Commentary on reviews of “outcome” studies of family and marital psychotherapy

Reviews of the outcome literature in family and marital therapy are critically evaluated. The literature is equivocal in regard to the effectiveness of family therapy, particularly in comparison to alternative forms of treatment, so that statements to the effect that family therapy has demonstrated its general efficacy would not appear to be justified. Problems are identified which require solution before the efficacy of family therapy can be demonstrated.Paper presented at the 45th annual conference of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, Chicago, Illinois, October 31, 1987.     

Equal Opportunity Programs: A Case for Counseling

The Civil Rights Act of 1964, under Title VI, requires that institutions of higher education submit enrollment figures according to ethnic breakdown for federal monies to be allocated. Such requirements are indicative of efforts to diversify student populations. The Higher Education Act of 1965 also incorporates a number of related programs—Supplemental Opportunity Grants, College Work Study, Talent Search, Upward-Bound—which are designed to provide direct or indirect assistance to disadvantaged students. (Gordon, 1975)     

Bilingualism and the perception of professional concepts

A selected set of professional concepts was subjected to analysis through two separate multidimensional scaling techniques, the INDSCAL and TORSCA models, to evaluate the intergroup perceptual differences of four experimental groups, made up of unilingual French, unilingual English and bilingual students. The linguistic relativism thesis provided the research hypotheses on the relationship between language access and usage and concept perception. The multidimensional scaling techniques were applied to the matrix of subjects' similarity judgments on pairs of concepts, thus enabling the identification of three dimensions. The dimensions were labelled as conjunctive, relational and disjunctive, and were assumed to be related to the criteria employed by the subjects in their similarity rankings. An analysis of variance of the individual saliences on each dimension provided evidence of linguistic relativism for both the relational and disjunctive dimensions. These findings support the contention that unilingual speakers of separate languages differ from each other and from bilingual speakers in their perception of professional concepts.     

The effects of spatial,temporal, and control variables on the free-recall serial position curve of retardates and equal-MA normals

Memory & Cognition - In Experiment I seven pictures were sequentially illuminated at a 3-see rate through seven translucent windows. A different window provided the starting point for each of...     

Aggression and heat: the influence of ambient temperature, negative affect, and a cooling drink on physical aggression.

Two experiments were conducted to examine the influence of ambient temperature upon physical aggression. In the first, male subjects received either a positive or negative evaluation from a confederate and were then provided with an opportunity to agress against this person by means of electric shock. On the basis of previous research, it was predicted that high ambient temperatures (92-95 degrees F) would facilitate aggression by those receiving positive evaluations but actually inhibit such behavior by those receiving negative assessments. Results confirmed both of these predictions and also indicated that more moderate but still uncomfortably warm temperatures (82-85 degrees F) produced similar effects. The second experiment employed procedures similar to the first and examined the suggestion that administration of a cooling drink would reduce the impact of high ambient temperatures upon overt aggression. This prediction, too, was confirmed. The possible mediating role of negative affect with respect to the influence of ambient temperature and other environmental factors upon aggression was discussed.     

On the relation between visual surround and motion aftereffect velocity

Two experiments examined the effect of changes in the visual surround upon the velocity of motion aftereffects. Experiment I showed that introduction or reintroduction of a patterned surround midway through the test period was sufficient to produce an increase in apparent velocity. However, a greater increase was observed when a patterned surround instead of a dark homogeneous surround had been used during the induction period. Experiment II demonstrated that luminance change was also sufficient to produce an increase in apparent velocity, although the extent of the increase was not as great as that produced through the use of the patterned surround in Experiment I. These results indicate that a change in stimulus surround is sufficient to produce an increase in the velocity of a motion aftereffect and that the extent of the increase is dependent upon the characteristics of both the induction and test surrounds.     

Behavioral assessment of eating patterns and blood glucose in diabetes using the Self-Monitoring Analysis System

The Self-Monitoring Analysis System is a set of microcomputer programs that were developed to remove clinical judgment from the task of behavioral assessment using self-monitoring diaries. The program is written in Turbo Pascal and runs on MS-DOS (16-bit) or CP/M (8-bit) microcomputer systems. The program allows the user to custom design data bases with hundreds of binary, categorical, integral, and real variables. Full-screen data-entry forms can be custom designed, and random access files allow for flexible data entry and editing. The program makes extensive utilization of Pascal’s very flexible data structure capabilities. Dynamic allocation of memory allows the program to maximize its use of available RAM. Data from a patient with diabetes is presented as a case study illustrating the system’s utility.     

Trivial persuasion in the courtroom: the power of (a few) minor details

Investigated the influence of trivial testimonial detail on judgments of 424 undergraduates who served as mock jurors. Ss read a summary of a court case involving robbery and murder. In Experiment 1, detailed testimony influenced judgments of guilt, even when the detail was unrelated to the culprit. In Experiment 2, detailed testimony was especially powerful when an opposing witness testified that she could not remember the trivial details. Subsequent analyses suggest that the impact of detailed testimony on guilt judgments is mediated by inferences about the eyewitnesses. When eyewitnesses provided more detail, they were generally judged to be more credible, to have a better memory for the culprit's face and for details, and to have paid more attention to the culprit.