Validity and reliability of the EOM-EIS for early adolescents

The Extended Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status (EOM-EIS) was examined for reliability and validity among early/middle adolescent subjects. The EOM-EIS represents a combination of the Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status and a structured interview of identity status. The instrument was designed to measure ego identity with regard to occupational, religious, political, philosophical, and social contexts along ideological and interpersonal dimensions. A total of 467 students aged 12 to 18 (median = 15.73) responded to the instrument. In general the results from the analyses of reliability, validity, demographic characteristics, and psychosocial maturity yielded results which parallel the theoretical framework and the results from college-aged subjects.     

An intervention program for adolescents with behavior problems

Adolescents with behavior problems (aged 12 to 14) attending a regular public high school were in need of an intervention program. The purpose was to enhance their personal and interpersonal functioning as well as to structure a stimulating learning environment. In order to improve their social, educational, and psychological functioning, program objectives were established to help students develop the ability to listen to one another, respect others as well as their opinions, become aware of their own emotions and those of their peers, and recognize and minimize derogatory remarks toward one another. To attain these objectives, relaxation sessions, magic circle activities, art sessions, future planning groups, and decision-making groups were used. Meetings with teachers enabled them to examine and improve their attitudes and relationship with students. Upon completion of the program, the adolescents manifested less disruptive classroom behavior, increased their class participation, and displayed a more positive attitude toward school. The achievement of these behavioral changes indicates that a psychologically oriented intervention program is a feasible addition to a conventional curriculum. Teachers learned the basic skills of program formation, implementation, and evaluation, and most importantly, revitalized their attitude toward troubled students and their profession.     

Visual information processing speed in hypnotized and nonhypnotized subjects

Using a backward-masking paradigm with a bias-free and ceiling-free psychophysical task, we tested hypnotized and control subjects for speed of visual information processing. Approximately half of each group received visual imagery suggestions in an attempt to influence attention. Imagery produced no significant differential effect. Although an absence of a hypnotizability-performance relationship was in keeping with findings of a previous study, those subjects in the present study who performed under hypnosis were, as a group, significantly superior to the other subjects in speed of information processing.     

Redundancy: a similar principle in independent adaptation techniques

The present study examined the similarities between four auditory adaptation techniques to determine whether the effects were correlated. The four adaptation techniques compared were: Simultaneous Dichotic Loudness Balance technique (SDLB; Hood, 1950), Magnitude Estimated Binaural technique (MEB; Botté, Canévet, & Scharf, 1982), Magnitude Estimated Monaural technique, (MEM; Weiler, Sandman, & Pederson, 1981), and the Monaural Reaction Time technique (RT; Davis & Weiler, 1976). Results did not show significant correlations between the four techniques, except (r = 0.39) between MEB and MEM procedures. This correlation was much less than the reliability of the measures would allow (r = 0.98 and r = 0.99, respectively). Thus, it appears that the different methods either produced different adaptation effects or measured different aspects of auditory adaptation. The normal ear apparently shows several forms of adaptation, which reduces the perceptual strength of a continuing stimulus, in favor of an intermittent, less redundant one.     

Effects of head restraint on signal detectability in simultaneous and successive vigilance tasks

Dittmar, Warm, and Dember (1985) suggested that visual parallax may lead to declines in perceptual sensitivity over time in spatial vigilance tasks involving comparative judgments. The present study tested this possibility by restraining subjects' head movements during a 1-hr vigil in which comparative (simultaneous task) or absolute (successive task) judgments of line length were necessary for signal detection. Under free-viewing conditions, perceptual sensitivity declined over time with both types of tasks. Head restraint eliminated the sensitivity decrement in both cases. The results highlight signal quality as a crucial determinant of perceptual decrements in sustained attention.     

Family Characteristics and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Follow-Up of Israeli Combat Stress Reaction Casualties

This study assessed the role of family status and family relationships in the course of combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The sample consisted of 382 Israeli soldiers who suffered a combat stress reaction episode during the 1982 Lebanon War. Results showed that one year after the war married soldiers had higher rates of PTSD than did unmarried soldiers. Furthermore, higher rates of PTSD were associated with low expressiveness, low cohesiveness, and high conflict in the casualties' families. Theoretical, methodological, and clinical implications are discussed.     

Chronic Illness and the Life Cycle:A Conceptual Framework

This article provides a conceptual framework for thinking about the system created at the interface of chronic illness with the family life cycle. First, a psychosocial typology and time phases of illness schema is described as a necessary, preliminary step to create a common language that bridges the worlds of illness, individual, and family development. This schema organizes similarities and differences between diseases in a manner useful to psychosocial-developmental rather than biomedical inquiry. Then, drawing on several major life-cycle theories in the literature, key concepts (periods of transition, life-structure building and maintaining, centripetality, and centrifugality) are used in a complementary fashion to link these three lines of development. Equipped with these psychosocial languages, consideration is given to transgenerational aspects of illness, loss, and crisis, and the interwoven threads of illness, family, and individual development. Clinical vignettes are provided to highlight this conceptual framework.     

Toward a generative theory of the therapeutic field

In the various models of family therapy, family systems are described as being patterned and programmed in their operations and development. The regularities and patterns found in family life are believed to be the expression of a program that determines the behavior of the family system and each of its members. Therapists holding this view will use "programming methods" in order to map family phenomena, and therapeutic work will consist of disrupting the problematic sequences in a deterministic way. However, if we take into consideration the impossibility of always linking inputs and outputs and the inability to evaluate consistently the behaviors in a system, problems associated with indeterminancy appear. Under such conditions, it may be impossible for therapists to formulate programs of family functioning. Therefore, we have operationalized a set of methodological principles that can be applied in such conditions. In this article we present the theoretical and practical implications for the field of therapy of "nonprogramming methods." A videotaped session is analyzed in order to show the application of the nonprogramming methods in clinical practice.     

Interventive Interviewing: Part I. Strategizing as a Fourth Guideline for the Therapist

A clinical interview affords far more opportunities to act therapeutically than most therapists realize. Because so many of these opportunities remain outside the therapist's conscious awareness, it is useful to elaborate guidelines that orient his or her general activity in directions that are liable to be therapeutic. The Milan associates defined three such basic guidelines: hypothesizing, circularity, and neutrality. Hypothesizing is clear and easy to accept. The notions of circularity and neutrality have aroused considerable interest but are not as readily understood. These guidelines may be clarified and operationalized when reformulated as conceptual postures. This process is enhanced by differentiating a fourth guideline, strategizing, which entails the therapist's decision making, including decisions about how to employ these postures. This paper, the first in a series of three, explores these four interviewing guidelines. The other papers will appear in a subsequent issue. Part II will focus on reflexive questioning, a mode of inquiry oriented toward mobilizing the family's own healing capacity. Part III will provide a scheme for analyzing and choosing among four major types of questions: linear questions, circular questions, reflexive questions, and strategic questions.     

Families of Adolescent Drug Abusers Are “Rigid”: Are These Families Either “Disengaged” or “Enmeshed,” or Both?

The FACES instrument, based on Olson's Circumplex Model of family functioning, was administered to 96 adolescent drug-abuse clients and their parents. The majority of these families categorized themselves as "disengaged" (rather than "enmeshed") on the cohesion dimension, and as "rigid" (rather than "chaotic") on the adaptability dimension. These findings were unexpected as they were substantially different from published findings on families with other types of problems. Family therapists, utilizing Olson's Clinical Rating Scale for the Circumplex Model, characterized significantly more of these same families as "enmeshed," rather than "disengaged." Possible explanations for the difference between the therapists' perceptions and the families' self-perceptions are discussed.