Depth oriented brief therapy: an ideal technique as hospice lengths-of-stay continue to shorten

The authors note that as hospice patients' lengths-of-stay continue to shorten, psychosocial/spiritual counselors are being challenged to help patients and families process the myriad of issues terminal illness gives rise to. Given this reality, the authors suggest that the Depth Oriented Brief Therapy (DOBT) approach should prove especially useful. The DOBT premise is that if people can be helped to experience the emotional meanings of why they hold on to emotionally painful symptoms then they can abandon their symptoms for healthier ways of being.     

An examination of Euro-American and African-American differences in social physique anxiety among college women

Many studies have examined sex differences in social physique anxiety; however, few researchers have examined possible perceptual differences in such anxiety based on ethnicity. The present purpose was to examine social physique anxiety among college-age women of Euro-American and African-American descent. Participants (N = 91) from physical activity classes at a university located in the southeastern United States completed the Social Physique Anxiety Scale. The participants were 67 Euro-Americans and 24 African Americans. An independent t test yielded a significant difference (p =.01) between groups on Eklund's scale, which supports the hypothesis.     

Implementing communication between Windows PCs and test equipment using RS-232 and Borland C+ + Builder

Modern experiments in the behavioral sciences frequently employ several items of electronic equipment such as computers, monitoring devices, stimulus presentation equipment, and response collection systems. In many cases it would be advantageous for these items to communicate directly with each other. Such communication may facilitate greater automation of experiments (i.e., reduced experimenter influences during the experiment), more precise experiment control (i.e., superior timing and synchronization capabilities of electronic devices), and greater accuracy of data collection (i.e., reduced ambiguity of participant responses). Many electronic experiment devices already provide external interfacesthrough which communication with other devices can be implemented. The most common is based on the RS-232 protocol, which is also found in all standard PCs. Therefore, Microsoft Windows based computers can be programmed to control experiments by communicating directly with electronic experiment devices. We show how to implement this RS-232 interconnection between devices and a Windows PC using currently available software tools.