Media reviews

Abstract

To Have and to Hold: A Film about Men Who Batter Women, by Mark Lipman. New Day Films, Franklin Lakes, NJ, 1982. 16mm color film: $350.00 purchase price, $35.00 rental. 3/4″ videocassette: $300.00, purchase only.     

Continuing education and training

Abstract

Great attention has traditionally been paid to the problems of engagement in family therapy, and to initial moves by the therapist to establish a contract and clearly define the working relationship and goals. Additionally, the early tasks of assessing the areas of family difficulty and of grasping the family dynamics are usually given prominent attention. The course of therapy during that “middle phase” has too often been neglected; yet, it can be one of turbulence, of confusion, and of abrupt discontinuations, or circular redundancies. In the conference reported here, Dr. Carlos Sluzki gives a broad view of that hazardous terrain, and with theoretical and clinical clarity shares the long experience of a noted theoretician and teacher with others who also travel on that therapeutic journey.

The conference chairpersons, George J. Meyer and Robert Scherb have also provided us with succinct and interesting summaries of the seven workshops which followed Dr. Sluzki's presentation.     

Self-Blame Among Sexual Assault Victims Prospectively Predicts Revictimization: A Perceived Sociolegal Context Model of Risk

This investigation focused on relationships among sexual assault, self-blame, and sexual revictimization. Among a female undergraduate sample of adolescent sexual assault victims, those endorsing greater self-blame following sexual assault were at increased risk for sexual revictimization during a 4.2-month follow-up period. Moreover, to the extent that sexual assault victims perceived nonconsensual sex is permitted by law, they were more likely to blame themselves for their own assaults. Discussion focuses on situating victim-based risk factors within sociocultural context.     

Religious Zeal and the Uncertain Self

In two studies, personal uncertainty threats caused compensatory religious zeal. In Study 1 an academic uncertainty manipulation heightened conviction for religious beliefs and support for religious warfare. In Study 2 a relationship uncertainty manipulation caused non-Muslim's to derogate Islam. Together, these findings demonstrate that two aspects of religious zeal—conviction for one's own beliefs and derogation of others'—are caused by personal uncertainty.     

Does length or neighborhood size cause the word length effect?

Jalbert, Neath, Bireta, and Surprenant (2011) suggested that past demonstrations of the word length effect, the finding that words with fewer syllables are recalled better than words with more syllables, included a confound: The short words had more orthographic neighbors than the long words. The experiments reported here test two predictions that would follow if neighborhood size is a more important factor than word length. In Experiment 1, we found that concurrent articulation removed the effect of neighborhood size, just as it removes the effect of word length. Experiment 2 demonstrated that this pattern is also found with nonwords. For Experiment 3, we factorially manipulated length and neighborhood size, and found only effects of the latter. These results are problematic for any theory of memory that includes decay offset by rehearsal, but they are consistent with accounts that include a redintegrative stage that is susceptible to disruption by noise. The results also confirm the importance of lexical and linguistic factors on memory tasks thought to tap short-term memory.     

Facial reactions reveal that slim is good but fat is not bad: Implicit and explicit measures of body‐size bias

Facial electromyography (EMG) was used to gauge emotional responding towards images of slim and overweight individuals, and findings were compared with data from a series of alternative measures including two implicit attitudinal procedures, the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) and the Implicit Association Test (IAT), and explicit measures of anti‐fat prejudice and discriminatory behavior. Images of slim individuals elicited EMG responses consistent with more positive affect. Data from both the IRAP and IAT indicated higher levels of bias than were revealed on the explicit measures, and the IRAP also corroborated the EMG pattern by indicating responses consistent with pro‐slim rather than anti‐fat bias. The IRAP was moderately correlated with both EMG and the IAT and was the only measure to predict behavioral intentions. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Marital status and reproduction: Associations with childhood intelligence and adult social class in the Aberdeen children of the 1950s study

Childhood intelligence (age 11) and occupational social status at midlife (age 46 to 51) was associated with marital status and reproduction in a sample from the Aberdeen Children of the 1950s cohort study (N = 9614).Male and female divorcees had lower childhood intelligence test scores than their married counterparts, but no meaningful difference was found between ever- and never-married individuals. Lower occupational social status increased the odds of being never-married, divorced, separated or widowed compared to being married by 53% to 26% in men (N = 2716) but not in women (N = 2920). Higher intelligence scores were associated with being married rather than divorced at midlife with odds ratios (OR) of 0.86 (Confidence Interval of 95% of 0.76 to 0.99) in men, and 0.87 (0.77 to 0.98) in women.In men, lower intelligence predicted having offspring (0.69; 0.59 to 0.81), while in women, higher occupational status was associated with lower odds of having children (0.66; 0.55 to 0.76). An interaction term showed that high intelligence women remained childless in the top occupational classes but, in the lower social groups, mothers were more intelligent than their childless peers. Intelligence or occupational status were not associated with the number of offspring in both sexes.     

When does length cause the word length effect?

The word length effect, the finding that lists of short words are better recalled than lists of long words, has been termed one of the benchmark findings that any theory of immediate memory must account for. Indeed, the effect led directly to the development of working memory and the phonological loop, and it is viewed as the best remaining evidence for time-based decay. However, previous studies investigating this effect have confounded length with orthographic neighborhood size. In the present study, Experiments 1A and 1B revealed typical effects of length when short and long words were equated on all relevant dimensions previously identified in the literature except for neighborhood size. In Experiment 2, consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words with a large orthographic neighborhood were better recalled than were CVC words with a small orthographic neighborhood. In Experiments 3 and 4, using two different sets of stimuli, we showed that when short (1-syllable) and long (3-syllable) items were equated for neighborhood size, the word length effect disappeared. Experiment 5 replicated this with spoken recall. We suggest that the word length effect may be better explained by the differences in linguistic and lexical properties of short and long words rather than by length per se. These results add to the growing literature showing problems for theories of memory that include decay offset by rehearsal as a central feature.     

Autography as auto-therapy: psychic pain and the graphic memoir

Over the last three decades, the graphic novel has developed both in sophistication and cultural importance, now being widely accepted as a unique form of literature (Versaci 2007). Autobiography has proved to be a successful genre within comics (the word is used in the plural to denote both the medium and the philosophy of the graphic form) and within this area a sub-genre, the memoir of the artist's own disease or suffering, sometimes known as the graphic pathology, has arisen (Green and Myers 2010). Storytelling and healing have been linked since ancient times, and the disclosure of ones story forms part of the psychotherapeutic treatment of trauma (Herman 1997). This paper will examine, in both graphic and textual form, whether, among the myriad reasons that one might embark upon the labour intensive work of making a graphic memoir, some artists might be seeking some form of healing or catharsis through their work.