Cognitive-behavioral treatment with and without response prevention for Bulimia

We compared cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) with and without exposure and response prevention (ERP) in the treatment of eating disorder patients who both binged and purged, and reported abnormal attitudes concerning body weight and shape. Both treatments produced significant and comparable reductions in binge-eating and purging, eating patterns, and attitudes about weight and shape at posttreatment. Treatment effects were generalized to improvements in different measures of general psychopathology, and were maintained over follow-ups of 3 and 12 months. The findings are consistent with prior research showing that CBT is an effective treatment for patients with the core features of bulimia nervosa. Furthermore, the data suggest that the addition of in-session exposure and response prevention does not enhance the effectiveness of the basic CBT program.     

Evaluation of A Single Presentation Format For Education About Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) Disease1

This study explored the efficiency and effectiveness of a single presentation format for education about human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) disease. Pretraining and posttraining questionnaires assessing knowledge and risk assessment were given to police officers attending a two-hour seminar on HIV disease. A one-way ANOVA was used to compare posttraining scores of 42 officers who attended the seminar one year ago with the pretraining scores of 63 officers currently attending the seminar, some of whom had attended the seminar one year earlier. Significant differences were found on knowledge items (p < .05). Post hoc analysis revealed no significant decline in knowledge scores after one year, while pretraining knowledge scores for those who had attended the seminar before were significantly greater than for those who had not. No significant differences were found on risk assessment items, suggesting that beliefs about on the job risk have become part of the officers' common culture.     

Homogeneous group therapy of borderline personality disorder

The authors maintained a time-limited, diagnostically homogeneous psychotherapy group of borderline patients for one year. The group progressed through prototypical stages of group development, but each phase was marked by variations of the aggressive drive and defenses against aggression that are characteristic of this disorder. The group provided a well-suited forum for the exploration of suicidal and homicidal impulses and the development of an observing ego. Despite the limits on generalizability from this group, it appears that group psychotherapy can be a valuable adjunctive modality for some borderline patients.Paper presented at the American Psychiatric Association Conference, Montreal, May, 1988.     

Sexual harassment of university faculty by colleagues and students

The focus of this research was on faculty members as victims of sexual harassment by colleagues (peer harassment) and students (contrapower harassment). A self-administered, mailed questionnaire was sent to a probability sample of faculty at a large, public Midwestern university and to the whole population of faculty at a small, public institution in the Western Mountain region. Several hypotheses were made based on conflict theory, role theory, and previous research. Results indicated that women faculty generally have more negative attitudes toward and broader definitions of sexual harassment than do male faculty. Moderate levels of sexual harassment of faculty by both colleagues and students were reported; minor and anonymous (course evaluations and obscene phone calls) forms were the most common. Female faculty were more likely to report harassment by colleagues; male faculty were more likely to report some potentially harassing behaviors by students. Incidents of sexual harassment were usually not reported to formal agents of social control.This research was funded, in part, through the Small Grant Program of the Office of Research and Sponsored Activities, Illinois State University. The author would like to thank Krista Moore for her assistance in data collection at the Colorado site, Nancy Uphoff for her assistance with the library research, Robyn Leech and Ann Marie Woods for coding and data entry, and Elizabeth Grauerholz and Susan Specher for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper.     

Apparent duration of long meaningful events and meaningless intervals

Time estimates of 1 1/2-, 5¼-, and 14 1/2-min intervals were obtained from 12 American graduate students and 12 Indian graduate students by the methods of verbal estimation and cross-modality matching. Material presented during stimulus intervals varied in degree of meaningfulness. Each subject was tested on 4 successive days with basically the same material in order to determine the effects of repetition. The relationship between perceived and physical time was found to follow Stevens’ power law, and confidence limits of exponents obtained in this study include the exponents previously reported for short durations. Neither actual judgments nor exponents were affected by cultural background or by cognitive factors such as memory for material presented in the interval, familiarity, complexity, degree of meaningfulness, and repetition. It had previously been reported that time judgments were dependent on these cognitive factors. In light of the present research, it is necessary to review and replicate those studies which support a cognitive view of time perception.     

Letter versus dot stimuli as tools for “splitting the normal brain with reaction time”

Filbey and Gazzaniga (1969) found simple dot-present or -absent reports averaged 35 ms slower for the left than for the right visual field. Other data suggests that verbal processing efficiency differences between the cerebral hemispheres, rather than transcallosal transfer time alone, must be tapped to obtain half-field differences as large as 35 ms. Three experiments were conducted. The first failed to show any half-field differences in vocal RT for dot detection; the second replicated previous reports of significant right field superiority of vocal RT to letter stimuli for right handers, and also showed a substantially smaller half-field difference for left handers; the third experiment, utilizing the fixation control procedure of the second experiment, again failed to show half-field differences for the dot detection paradigm. Differences between the Filbey and Gazzaniga and present results probably reflect important procedural differences. We conclude that transcallosal transfer time for simple dot information is much smaller than assumed by Filbey and Gazzaniga and that the letter report-time task taps hemispheric asymmetries of verbal processing efficiency.     

Concerning the determination of trait variability

An analytic technique for the study of trait variability is presented. An expression for the average variance from test to test and an expression for the variance of these variances are derived in terms of the number of tests and the intercorrelations between them, and limiting cases are examined. The question of the true relationship between the nature of the distribution of test scores in a sample ofN persons and the nature of the distribution ofn traits in a single individual is discussed, and other problems are introduced.     

The association between play materials and social behavior in a mainstreamed preschool: A naturalistic investigation

Social interaction during play with various types of materials was observed during free play in a DARCEE model mainstreamed preschool classroom. Results indicated that the use of play materials by mildly handicapped and nonhandicapped children was quite similar. Blocks and vehicles and water play materials were associated with handicapped/nonhandicapped interactions. Library, fine motor, and art materials were associated with solitary activity; blocks and vehicles, water play, housekeeping and music with cooperative interaction; and blocks and vehicles with conflict. Adult-child interaction was associated with children not engaged with any play materials. Implications for mainstreamed preschool settings are discussed.