Parental blaming and acquisition of guilt: A developmental task of childhood

Incidents involving the authors' twin 10-year-old daughters illustrate that guilt is well established in normal children of 10. The incidents suggest how the expectation of parental blaming triggers guilt and shame. Guilt and shame are compared. While they may coexist in the 10-year-old, guilt clearly is assuming a dominant position. Mental health professionals have emphasized the psychopathology of guilt and many forget that it is essential for normal socialization in that the guilty person feels a need to repair damage allegedly done. Guilt presumes that at least a primitive mutuality has been established in the person; and mutuality is the hallmark of human maturity. Terms are defined here with some variation from their usage by mental health experts: shame, guilt, blame, and counterblame.     

Teaching symbolic-experiential family therapy: The personhood of the teacher

This article explores issues in teaching symbolic-experiential family therapy to psychiatric residents. Six controversial contextual issues that arise in teaching any school of family therapy in this setting are presented. Then, the author distinguishes between content and process dimensions in teaching symbolic-experiential family therapy. This distinction helps to clarify the muddle often attendant to attempts to teach this particular area. A major point, to paraphrase Whitaker's famous dictum, is that Teaching symbolic experiential family therapy resides in the personhood of the teacher.     

On teaching psychotherapy via consultation and cotherapy

In this article Dr. Whitaker presents his basic assumptions about teaching psychotherapy. He discusses his expectations of himself and his trainees in the teaching relationship and how he attempts to empower the trainee in his/her professional growth. Following this, Dr. Garfield joins Dr. Whitaker in a dialogue about consultation and cotherapy.     

Arousal and the Bakan vigilance task: The effects of noise intensity and the presence of others

The joint effects of social setting and loud noise on task performance are examined. In a modified version of the Bakan vigilance task subjects were required to detect a sequence of two identical even digits and to report the two digits preceding the signal. Two types of acoustic environment were compared: loud noise at 90 dBC and quiet noise at 60 dBC. Two types of social setting were employed: “pair” where two subjects worked in the same room on similar tasks, and “single” where a subject performed the task alone. The effects of noise and the presence of another did not interact. Loud noise increased the speed of responses to signals early in the task. This effect is attributed to noise-induced arousal. There was a higher incidence of recall errors in pre-signal digits when subjects were in pairs. This effect is attributed to distraction. This research was part of a series of studies sponsored by the Social Science Research Council (Grant HR 5563 awarded to Dr. A.J. Chapman and Dr. D.M. Jones).     

Avoidant control difficulty and aversive incentive appraisals: Additional evidence of an energization effect

There is evidence that certain physiological and subjective indices of stress are relatively great when control over aversive outcomes is moderately difficult and relatively reduced when control over such outcomes is either easy or impossible. A possible explanation is suggested by Brehm's recent theory of motivation, which asserts that energy mobilization and the perceived unpleasantness of an aversive event will (a) increase with the difficulty of avoidant behavior so long as avoidance is believed to be possible and worthwhile, and (b) be low when avoidant behavior is impossible, not worthwhile, or simply unavailable. This article reports two experiments that examined appraisals of an aversive incentive under conditions where avoidance was expected to be easy, difficult, and impossible. The first demonstrated the complete nonmonotonic pattern of appraisals predicted by the energization theory, something that has proved elusive in previous investigations. The second study demonstrated this as well and, in addition, showed a correspondence between subjects' incentive appraisals and their cardiovascular responses immediately before and during an avoidance task period. Implications and alternative interpretations are discussed.This research was supported in part by a Faculty Research Award from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.     

Is valentine still doubtful? A workshop model for children of divorce

We present this eight-session structured workshop format aimed at school-aged children of divorce who are considered psychologically healthy by family and teachers, in which we review the situations most frequently encountered by these families.In the workshop we offer an understanding vision of divorce while providing the children with the experience of working with therapists who are able to deal with highly troublesome issues in a caring atmosphere.Acknowledgements are expressed to Bernardita Cruz, school counselor, and Ilana Meler and Patricia Tahl, child psychologists.     

