Language functioning after bilateral prefrontal leukotomy

Three groups of patients with orbital frontal lesions secondary to leukotomy were compared to psychiatric and normal control groups on a series of tasks involving language. The results indicated that chronic orbital frontal lesions, at least in the patients in this study, do not affect language as defined by the tasks used in the study. The frontal lobes, when implicated in language, appear to require dorsal-lateral or medial cortical involvement.     

Factors associated with erection in adolescent sex offenders

A majority of adult child molesters report that their deviant interest began prior to the age of 18. This illustrates the need to evaluate adolescents who have molested children. Since self-report of deviant interest is rare in adolescent offenders, psychophysiologic assessment is necessary to help to determine the extent for a deviant interest pattern. The current study was designed to determine what factors are associated with erectile responding to age-inappropriate stimuli in an adolescent sex offender population. Factors studied were (a) admit/deny, (b) history of physical abuse, (c) history of sexual abuse, (d) history of nonsex arrests, and (e) incest/nonincest. The dependent variables were two pedophile indices, a relative measure of deviant to nondeviant arousal. Results indicated that history of sexual abuse was associated with more deviant erectile responding in those adolescents who had molested young boys. The possibility of adolescents modeling their own victimization is discussed.     

Predictors of adolescent female decision making regarding contraceptive usage.

The relationship of cognitive capacity, cognitive egocentrism, and experience factors to decision making in a contraceptive usage problem was examined. Fifty sexually active, unmarried females, ages 14-19, served as subjects. Using correlational, regression, and canonical correlational analyses, cognitive capacity and cognitive egocentrism variables, not experience with contraceptives, were found to be significantly related to, and predictive of, five of seven decision-making variables. Forty-one percent of the variance was accounted for in predicting the canonical decision-making variable. The implications of these results for future research are discussed.     

Sensitivity to conversational deviance in right-hemisphere-damaged patients.

To participate meaningfully in conversation, speakers must be sensitive to statements which advance and those which block the direction of a discourse. The effect of right-hemisphere damage (RHD) on sensitivity to conversational advancers and blockers was investigated by asking subjects to interpret normal conversations and conversations which were blocked by violations of Gricean maxims: specifically, tangential and redundant statements. Results indicate that RHD patients function normally in canonical, directed conversation. However, they have difficulty interpreting and judging the effect of blocking statements, particularly with regard to tangentiality. The results are discussed in terms of a mental model of directed conversation which incorporates both structural and affective components.     

Idiomatic processing: Syntactic frozenness and subjective familiarity

Summary Four experiments are reported that investigated idiomatic processing. Two experiments collected subjects' ratings of frozenness, familiarity, and meaningfulness for a set of idioms. The ratings obtained were used to assess the contributions of these dimensions to performance in two experiments that utilized a phoneme-identification task. Ambiguous and unambiguous phoneme targets occurred as the initial sound in the final word in idiomatic and neutral carrier phrases. Subjects' phoneme identifications were biased in the labeling of ambiguous segments in that identification responses in the idiom context tended to form an idiomatic phrase, more so than those in the neutral carrier phrase. Additional correlational analyses suggested that an idiom's degree of influence on identification depended on the rated syntactic frozenness. For subjects who knew the idioms, familiarity did not account for the biasing effect of idiomatic contexts. The experiments are discussed in terms of theories of auditory word recognition and the representation of frozenness in the mental lexicon.This research was supported by NIDCD Grant R29 NS26 587 to the first author.     

