Analog scale,magnitude estimation,and person trade‐off as measures of health utility: biases and their correction

Subjects judged the disutility of health conditions (e.g. blindness) using one of them (e.g. blindness+deafness) as a standard, using three elicitation methods: analog scale (AS, how bad is blindness compared to blindness+deafness?); magnitude estimation (ME, blindness+deafness is how many times as bad as blindness?); and person trade‐off (PTO, how many people cured of blindness is as good as 10 people cured of blindness+deafness?). ME disutilities of the less bad condition were smallest, and AS was highest. Interleaving PTO with ME made PTO more like ME. AS disutilities were inconsistent with direct judgments of differences between pairs of conditions. ME and PTO judgments were internally inconsistent: e.g. the disutility of one‐eye‐blindness relative to blindness+deafness was larger than predicted from comparison of each to blindness. Consistency training reduced inconsistency, increased agreement between AS and PTO, and transferred from one method to the other. The results support the use of consistency checks in utility elicitation. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Emotional state and the detection of change in facial expression of emotion

A new method is presented for examining effects of emotion in the detection of change in facial expression of emotion. The method was used in one experiment, reported here. Participants who were induced to feel happiness, sadness, or neutral emotion, saw computerized 100‐frame movies in which the first frame always showed a face expressing a specific emotion (e.g. happiness). The facial expression gradually became neutral over the course of the movie. Participants played the movie, changing the facial expression, and indicated the frame at which the initial expression was no longer present on the face. Emotion congruent expressions were perceived to persist longer than were emotion incongruent expressions. The findings are consistent with previous findings documenting enhanced perceptual processing of emotion congruent information. The value of the current technique, and the types of everyday situations that it might model are discussed. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Issues in the treatment of depressed children

Basic research into the cognitive, behavioral, familial, and physiological disturbances associated with depressive disorders during childhood is reviewed. Implications for the development of a treatment program are discussed and a comprehensive treatment model is proposed. The proposed model includes intervention strategies for the child, parents, family, and school. The child component consists of intervention strategies for the affective, cognitive, behavioral, and physiological disturbances that are evident from the existing research. The parent training component is designed to address disturbances in parenting due to cognitive disturbances and skills deficits. The family therapy component emphasizes changing interaction patterns that communicate schema-consistent maladaptive interactions. A school consultation component is proposed in which school personnel support the skills training through prompting use of the skills and reinforcement of the use of the coping skills.     

Emotion Regulation Strategies in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Panic Disorder

Emotion regulation (ER) has been incorporated into many models of psychopathology, but it has not been examined directly in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for panic disorder with agoraphobia (PD/A). In this study, a preliminary model of ER in CBT for PD/A is proposed based on existing theories, and several propositions of the model are tested. We hypothesized that increases in cognitive reappraisal would precede decreases in biased cognitions, decreases in expressive suppression would follow decreases in biased cognitions, and a reduction in symptom severity would follow decreases in expressive suppression. Twenty-nine patients who received CBT for PD/A completed weekly self-report measures of symptom severity, anxiety sensitivity, reappraisal and expressive suppression. In addition, patients were compared to a matched normal sample. Cross-lagged analyses partially supported the hypotheses. Reappraisal did not change until late stages of therapy and was generally not associated with treatment outcome. Suppression decreased significantly and exhibited a reciprocal relationship with biased cognitions. Symptom reduction followed decreases in suppression as hypothesized. However, patients did not differ in ER from matched controls at either pre- or posttreatment. Results suggest the important distinction between reappraisal and appraisal, and stress the role of session-by-session decreases in suppression as a predictor of symptom reduction.     

Counting experiments

Philosophical Studies - In this paper, I show how one might resist two influential arguments for the Likelihood Principle by appealing to the ontological significance of creative intentions. The...     

Joint know-how

When two agents engage in a joint action, such as rowing together, they exercise joint know-how. But what is the relationship between the joint know-how of the two agents and the know-how each agent possesses individually? I construct an “active mutual enablement” (AME) account of this relationship, according to which joint know-how arises when each agent knows how to predict, monitor, and make failure-averting adjustments in response to the behaviour of the other agent, while actively enabling the other to make such adjustments. I defend the AME account from three objections, and I then use this account as the platform for an examination of the reducibility (or otherwise) of joint know-how to joint propositional knowledge. A summative account of joint propositional knowledge is incompatible with the reduction of joint know-how to joint propositional knowledge, whereas a distributive account is not (although serious difficulties for any such reduction remain). I close by highlighting some open questions the AME account brings into view concerning the evolutionary origin and scaling up of joint know-how.

     

Experiences of Altruism in the Therapeutic Relationship: Perspectives of Counselors‐in‐Training and Their Clients

The purpose of this phenomenological investigation was to explore experiences of altruism in the therapeutic relationship to better understand how counselors‐in‐training (CITs) and their clients mutually perceived the construct in sessions. Findings from interviews with clients (n = 14) included emotional–relational characteristics and cognitive–behavioral aspects of altruism by their counselors. Findings from interviews with CITs (n = 10) included explorations of the role of altruism in counseling, overall experiences of altruism in counseling sessions, and experiences of altruism with specific clients. Implications for practice and research are discussed.     

Metaethics and Mental Time Travel: a Reply to Gerrans and Kennett

Philosophia - In “Neurosentimentalism and Moral Agency” (Mind 2010), Philip Gerrans and Jeanette Kennett argue that prominent versions of metaethical sentimentalism and moral realism...