Unglücklich machende Familienideale

Zusammenfassung Der Artikel konstrastiert familiäre Lebensrealitäten und familiäre Idealvorstellungen miteinander. Für Patienten, bei denen beide weit auseinander klaffen, werden Anregungen für die Dekonstruktion selbstquälerischer Familienideale in der Psychotherapie entwickelt. Als potenziell unglücklich machend werden Familienideale beschrieben, nach denen Kinder (nur) eine Familie und Familien (nur) ein Heim brauchen; dass Familien gemeinsam verbrachte Zeit, Söhne ihre Väter und überhaupt Kinder heterosexuelle Eltern bräuchten; dass Eltern einander lieben und ihre Kinder bei sich behalten sollten; dass Kinder sich von ihren Eltern ablösen sollten. Als psychotherapeutisch nützlich werden aus Familiensoziologie und systemischer Psychotherapie die Ideen der Wahlverwandtschaft, der konsensentlasteten Diskurse und der systemischen Selbstbeobachtung empfohlen, ferner als therapeutische Techniken die zirkulären Fragen, speziell Verschlimmerungsfragen und die positive Umdeutung. Die Konstruktion neuer Rituale und die Nutzung von Netzwerkressourcen stehen am Ende der Untersuchung.Überarbeitete Fassung des Eröffnungsvortrags der Lübecker Psychotherapiewoche, 17.10.1999.     

DRG-Vergütung und Kosten stationärer integrierter psychosomatischer Behandlung

Ohne ZusammenfassungDie Autoren M. Rose und R. Lohmann zeichnen für den Beitrag als gleichberechtigte Erstautoren.     

The force of symmetry revisited: symmetry-to-noise ratios regulate (a)symmetry effects

Freyd and Tversky's [Am. J. Psychol. 97 (1984) 109] data suggested that human observers tend to overestimate relatively high levels of symmetry (symmetry effect), and tend to underestimate relatively low levels of symmetry (asymmetry effect). However, on the basis of their holographic approach to visual regularity, van der Helm and Leeuwenberg [Psychol. Rev. 103(3) (1996) 429] predicted that, at any level of symmetry, both symmetry and asymmetry effects may occur as a consequence of correct estimates of symmetry-to-noise ratios. This prediction was tested in two experiments, with tasks and stimuli similar to those in Freyd and Tversky's study. First, subjects had to judge whether a noisy symmetry is more similar to a slightly more symmetrical variant or to a slightly less symmetrical variant. Second, for every pair of stimuli in such a triadic comparison, subjects had to judge which stimulus is the more symmetrical one. The results from both experiments show that the occurrence of (a)symmetry effects indeed depends on symmetry-to-noise ratios.     

A six-factor structure of personality-descriptive adjectives: solutions from psycholexical studies in seven languages

Standard psycholexical studies of personality structure have produced a similar 6-factor solution in 7 languages (Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Polish). The authors report the content of these personality dimensions and interpret them as follows: (a) a variant of Extraversion, defined by sociability and liveliness (though not by bravery and toughness); (b) a variant of Agreeableness, defined by gentleness, patience, and agreeableness (but also including anger and ill temper at its negative pole); (c) Conscientiousness (emphasizing organization and discipline rather than moral conscience); (d) Emotionality (containing anxiety, vulnerability, sentimentality, lack of bravery, and lack of toughness, but not anger or ill temper); (e) Honesty-Humility; (f) Intellect/Imagination/Unconventionality. A potential reorganization of the Big Five factor structure is discussed.     

On quasivarieties and varieties as categories

Finitary quasivarieties are characterized categorically by the existence of colimits and of an abstractly finite, regularly projective regular generator G. Analogously, infinitary quasivarieties are characterized: one drops the assumption that G be abstractly finite. For (finitary) varieties the characterization is similar: the regular generator is assumed to be exactly projective, i.e., hom(G, –) is an exact functor. These results sharpen the classical characterization theorems of Lawvere, Isbell and other authors.Supported by the Czech Grant Agency (Project 201/02/0148).Special issue of Studia Logica: Algebraic Theory of Quasivarieties Presented by M. E. Adams, K. V. Adaricheva, W. Dziobiak, and A. V. Kravchenko     