The effects of cued UCS rehearsal on the retention of differential 'fear' conditioning: an experimental analogue of the 'worry' process

This study describes a human electrodermal conditioning experiment in which subjects were asked to mentally rehearse the UCS in a period following initial fear conditioning and prior to a test period involving nonreinforced presentations of the CS. Subjects who were asked to rehearse the UCS retained a differential fear CR during subsequent unreinforced presentations of the CS, but control subjects who were asked to rehearse either a nonaversive event or an aversive event unrelated to the UCS failed to retain the differential CR they had acquired during conditioning. These results suggest that rehearsal of the UCS during periods when CS and UCS are absent can aid the persistence of a fear CR in the absence of further pairings of the CS and UCS. It is argued that these effects can be explained in terms of the effect of UCS rehearsal on the strength and evaluation of the UCS representation. It is also suggested that cued UCS rehearsal might provide a useful procedure for understanding clinical incubation effects and for understanding how the 'worry' process contributes to the maintenance and incubation of fear.     

Children's self-assessment of performance and task-related help seeking

The present research examined the role of self-assessment of performance on children's use of help-seeking as an achievement strategy. In two experiments, third- and fifth-grade children were blocked into low and high verbal skill groups. Children performed a multitrial verbal task in which they were required to indicate their confidence in the correctness of their tentative solution and then were given the opportunity to seek help before providing a final solution on each trial. The second experiment differed from the first in that subjects were provided with a common motivation for seeking help. Subjects' confidence in the correctness of their solution was found to influence both the frequency and type of help sought. High task-related skill was associated with the discriminating use of help-seeking as an achievement strategy, especially among boys. Also, both the frequency and type of help sought varied with self-assessments for older children more than for younger children. Findings are discussed in terms of grade and sex differences in the use of internally based cues for performance evaluation. The importance of accounting for the interplay of children's age and task specific skill with achievement-related goals is stressed.     

Disruption of visual short-term memory by changing-state auditory stimuli: The role of segmentation

Typically, serial recall performance can be disrupted by the presence of an irrelevant stream of background auditory stimulation, but only if the background stream changes over time (the auditory changing-state effect). It was hypothesized that segmentation of the auditory stream is necessary for changing state to be signified. In Experiment 1, continuous random pitch glides failed to disrupt serial recall, but glides interrupted regularly by silence brought about the usual auditory changing-state effect. In Experiment 2, a physically continuous stream of synthesized vowel sounds was found to have disruptive effects. In Experiment 3, the technique of auditory induction showed that preattentive organization rather than critical features of the sound could account for the disruption by glides. With pitch glides, silence plays a preeminent role in the temporal segmentation of the sound stream, but speech contains corr-elated-time-varying changes in frequency and amplitude that make silent intervals superfluous.     

Expected endings and judged duration

In four experiments, the predictions of an expectancy/contrast model (Jones & Boltz, 1989) for judged duration were evaluated. In Experiments 1 and 2, listeners estimated the relative durations of auditory pattern pairs that varied in contextual phrasing and temporal contrast. The results showed that when the second pattern of a pair either seems to (Experiments 1 and 2) or actually does (Experiment 2) end earlier (later)than the first, subjects judge it as being relatively shorter (longer). In Experiment 3, listeners heard single patterns in which notes immediately preceding the final one were omitted. Timing of the final (target) tone was varied such that it was one beat early, on time, or one beat late. Listeners’ ratings of target tones revealed systematic effects of phrasing and target timing. In Experiment 4, listeners temporally completed (extrapolated) sequences of Experiment 3 that were modified to exclude the target tone. The results again showed that phrase context systematically influenced expectancies about “when” sequences should end. As a set, these studies demonstrate the effects of event structure and anticipatory attending upon experienced duration and are discussed in terms of the expectancy/contrast model.