Healing Rituals for Couples Recovering from Adultery

Recovery from the trauma of adultery is a process that is full of points where the couple can get stuck. We describe an experiential model that utilizes healing rituals. We start with a general exploration of the use of rituals in marriage and family therapy. The key elements of effective rituals are described. We describe stuck points in these relationships including: 1) knowing the details, 2) releasing the anger, 3) showing commitment, 4) rebuilding trust, and 5) rebuilding the relationship. Ritualized interventions are described for each of these stuck points.     

Distinguishing the cognitive and behavioral consequences of attitude importance and certainty: A new approach to testing the common-factor hypothesis

Some published factor analyses have suggested that attitude importance and certainty are distinct psychological constructs, but other factor analytic investigations have suggested they are largely redundant reflections of a more general underlying construct. This latter sort of finding has led investigators to average measures of importance and certainty together into a composite index and then explore its cognitive and behavioral consequences. In this paper, we report three studies gauging the underlying structure of these strength-related attitude attributes by assessing whether they in fact relate in the same ways to information processing and action tendencies. We found that importance and certainty both independently predicted the likelihood that a person attempted to persuade others to adopt his or her attitude. Importance (but not certainty) was associated with the tendency to seek out information that would enable people to use their attitudes in a subsequent judgment and only importance predicted whether or not they turned out to vote in an election to express their attitudes. Certainty (but not importance) was related to the tendency to find more than one political candidate acceptable. And importance and certainty interacted to predict the frequency with which people performed attitude-expressive behaviors. All this suggests that importance and certainty have distinct effects on thinking and behavior and supports the maintenance of conceptual and empirical distinctions between them in social psychological theory building.     

The Effect of Later Life Parental Divorce on Adult‐Child/Older‐Parent Solidarity: A Test of the Buffering Hypothesis1

The present study examined the effect of later life parental divorce on solidarity in the relationship between the adult child and older parent. This examination was achieved by testing the buffering hypothesis. A cross‐sectional quasiexperimental pre‐post treatment design was used (Cook & Campbell, 1979), with retrospective pretests and data from 100 adult‐child/older‐parent dyads. The ANOVA results show that the mother/adult‐child relationship with a higher degree of predivorce solidarity responded to later life parental divorce with less disruption of affectional solidarity and associational solidarity than those with a lower degree of predivorce solidarity. Thus, the current research provides modest evidence (for the mother/adult‐child relationship) to support the buffering hypothesis. We found no evidence of a buffering effect for the father‐child relationship.     

Infinity Machines and Creation Ex Nihilo

In this paper a simple model in particle dynamics of a well-known supertask is constructed (the supertask was introduced by Max Black some years ago). As a consequence, a new and simple result about creation ex nihilo of particles can be proved compatible with classical dynamics. This result cannot be avoided by imposing boundary conditions at spatial infinity, and therefore is really new in the literature. It follows that there is no reason why even a world of rigid spheres should be eternal, as has been erroneously assumed, especially since the time of Newton. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Evidence of complementary afterimages in the pigeon

Key pecking of pigeons was reinforced on a variable-interval schedule when ambient illumination came from a green light, but not when it came from a red, yellow, or white light. The different hues were randomly presented for periods of 30 sec each, with the restriction that white never followed red. After discriminative control was established, the pigeons were tested with the same procedure used during training, except that white sometimes followed red. Significantly more responses were made during white-following-red than during white following either green or yellow. These findings indicate that, in changing from red to white, complementary afterimages can be induced in pigeons for a brief period of time. By providing behavioral evidence for afterimages in the pigeon, this technique may be useful to research in comparative neurophysiology, animal discrimination learning, and theories of color vision.     

Inpatient Therapeutic Assessment With Narcissistic Personality Disorder

Growing evidence supporting the effectiveness of Collaborative/Therapeutic Assessment (C/TA) has led clinicians and researchers to apply C/TA to a variety of clinical populations and treatment settings. This case example presents a C/TA inpatient adaptation illustrated with narcissistic personality disorder. After a brief overview of salient concepts, I provide a detailed account of the clinical interview, test interpretation paired with diagnostic considerations specific to narcissism, planned intervention, and discussion of assessment results. Throughout the case study, I attempt to demonstrate defining features of C/TA, inpatient adaptations, and clinical techniques that encourage meaningful engagement with a “hard to reach” personality.     

Behaviorism and Society

A probable list of causes for the limited acceptance of behaviorism in our society is identified. This is followed by a summary review of the proposed solutions identified in other papers in this special issue of The Behavior Analyst, most of which relate to either better marketing of either the behavior analytic process or the results achieved as a consequence. One paper proposes a more broad conception of behavior analysis. This paper endorses the solutions identified in previous papers and then goes on to propose an even more broad conception of behavior analysis and makes the point that behavior analysis is unlikely to flourish unless behavior analysts understand a good deal more about the cultural and other contextual features of the environments in which they work.     

Exploring the associations shared by mood,pain-related attention and pain outcomes related to sleep disturbance in a chronic pain sample

Objective: Sleep disturbance in chronic pain is common, occurring in two-thirds of patients. There is a complex relationship between chronic pain and sleep; pain can disrupt sleep and poor sleep can exaggerate pain intensity. This may have an impact on both depressive symptoms and attention to pain. This study aims to evaluate the relationship between chronic pain and sleep, and the role of mood and attention.

Methods: Chronic pain patients, recruited from a secondary care outpatient clinic, completed self-report measures of pain, sleep, depressive symptoms and attention to pain. Hierarchical regression and structural equation modelling were used to explore the relationships between these measures. Participants (n = 221) were aged between 20 and 84 (mean = 52) years.

Results: The majority of participants were found to be ‘poor sleepers’ (86%) with increased pain severity, depressive symptoms and attention to pain. Both analytical approaches indicated that sleep disturbance is indirectly associated with increased pain severity Instead the relationship shared by sleep disturbance and pain severity was further associated with depressive symptoms and attention to pain.

Conclusions: Our results indicate that sleep disturbance may contribute to clinical pain severity indirectly though changes in mood and attention. Prospective studies exploring lagged associations between these constructs could have critical information relevant to the treatment of chronic pain.