Real relationship,working alliance,transference/countertransference and outcome in time-limited counseling and psychotherapy

Six client/therapist dyads (three therapists each working with two clients) were studied to determine how the real relationship unfolds over the course of time-limited treatment and how this unfolding relates to the development of the client/therapist working alliance, client transference, and therapist countertransference. We also examined how these indices of the relationship fluctuate as a function of treatment outcome. Results indicate that in general for all six dyads, therapists’ and clients’ ratings of the real relationship and working alliance were strong throughout treatment. However, patterns of real relationship and working alliance over the course of treatment varied between dyads categorized as more vs. less successful. Therapists’ countertransference was low, as was client transference, but differences in ratings were evident when the dyads were classified by outcome.     

Revisiting the factor structure of the 12-item Disgust Propensity and Sensitivity Scale – Revised: Evidence for a third component

The 12-item Disgust Propensity and Sensitivity Scale – Revised (DPSS-12) is widely used to assess the tendency for an individual to respond with disgust (i.e., disgust propensity) and how bothered an individual is by the experience of disgust (i.e., disgust sensitivity). However, heterogeneous items included in the DPSS-12 call into question the adequacy of its two-factor structure. The current study examined the factor structure of the DPSS-12 using two large, nonclinical student samples. Exploratory factor analyses revealed three lower order factors: (1) disgust propensity, (2) disgust sensitivity, and (3) self-focused/ruminative disgust. Confirmatory factor analyses supported the three-factor solution and demonstrated that the model fit better than a unidimensional or two-factor model. Further, a modified two-factor model that excluded the third factor provided a better fit than the original two-factor model. Additionally, the third domain explained a significant portion of the total variance, and evidenced a distinctive pattern of association with relevant constructs including obsessional symptoms. These data suggest the need to refine our knowledge about the latent structure of disgust reflected by this measure.     

Contextual Variation in Automatic Evaluative Bias to Racially-Ambiguous Faces

Three studies examined the implicit evaluative associations activated by racially-ambiguous Black-White faces. In the context of both Black and White faces, Study 1 revealed a graded pattern of bias against racially-ambiguous faces that was weaker than the bias to Black faces but stronger than that to White faces. Study 2 showed that significant bias was present when racially-ambiguous faces appeared in the context of only White faces, but not in the context of only Black faces. Study 3 demonstrated that context produces perceptual contrast effects on racial-prototypicality judgments. Racially-ambiguous faces were perceived as more prototypically Black in a White-only than mixed-race context, and less prototypically Black in a Black-only context. Conversely, they were seen as more prototypically White in a Black-only than mixed context, and less prototypically White in a White-only context. The studies suggest that both race-related featural properties within a face (i.e., racial ambiguity) and external contextual factors affect automatic evaluative associations.     

Speaking rate from proximal and distal contexts is used during word segmentation

A series of eye-tracking and categorization experiments investigated the use of speaking-rate information in the segmentation of Dutch ambiguous-word sequences. Juncture phonemes with ambiguous durations (e.g., [s] in 'eens (s)peer,' "once (s)pear," [t] in 'nooit (t)rap,' "never staircase/quick") were perceived as longer and hence more often as word-initial when following a fast than a slow context sentence. Listeners used speaking-rate information as soon as it became available. Rate information from a context proximal to the juncture phoneme and from a more distal context was used during on-line word recognition, as reflected in listeners' eye movements. Stronger effects of distal context, however, were observed in the categorization task, which measures the off-line results of the word-recognition process. In categorization, the amount of rate context had the greatest influence on the use of rate information, but in eye tracking, the rate information's proximal location was the most important. These findings constrain accounts of how speaking rate modulates the interpretation of durational cues during word recognition by suggesting that rate estimates are used to evaluate upcoming phonetic information continuously during prelexical speech processing.     

