men tend to delay and decline traditional depression treatment, the faith community may be an effective source of support. The aim of this study was to determine how a rural African-American faith community describes and perceives experiences of depression among African-American males. A convenience sample of 24 men and women participated in focus groups and interview. Four themes were identified: defining depression, etiology of depression, denial of depression, and effect of masculine roles on depression experience.     

Lie Detection from Multiple Cues: A Meta‐analysis

Despite the importance of judgments of veracity in many settings, research suggests that it is difficult to detect lies. In this meta‐analysis, we assess the detectability of lies from constellations of multiple cues, with a particular focus on whether lie detectability increases as the conditions approach real‐life, forensic settings, as some critics of laboratory research have argued. We synthesized 144 samples, including 9380 liars and truth tellers providing a total of 26,866 messages. We examined the accuracy with which deception could be predicted on the basis of multiple behavioral cues and to what extent lie detectability was moderated by the motivation of the sender, the presence of strong emotion, the content of the lie, the context in which the lie was told, and the demographics of the senders. The findings show that lies can be detected with nearly 70% accuracy. This level of detectability is stable across settings. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Eyewitness testimony: tracing the beliefs of Swedish legal professionals

This paper examines beliefs held by Swedish legal professionals about eyewitness testimony. In a survey including questions about 13 key issues of eyewitness testimony, three groups were investigated: police officers (n = 104), prosecutors (n = 158), and judges (n = 251). The response rate was 74%. Examples of findings are that the beliefs were in line with scientific findings concerning the weapon focus effect, but were not in line for simultaneous vs. sequential lineups. Between-group differences were found for seven items. Judges were much more sceptical than police officers about the reliability and completeness of children's testimonies. The groups seldom agreed about one answer alternative, and they reported not being up to date about scientific research on eyewitness testimony. The results suggest that some important research findings have reached those working on the field. However, they hold many wrongful beliefs about eyewitness testimony, beliefs that might compromise the accuracy of legal decisions.     

Harmful dysfunction and the DSM definition of mental disorder.

Physicians, including psychiatrists, give a lot of thought in their everyday work to answer the question of whether or not a particular patient has a disorder; they rarely give much thought to the broader issue of what constitutes a disorder. Remarkably, and consistent with the harmful dysfunction (HD) analysis, there is a broad consensus in both the general public and the medical and health professions as to what conditions are disorders--even though there is no consensus definition of disorder. The HD analysis is a substantial advance over previous attempts to define disorder in specifying the nature of what is not working in the individual (the dysfunction). The adoption of the HD analysis in DSM-V (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th ed.) would probably have little if any effect on the list of categories of mental disorders. Its main value would be in helping make revisions in the diagnostic criteria more valid as true indicators of disorder.     

Monotic and dichotic presentation of phonemic elements in a backward recognition-masking paradigm

Summary Auditory processing was examined in eight normal subjects using monotic and dichotic presentations of phonemic elements in an auditory backward recognition-masking paradigm. Experimental trials consisted of the presentation of one of three equiprobable consonant-vowel targets (/ba/,/da/,/ga/) followed by a vowel masker (/a/), separated by a variable silent interstimulus interval (ISI). For the dichotic condition, the mean percentage of correct recognition scores for target identification improved systematically with increases in ISIs, reaching an asymptote followed by an apparent plateau. In contrast, mean performance accuracy for the monotic condition revealed a U-shaped function for signal pairs having short temporal offsets. Although the dichotic presentations resulted in overall lower mean recognition scores, comparability between listening conditions was observed at prolonged ISIs. Observed differences in performance between the monotic and dichotic conditions at short-duration ISIs suggested the existence of different processing mechanisms, correlated with integration and interruption of phonemic pairs, for target-mask interactions occurring in close temporal succession.     

The MCMI and DSM-III: a brief rejoinder to Million (1985)

Millon (1985) presented eight criticisms of the article by Widiger, Williams, Spitzer, and Frances (1985) on the MCMI as a measure of DSM-III. This article is a brief rejoinder. The major point we wish to make is that one should be cautious in interpreting the MCMI as a measure of DSM-III disorders because there has not yet been any research published on the relationship between the MCMI and DSM-III. We believe this position has not been refuted by Millon's critique.     

An outsider-insider's views about revising the DSMs

After having a leadership role in the development of the 3rd edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III; American Psychiatric Association, 1980) and its revision (DSM-III-R; American Psychiatric Association, 1987), I now comment as an outsider-insider on the development of DSM-IV. Many features of the DSM-IV process, such as systematic literature reviews and focused field trials, represent significant advances that will increase the role of empirical findings in the decision-making process in this latest edition of the DSM. However, it is likely that when final decisions are made about DSM-IV, the decisions will still be based primarily on expert consensus, rather than on data, as was the case with DSM-III and DSM-III-R.     

Genetic Counseling for Confined Placental Mosaicism: A Case Report

New technologies can lead to unforeseen discoveries which in turn can lead to diagnostic and counseling dilemmas. A case which involved confined placental mosaicism for trisomy 16 is presented to illustrate such a situation. While interpreting data and explaining a newly described phenomenon created uncertainties for the genetic counseling team, the patient and her husband were primarily dealing with grief surrounding the loss of a wanted pregnancy. It is important to recognize that the counseling issues may be different for the professionals and the families. Genetic counselors must be cognizant of their own reactions and those of their clients and be prepared to use all of their counseling skills to address these varying needs.