Anagram solving: Does effort have an effect?

The purpose of these studies was to explore the role of effort in remembering anagrams and their solutions. In Experiment 1, we compared the effects on memory of copying words, typing them as solutions for easy anagrams, or typing them as solutions for difficult anagrams. Solving anagrams involved more effort than did simply typing words, as indexed by response time. However, this effort facilitated recall for solutions to easy anagrams but not for solutions to difficult anagrams. In Experiment 2, we compared memory for anagrams and their solutions using a frequency-judgment task. Memory for solutions was better than memory for anagrams, and this difference was not affected by anagram difficulty. The results of these studies have implications for our understanding of the role of effort in remembering.     

Precipitating crises in families: patterns which connect

This paper proposes that a stage in treatment common in all successful approaches to therapy is the precipitating of some degree of crisis, and that failure to provoke an element of crisis in terms of behaviour or beliefs in the family represents a 'crisis' for the therapist. Before considering the different approaches of three major schools of family therapy, it is first suggested that, at a more abstract level, 'the patterns which connect' (Bateson, 1979) the different schools provide a unifying framework to understand one of the aims of therapy. This is the intention to challenge established patterns to precipitate crisis. Three models of Family Therapy, Structural, Strategic, and Milan/Systemic, are outlined and their manner of precipitating crises described.     

On people’s understanding of the diagnostic implications of probabilistic data

Two lines of prior research into the conditions under which people seek information are examined in light of two statistical definitions of diagnosticity. Five experiments are reported. In two, subjects selected information in order to test a hypothesis. In the remaining three, they selected information in order to convince someone else of the truth of a known hypothesis. A total of 567 university students served as subjects. The two primary conclusions were as follows: (1) When the task is highly structured by the environment, subjects select information diagnostically, and (2) when the task is less structured, so that subjects must seek relevant information not manifest, they select information pseudodiagnostically. Possible relations to other laboratory inference tasks and to clinical judgment are discussed.     

Case study of a Thai conduction aphasic

A case study of a 55-year-old nonfamilial left-handed monolingual Thai patient with clinical and pathoanatomic evidence of major infarction in the left temporoparietal region is presented. He was studied at 9 years poststroke with a Thai adaptation of the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Exam and supplementary tests. His language characteristics included fluent spontaneous speech, near-normal auditory language comprehension, and poor repetition, leading to a diagnosis of conduction aphasia. In regard to this aphasic syndrome, issues concerning classification, neuroanatomic correlates, and underlying neuropsychological mechanisms are addressed. The nature of his grammatical disturbance is examined critically in light of the notion of “information load.”     

'Can I (let you let me) leave?’ Therapy with the adolescent and his family

A number of dimensions are reviewed in relation to adolescence. The focus is primarily on adolescence in the context of the family, but it is acknowledged that this is an arbitrary and restricted view of wider social and cultural contexts. It is briefly suggested why this area of work may have been under-represented in professional work in the past. An outline is given of varying ways of defining adolescence, and the impact of this developmental stage in the family life cycle for the adolescent and his family. Within this context, choices must be made over approaches to treatment, and a structural hierarchical framework is proposed. Some of these dilemmas are discussed in relation to therapy with a family where the presenting problem was drug addiction in the younger son. This case was chosen for the many difficulties it raised for the therapist and the other professionals directly involved. The subsequent discussion looks at the implications of some of the mistakes made in therapeutic strategy.