REBT in a Therapeutic Community: REBTC

Long-term residential treatment--therapeutic communities--have some empirical support for efficacy but historically have been viewed as insulated and alien to the world of research. A therapeutic community with Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy as the core of its philosophy and practice is described, and follow-up results are presented. The argument is made that therapeutic communities may be particularly well suited to treatment of people with dual diagnoses.     

Parietal ERP Activity and Appetite

Recent research on brain activity suggests that visual attention increases in response to emotional images. This increase is reflected in signs of greater activity, in response to different emotional visual stimuli, in parietal and parietooccipital areas in several studies employing neuroimaging techniques and event-related potentials (ERPs). In the latter case, greater parietal and parietooccipital negativities have been observed. The objective of the present study was to examine the role of a person's level of motivation towards the emotional stimulus with respect to this ERP pattern. Two groups of stimuli were presented to 60 participants: neutral or N (photographs of taps) and appetitive or A (photographs of cakes). The level of hunger was measured via a questionnaire. Recordings were taken at PO3, PO4, P7, and P8. The largest differences, as a function of appetite, were produced between 575 and 625 ms. Multiple regression analyses were carried out to study the relationship between subjects' appetite and their ERP recordings in response to A and N stimuli. There was a significant negative association between appetite and 575–625 mean amplitude in response to stimulus A at PO3 and PO4.     

Testing the age related differentiation hypothesis through the Wechsler’s scales

According to the age differentiation hypothesis (ADH), g becomes increasingly invested in specific abilities with age: with increasing age, g should account for a decreasing proportion of the variance in any particular cognitive test. However, there is no conclusive evidence concerning this important topic. Data from the Italian, Spanish, and American standardisation samples of the WPPSI and the WISC-R were analysed in the present study for testing the ADH. No changes in the proportion of variance associated with g in the 4–16 age range were found. This pattern does not change depending on the country. Therefore, the ADH is rejected: g seems to be very stable across age, and, thus, it seems to be an equally important component of intelligence test performance from early childhood to late adolescence.     

Distress in response to emotional and sexual infidelity: evidence of evolved gender differences in Spanish students

The authors studied gender differences in response to hypothetical infidelity in Spanish students. Using a forced-choice methodology, the authors asked a sample of 266 participants to indicate which kind of infidelity would be more distressing: emotional or sexual. Men were significantly more distressed by sexual infidelity than were women, and women were significantly more distressed by emotional infidelity than were men. Results supported the hypothesis that particular infidelity types, which resemble adaptive problems that human beings faced in the past, contribute to the psychology of jealousy. The results are consistent with previous cross-cultural research.     

Influence of articulation rate on two memory tasks in young and older adults

This study investigated the relation between phonological loop functioning and age. Phonological loop is a time-based subsystem of the Working Memory Model of Baddeley and Wilson, which uses rehearsal of information as an active process to avoid phonological decay. Performance differences were examined between young and older adults in two speech-based memory tasks, such as the immediate serial recall of words and the Digit Ordering Task. Analysis showed that performance on both tasks was lower for the older group. Articulation rate was also measured to test the hypothesis that the impairment of some cognitive functions in adults can be associated to their slowness or the greater time needed by older adults for the rehearsal process. A significant negative correlation was found for articulation rate with age. When the effect of articulation rate on Serial Recall and Digit Ordering Tasks was partialled out, the difference between the two groups was eliminated.     

类比归纳的相似性效应和概念效应比较

该文用两个实验比较了类比归纳中的相似性效应和概念效应。预备实验首先检验了实验所使用的人工概念符号的效度。结果显示,研究采用的人工符号能够按照实验要求准确控制被试对概念关系和相似性的估计。预备实验还显示,在只有相似性或概念信息的条件下,人们更加信任概念信息。在正式实验中,相似性信息和概念信息同时呈现,结果显示,在概念信息明确的时候,人会忽略相似性信息;但在相似性信息和明确的时候,人不会忽略概念信息,因此,文章得出结论：概念是类比归纳的基本构成要素。     

Priming the mental time-line: effects of modality and processing mode

The notion of a mental time-line (i.e., past corresponds to left and future corresponds to right) supports the conceptual metaphor view assuming that abstract concepts like “time” are grounded in cognitively more accessible concepts like “space.” In five experiments, we further investigated the relationship between temporal and spatial representations and examined whether or not the spatial correspondents of time are unintentionally activated. We employed a priming paradigm, in which visual or auditory prime words (i.e., temporal adverbs such as yesterday, tomorrow) preceded a colored square. In all experiments, participants discriminated the color of this square by responding with the left or the right hand. Although the temporal reference of the priming adverb was task irrelevant in Experiment 1, visually presented primes facilitated responses to the square in correspondence with the direction of the mental time-line. This priming effect was absent in Experiments 2, 3, and 5, in which the primes were presented auditorily and the temporal reference of the words could be ignored. The effect, however, emerged when attention was oriented to the temporal content of the auditory prime words in Experiment 4. The results suggest that task demands differentially modulate the activation of the mental time-line within the visual and auditory modality and support a flexible association between conceptual codes.     

Childhood and Adolescent Victimization and Perpetration of Sexual Coercion by Male and Female University Students

This study examines the extent to which male and female university students use verbal sexual coercion and physically forced sex on a dating partner and tests a theoretical model that specifies that corporal punishment, minor forms of neglect by parents, and sexual abuse increase the probability of sexually coercing and sexually assaulting a partner, and that this relationship is partly mediated by antisocial traits and behavior. A path analysis using multinomial logistic regression was used to test the fit of the model to a convenience sample of 13,877 students in 32 nations. Both male and female students perpetrate sexual coercion, but the rates are higher for males. For both men and women, each of the three forms of prior victimization studied were associated with an increased probability of antisocial behavior, which in turn was associated with an increased probability of verbally coercing and physically forcing sex. Most of the direct paths from victimization to sexual coercion were also statistically significant. Because relatively mild victimization such as corporal punishment and seemingly innocuous forms of neglect are highly prevalent, steps to reduce their prevalence could be an import step in primary prevention of sexual coercion.