Synonym comprehension and the generality of categorization models

Memory & Cognition - When subjects classify a two-word display as representing the “same” category or two “different” categories, semantic similarity between the words...     

Women and Therapy: A Survey on Internship Programs

Two hundred and ninety-nine internship programs and selected psychology graduate schools were surveyed by mail regarding their opinions and practices relevant to training in psychotherapy for women. The 94 usable replies included 55% of all APA approved programs. The results indicated that only a minority of training facilities deal in a systematic way with issues of sex bias and sex-role stereotyping in psychological practice. About 20% of the respondents expressed a need to improve their programs. Respondents' answers are detailed and the suggestion is made that egalitarian group supervisory meetings afford more opportunity than individual sessions to deal effectively with issues of sex bias and stereotyping.     

Saccadic eye movements and reading difficulties

Saccadic eye movements of 14 children with reading difficulties and of 14 normal readers were compared before and after the problem readers underwent a seven month individual tutoring program. At pretesting the problem readers showed a rate of eye movements that was markedly lower than that of the normal readers whose rate they attained and surpassed at completion of the remedial reading program. Results are discussed in terms of the presumed function of saccadic eye movements and their relation to reading, attention, and information gathering.This study was supported by grant OEG-2-2-2BO24 from the National Institute of Education. The valuable assistance of Mark J. Fischer and the help of Sandra Armel, Steven Rayack, and Betty White are gratefully acknowledged. Dr. Lowey, of the Three Village School District and particularly Mr. Hanrahan, Principal of Main Street School, greatly facilitated our work and we are most grateful.     

The Impact of Brief Mindfulness Training on Postevent Processing Among Individuals With Clinically Elevated Social Anxiety

Postevent processing (PEP), the engagement in detailed and repetitive self-focused review of one’s performance in social situations, is theorized to maintain pathological social anxiety. However, little is known about interventions that may impact this maintenance factor. The current study examined the impact of brief mindfulness training (BMT) on PEP among socially anxious individuals. There were 77 participants (75.32% female, 63.64% non-Hispanic/Latinx White) with clinically elevated social anxiety who attended one appointment in the laboratory during which they were randomized to receive a brief mindfulness-based training (n = 37) or no training (i.e., thinking as usual control group; n = 40). After the training period, participants underwent a 3-minute social anxiety induction task, after which they were instructed to apply their thinking strategy. Participants were then asked to complete 2 weeks of daily online surveys that included a PEP induction task, instructions to use their thinking strategy following PEP induction, and a measure of state PEP. Individuals in the BMT condition reported a significant reduction in state anxiety posttraining compared to individuals in the control condition. Conditions did not differ on state PEP after the social anxiety induction task. However, compared to those in the control condition, participants in the BMT condition reported significantly greater decreases in state PEP over the 14-day follow-up period. Thus, this brief mindfulness-based strategy may be useful for individuals with clinically elevated social anxiety who engage in PEP, a cognitive vulnerability factor implicated in the maintenance of social anxiety.     

THE POST-METROPOLIS IS GOD: Notes for a Phenomenology of the Urban Spirit

Topoi - More akin to the Roman Empire’s concept of civitas mobilis augescens, the distinction between the twentieth-century metropolis and the Roman model of a city must be sought in the...     

Picture priming in normal aging and Alzheimer's disease

The present study investigated age invariance for naming pictures and whether implicit memory is spared in Alzheimer's disease (AD). During the study phase, young adults, AD patients, and older controls were shown outlines of familiar pictures. After a distracter task, implicit memory was assessed incidentally. The results showed similar visual priming for the three groups, although young adults responded faster than the two older groups. Moreover, the number of errors was smaller for studied than for non-studied pictures. This pattern of results was repeated across the three groups, although AD patients produced more errors than young adults and older controls, and there were no differences between these latter groups. These results confirmed previous visual and haptic findings showing unimpaired perceptual priming in normal aging and AD patients when implicit memory is assessed using identification tasks. These results are interpreted from a cognitive neuroscience perspective.     

Cross-cultural diagnostic applicability of the Pictogram Test

The aim of this study was to determine whether the Pictogram Test (PT; Vygostsky, 1960) a test of logical memory that was developed in Russia, is applicable for diagnosing and understanding thought disturbances in schizophrenia within an English-speaking population. Participants included 62 patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorders and 80 community nonpatients from Russia and the United States. We used correlational analysis to organize PT variables into Concrete (CI), Attribute (AI), and Geometric (GI) indexes. Discriminant function analysis revealed that only AI and GI had significant discriminatory power. These indexes correctly classified 91% of English-speaking and 86% of Russian-speaking participants as either patients or nonpatients. Controlling for age and education, multivariate analysis revealed that patients had significantly lower AI and significantly higher GI scores relative to nonpatients, and those differences were similar across languages. These results indicate that the PT can discriminate between patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorders and nonpatients, which suggests that characteristics of the PT could be used to understand the mechanism of logical thinking in patients and nonpatients.