Initial examination of a multidimensional model of trauma-related guilt: Applications to combat veterans and battered women

Guilt is conceptualized as a multidimensional construct consisting of negative affect and a set of interrelated cognitions. Guilt magnitude is thought to be a function of the magnitudes of six variables posited as primary components of guilt: a negative event, distress, perceptions of responsibility, lack of justification, wrongdoing, and false beliefs about preoutcome knowledge. The model was tested with samples of Vietnam veterans and battered women. Participants rated their reactions to and perceived roles in trauma-related events. Among Vietnam veterans, distress ratings were highly correlated with guilt severity. Cognitive guilt-component variables were significantly correlated with guilt in both groups. In multiple regression, guilt components accounted for 61% of variance in veterans' guilt and 44% of variance in women's guilt. Among veterans, distress ratings were highly correlated with measures of PTSD and depression. In both groups, cognitive guilt-component variables were positively correlated with psychopathology. Results support the view that beliefs about one's role in trauma are important factors in posttrauma adjustment.     

Proposal for Centers for the Study of Biblical Psychotherapy

This paper describes the need for a Biblically based psychotherapy to replace a psychotherapy dominated by Greek mythology. Centers for Biblical Psychotherapy are proposed and sample curriculae are discussed.     

Book reviews

History of Islamic Philosophy Seyyed Hossein Nasr & Oliver Leaman, Editors, 1996 London, Routledge Part I, xx+ 780 pp., Part II, xiv + 428 pp., hb ISBN 0415 05 6675, £120.00

Early Advaita Vedānta and Buddhism: the Mahāyāna context of the Gaudapādiya‐Kārikā Richard King, 1995 Albany, State University of New York Press xii + 341 pp., pb $19.95

Vaisnavism: its philosophy, theology and religious discipline S.M. Srinwasa Chari, 1994 Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass xxxviii + 383 pp., pb Rs. 350

Vaisnavism: contemporary scholars discuss the Gaudiya tradition Steven J. Rosen (Ed.), 1992 Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass, 1994 ix + 354 pp., pb Rs. 160

Cultural Realism: strategic culture and grand strategy in Chinese history Alastair Iain Johnston, 1995 Princeton, Princeton University Press xiii + 367 pp., hb ISBN 0691029962, $39.50

Laughing at the Tao: debates among Buddhists and Taoists in medieval China Livia Kohn, 1995 Princeton, Princeton University Press xii + 281 pp. hb (price not given)

Pantheism. A Non‐theistic Concept of Deity Michael P. Levine, 1994 London, Routledge xii + 388 pp., hb £45 ISBN 0415070643     

The coincidence effect in similarity and choice

Medin, Goldstone, and Markman (1995) recently described a series of parallel effects in similarity and choice. They suggested that similarity and choice are related in a nontrivial way such that choice may entail a similarity judgment to an explicit or constructed ideal. In this paper, the correspondences between similarity and choice were investigated with respect to a phenomenon in similarity known as thecoincidence effect. In coincidence (pronounced “coincide-ence”), two items that match on one dimension but have a large difference on another dimension receive a higher similarity rating than do two items that have only modest differences on both dimensions. We conducted five experiments in order to examine commonalities between similarity and choice processes with respect to coincidence. Four types of tasks were given: similarity ratings, desirability ratings, forced choice similarities (which of two items is most similar to a target), and forced choice preferences (which of two items one would prefer, given a target). We found a main effect for ratings as opposed to forced choices, with ratings showing greater coincidence effects than did choices. Similarity measures tended to produce more coincidence than did preference measures. The overall pattern of results suggests the presence of dimensional weighting processes sensitive to task characteristics and operating somewhat differently for similarity and decision making.     

Experimental evaluation of rehabilitation in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: short-term effects on exercise endurance and health status

Randomly assigned 119 adults with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease to an 8-week comprehensive rehabilitation program or to an 8-week education control program. Comprehensive pulmonary rehabilitation included education, physical and respiratory therapy instruction, psychosocial support, and supervised exercise training; education control included biweekly classroom instruction and discussions on respiratory therapy, medical aspects of lung disease, clinical pharmacology, and diet, but no exercise training. Both groups received extensive physiological and psychosocial evaluation before and after the intervention. Six months after enrollment, patients randomly assigned to the rehabilitation program showed significant increases in exercise endurance, whereas patients randomly assigned to control program showed nonsignificant increases. Improvement in self-efficacy was correlated with improvements in exercise endurance.