The effect of context on the processing of type-shifting verbs

Recent research in lexical semantics has suggested that verbs such as begin and enjoy semantically select for a complement that denotes an activity or an event. When no such activity or event is specified in the form of a progressive or infinitival complement, as in John began (to read/reading) the book, the verb is said to "coerce" the NP direct object to shift its role to encompass the activity that begin requires as complement (e.g., writing, reading). Empirical support for this view has been provided by McElree, Traxler, Pickering, Seely, & Jackendoff (2001). In the present study, however, in two self-paced reading experiments, type-shifting effects (taken to be longer reading times engendered by the computation of the coercion process) were not obtained with sentences in isolation (Experiment 1) or with sentences embedded in contexts that specified the nature of the activity performed over the complement NP (Experiment 2). It is argued that type-shifting verbs are similar to non-preferred verbs for given contexts and that type-shifting operations are pragmatic inferences computed over underspecified semantic representations.     

On the representation of Portuguese gender-inflected words in the mental lexicon

This study aims at verifying whether Portuguese gender-inflected nouns and adjectives are represented as full forms as suggested by Spanish data (Dominguez, Cuetos, & Segui, 1999). A series of lexical decision experiments is reported. Grammatical gender, frequency dominance, and grammatical category are manipulated and cumulative frequency is controlled. The results do not provide support for a full form representation of gender-inflected words. They suggest that grammatical category, or the nature of the inflectional process involved (lexical or syntactic), affects the way words are represented and accessed. Shorter recognition latencies were obtained for nouns drawn from Feminine dominant gender-inflected pairs than from Masculine dominant pairs whereas a tendency in the opposite direction was observed in adjectives. The effect of frequency dominance appears, nevertheless, to be restricted to feminine nouns. The data are compatible with the view that masculine nouns and adjectives are represented as gender-unmarked forms. These results are discussed in relation to current dual-access models of word recognition and to the notion of "interpretability" of lexico-syntactic features, as put forward in the Minimalist Program of Generative Linguistics.     

Degree of illiteracy and phonological and metaphonological skills in unschooled adults

Phonological and metaphonological skills are explored in 97 Brazilian illiterate and semiliterate adults. A simple letter- and word-reading task was used to define the degree of illiteracy. Phonemic awareness was strongly dependent on the level of letter and word reading ability. Phonological memory was very low in illiterates and unrelated to letter knowledge. Rhyme identification was relatively preserved in illiterates and semiliterates, and unrelated to letter and word reading level. Phonetic discrimination (minimal pairs) was fairly good and marginally related to reading ability. These results suggest that phonological sensitivity, phonological memory, rhyme identification, and phonemic awareness are distinctive cognitive processes, and that only phonemic awareness is clearly and strongly dependent on the alphabetical acquisition.     

A goal activation approach to the study of executive function: an application to antisaccade tasks

We argue that a general control process, responsible for the activation and maintenance of task goals, is central to the concept of executive function. Failures of this process can become manifest as goal neglect: disregard of a task requirement even though it has been understood (Duncan, 1995). We discuss the results of several published and new experiments using various versions of the antisaccade task in order to investigate the circumstances under which goal neglect is likely to occur. Potentially conflicting results in the literature on adaptive control of saccadic eye movements are argued to be attributable to the extent to which different task versions elicit goal neglect. The results suggest an increased susceptibility to goal neglect of high-functioning older adults (Experiment 1) and of first-episode schizophrenia patients (Experiment 2), but not of patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (Experiment 3). However, the degree to which such differences in susceptibility become manifest in task performance, is shown to be strongly influenced by manipulations of the relative saliency of task requirements. Theoretical and methodological implications for the study of executive function are discussed.     

Visual discrimination of normal and drug induced behavior in quails (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Coturnix coturnix japonica</Emphasis>)

The ability to discriminate the physical states of others could be an adaptive behavior, especially for social animals. For example, the ability to discriminate illness behavior would be helpful for avoiding spoiled foods. We report on an experiment with Japanese quails testing whether these birds can discriminate the physical states of conspecifics. The quails were trained to discriminate between moving video images of quails injected with psychoactive drugs and those in a normal (not injected) condition. Methamphetamine (stimulant) or ketamine (anesthetic) were used to produce drug-induced behaviors in conspecifics. The former induced hyperactive behavior and the latter hypoactive behavior. The subject quails could learn the discrimination and showed generalization to novel images of the drug-induced behaviors. They did not, however, show discriminative behavior according to the type and dosage of the drugs. Thus, they categorized the behavior not on the basis of degree of activity, but on the basis of abnormality.