Joining with all members of a family system: The rhetoric of antilogic in family therapy dialogue

Family therapists face a significant rhetorical challenge in working with families that disagree about the problematic life-situation which brought them to therapy. Therapists must find a way to join with disagreeing family members and then find a way to engage in a therapeutically useful conversation with them. Thus, they must deal resourcefully with contradictions. This article explores the ways that the Sophistic rhetorical concept of antilogic may be employed in helping therapists join and then engage in a therapeutically useful conversation with families who hold contradictory views concerning the problem that brought them to therapy.The author wishes to thank Ronald Chenail, PhD, Douglas Flemons, PhD, and Shelly Green, PhD, for their assistance in the development of this project.     

A behavioral experimental analysis of dyslexia

A behavioral analysis of specific dyslexia is contrasted with traditional genetic, neurological and developmental theories which hold that the dyslexic's inability to read is based on impaired intellectual functioning and decreased perceptual and attentional skills caused by a biological limitation. Two groups of six children, aged 9 and 10 years and comprised of dyslexic and non-dyslexic subjects, were given either traditional remedial reading treatment or behavior therapy consisting of the Staats Motivated Action Reading Technique. Both dyslexic and non-dyslexic subjects receiving the behavioral intervention significantly improved in reading achievement to approximately the same degree, and the dyslexic subjects improved in several perceptual and attentional measures as well. These results are taken to support the position that the specific dyslexia syndrome is subject to the laws of learning and can be viewed as a function of a deficient learning history.     

Instructions and decision times of size-constancy responses

The current study investigated the effect of instructions and stimulus discriminability on size-constancy responses and decision times in a task allowing separate evaluation of the effects of instructions and of dimensional choices by the subjects in the size-constancy task. Objective, perspective, or distance matches were influenced both by the instructions given the subject and by the relative discriminability of the stimuli in each dimension, so that subjects did not always successfully follow their instructions. Decision times were found to be fastest with perspective rather than objective or apparent instructions, but times taken to produce objective and perspective matches did not differ. Apparently, both objective and perspective judgments are available to the perceiver before a response is made, but instructions affect postperceptual response times.     

Sex of leader,leader behavior,and subordinate satisfaction

A 2×2×2 factorial design was employed to examine the influence of instructed leadership style, sex of leader, and sex of followers on leader behavior, subordinate satisfaction, and productivity in a simple task. In general, male and female leaders were equally able and equally willing to display autocratic and democratic leadership styles if so instructed. Similarly, leader sex did not have a significant influence on subordinate satisfaction or productivity either by itself or in interaction with leadership style or follower sex.     

Dimensions underlying Holland's hexagon: Missing link between interests and occupations?

Holland uses a hexagon to model relationships among his six types of vocational interests. This paper provides empirical evidence regarding the nature of the interest dimensions underlying the hexagon. Two studies are reported. Study 1 examines the extent to which two theory-based dimensions—data/ideas and things/people—fit 27 sets of intercorrelations for Holland's types. Three of the data sets involve the mean scores of career groups (total of 228 groups and 35,060 individuals); 24 involve the scores for individuals (total of 11,275). Study 2 explores the heuristic value of the data/ideas and things/people dimensions by determining whether they contribute to the understanding of why interest inventories work. Two data sets covering a total of 563 occupations are used to calculate correlations between the vocational interests of persons and the tasks which characterize the persons' occupations. Each occupation's principal work tasks are determined from job analysis data obtained from the U.S. Department of Labor. Study 1 results provide substantial support for the theory-based dimensions. Study 2 results suggest that interest inventories “work” primarily because they tap activity preferences which parallel work tasks. Counseling and research applications of the data/ideas and things/people dimensions are suggested and implications for interest assessment are noted.     

Models for within-proposition representation tested by cued recall

A model is presented to account for the data from incremental cuing experiments that have been carried out to identify the representation of propositions in memory. In such experiments subjects first learn a list of sentences and are afterward cued for recall with words from the learned sentences. The model proposed distinguishes between a memory structure and stimulus and response processes. The all-or-none tendency in the data is captured by a Gestalt-like memory code. The model is compared with the stochastic theory of Anderson and Bower and the fragmentation hypothesis of Jones.     

The formation of reference systems in visual motion perception

Summary In visual perception complex movements are usually split up into components — e.g., in such a way that a moving reference system is applied, to which partial movements can be related. In the following experiment a perceptual vector analysis of this kind was investigated. It was shown that 1) a radial translatory movement (relative component) can be isolated perceptually from a rotatory movement (global component) and that 2) the precision of this decomposition of the complex movement is dependent on the strength at which the rotating reference system is anchored perceptually.The authors wish to thank M. Rauterberg for collecting the experimental data