Readers' reliance on source credibility in the service of comprehension

The current project examined the impact of knowledge about the credibility of sources on readers' processing of texts. Participants read texts in which information about characters was provided by either a credible or a noncredible source; this information suggested that the character potentially possessed a particular trait. A subsequent text episode offered the opportunity for participants to apply any inferred trait to their understanding of unfolding story events. In Experiment 1, participants' moment-by-moment reading times indicated strong expectations for characters to behave in trait-consistent ways, with little effect of credibility on those expectations. Experiments 2 and 3 provided participants with additional encouragement to attend to credibility during reading, but these experiments also revealed little influence of credibility. In Experiment 4, in addition to being given added encouragement, participants were explicitly asked to evaluate the likelihood of future text events; under these conditions, expectations for story outcomes were influenced by the credibility of information sources. This influence was mediated by the degree to which participants self-reported relying on credibility during the task. These findings have implications for contemporary accounts of text comprehension, persuasion, and individual differences in credibility assessment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).     

Racial/ethnic disparities in therapist effectiveness: a conceptualization and initial study of cultural competence

As a result of mental health disparities between White and racial/ethnic minority clients, researchers have argued that some therapists may be generally competent to provide effective services but lack cultural competence. This distinction assumes that client racial/ethnic background is a source of variability in therapist effectiveness. However, there have been no direct tests of the therapist as a source of health disparities. We provided an initial test of the distinction between general and cultural competence by examining client racial/ethnic background as a source of variability in therapist effectiveness. We analyzed cannabis use outcomes from a psychotherapy trial (N = 582) for adolescent cannabis abuse and dependence using Bayesian multilevel models for count outcomes. We first tested whether therapists differed in their effectiveness and then tested whether disparities in treatment outcomes varied across therapist caseloads. Results suggested that therapists differed in their effectiveness in general and that effectiveness varied according to client racial/ethnic background. Therapist effectiveness may depend partially on client racial/ethnic minority background, providing evidence that it is valid to distinguish between general and cultural competence.     

Mutual exclusivity in autism spectrum disorders: testing the pragmatic hypothesis

While there is ample evidence that children treat words as mutually exclusive, the cognitive basis of this bias is widely debated. We focus on the distinction between pragmatic and lexical constraints accounts. High-functioning children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) offer a unique perspective on this debate, as they acquire substantial vocabularies despite impoverished social-pragmatic skills. We tested children and adolescents with ASD in a paradigm examining mutual exclusivity for words and facts. Words were interpreted contrastively more often than facts. Word performance was associated with vocabulary size; fact performance was associated with social-communication skills. Thus mutual exclusivity does not appear to be driven by pragmatics, suggesting that it is either a lexical constraint or a reflection of domain-general learning processes.     

Gross gods and icky atheism: Disgust responses to rejected religious beliefs

Disgust is an emotional response that helps to maintain and protect physical and spiritual purity by signaling contamination and motivating the restoration of personal cleanliness. In the present research we predicted that disgust may be elicited by contact with outgroup religious beliefs, as these beliefs pose a threat to spiritual purity. Two experiments tested this prediction using a repeated taste-test paradigm in which participants tasted and rated a drink before and after copying a passage from an outgroup religion. In Experiment 1, Christian participants showed increased disgust after writing a passage from the Qur'an or Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, but not a control text. Experiment 2 replicated this effect, and also showed that contact with an ingroup religious belief (Christians copying from the Bible) did not elicit disgust. Moreover, Experiment 2 showed that disgust to rejected beliefs was eliminated when participants were allowed to wash their hands after copying the passage, symbolically restoring spiritual cleanliness. Together, these results provide evidence that contact with rejected religious beliefs elicits disgust by symbolically violating spiritual purity. Implications for intergroup relations between religious groups is discussed, and the role of disgust in the protection of beliefs that hold moral value.     

Individual working memory capacity is uniquely correlated with feature-based attention when combined with spatial attention

A growing literature suggests that working memory and attention are closely related constructs. Both involve the selection of task-relevant information, and both are characterized by capacity limits. Furthermore, studies using a variety of methodological approaches have demonstrated convergent working memory and attention-related processing at the individual, neural and behavioral level. Given the varieties of both constructs, the specific kinds of attention and WM must be considered. We find that individuals' working memory capacity (WMC) uniquely interacts with feature-based attention when combined with spatial attention in a cuing paradigm (Posner, 1980). Our findings suggest a positive correlation between WM and feature-based attention only within the spotlight of spatial attention. This finding lends support to the controlled attention view of working memory by demonstrating that integrated feature-based expectancies are uniquely correlated with individual performance on a working memory task.