Compensation for Jaw Fixation by Aphasic Patients

The ability to compensate for fixation of the jaw by a bite block was investigated in 6 nonfluent aphasics, 6 fluent aphasics, and 10 normal control subjects. Acoustic analyses of the vowels [i u a æ] and fricatives [s s] revealed substantial but incomplete compensation for the perturbation in all three subject groups. Perceptual identification scores and quality ratings by naive and phonetically trained listeners indicated poorer identification of the high vowels [i u] under compensatory conditions relative to normal production. Of particular interest was the fact that all three groups of subjects exhibited similar patterns of results. The findings suggest that any deficit in speech motor programming demonstrated by the nonfluent aphasic patients did not affect compensatory abilities. Results are discussed with respect to normal speech adaptation skills and the nature of articulatory breakdown in nonfluent aphasia.     

The Effects of Food and Gender on Interpersonal Perceptions

Male and female subjects provided ratings of personal traits, femininity and masculinity, and total caloric consumption for a female or a male target based on the type of diet she or he had allegedly consumed. The gender associated with the foods presented for each dietary profile was manipulated. Results showed that Target Gender and Dietary Profile significantly affected impression ratings and calorie estimates. Both male and female subjects perceived male eaters and those who ate a feminine diet more favorably. Results are discussed in terms of the different underlying expectations held for males and females when food consumption is involved during the impression formation process.     

A preliminary scale to measure connected and separate knowing: The Knowing Styles Inventory

The present investigation reported the development and validation of the Knowing Styles Inventory (KSI), a scale to measure connected and separate knowing [M. F. Belenky, B. M. Clinchy, N. R. Goldberger, and J. M. Tarule (1986), Women's Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind New York, Basic Books]. In Study 1, principal components analyses for samples of females (N = 300) and males (N = 253) yielded two components, Connected and Separate Knowing. Studies 2 and 3 focused on females exclusively. The results indicated adequate test—retest reliability and internal consistency for both components. Additionally, Connected Knowing was positively correlated with empathic concern, perspective-taking, social desirability, and the femininity factor of the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI). Separate Knowing was positively correlated with the masculinity factor of the BSRI and negatively correlated with social desirability. Suggestions for future research were presented.The authors wish to thank Jill Mattuck Tarule for the insight that she offered in the early stages of this project, and they wish to acknowledge the contribution of Nicole Bressler who participated in item development.     

The role of direct-care staff

This article examines the current role of direct-care staff, and their significance to individuals with disabilities living in the community. The role of staff will be redefined with respect to client normalization within the community. Finally, a framework for training staff is provided.     

Resetting the pitch-analysis system: 1. Effects of rise times of tones in noise backgrounds or of harmonics in a complex tone

The question of whether sudden increases in the amplitude of pure-tone components would perceptually isolate them from a more complex spectrum was investigated in two experiments. In Experiment 1, a 3.5-sec noise was played as a masker. During the noise, two pure-tone components of different frequencies appeared in succession. Subjects were asked to judge whether the pitch sequence went up or down. The rise time of these components had only a small and inconsistent effect on discrimination. In Experiment 2, the 3.5-sec background signal was a complex tone. The amplitudes of two of its components were incremented in succession. Again, subjects judged whether the pitch pattern went up or down. This time there was a sizable, monotonic effect of the rise time of the increments, with more rapid increments leading to better discrimination. The difference between the two results is interpreted in terms of the auditory system’s response to changing and unchanging signals and the role of its “sudden-change” responses in attracting perceptual processing to certain spectral regions.     

Family Secrets:

Family secrets are examined in a two-part article. Part I explores the dynamics of secrets in the relational context. Terminology is proposed for different types of family secrets as well as for different roles within the relational context. Guidelines for identifying family secrets are presented, and typical patterns accompanying or underlying secrets are explored. Different stances toward secrets are discussed, with particular emphasis on ethical issues. Finally, individual and relational consequences of secrets are proposed. Part II extends this discussion to the management of family secrets in marital and family therapy. Ethical and strategic dilemmas facing the therapist are examined as are consequences of secrets in treatment. A particular therapeutic stance is recommended and illustrated with examples of both reparative and preventive applications.     

A Single Intervention: A Visit to the Family

The following letter is reported unchanged except for disguised names. Concern with repairing disrupted relationships of adult members of a family with their own parents has been a matter of growing interest to a number of family therapists; Bowen (1), Boszormenyi-Nagy (2), and Framo (3), among others have stressed the importance of sending family members back to their families of origin. This report makes no effort to formulate the process in any particular theoretical framework (i.e., as reestablishing connectedness after an “emotional cut-off” or rebalancing a ledger of fairness, or whatever) but is intended only to illustrate the kind of outcome one may hope for in prescribing such a maneuver. It is offered simply as a clinical note. The letter needs little prefatory explication. Mr. Jack Newburgher had been a patient in psychoanalytic treatment for four years, with a quite successful outcome. On two occasions in the course of his therapy a joint session had been held with Mr. Newburgher and his wife, Muriel, when changes in his behavior had precipitated crises in the marital relationship. His therapy had terminated about two years before the visit referred to in the letter. Mr. Newburgher had called and asked for a joint consultation with Muriel about an acute family problem they were experiencing. Some — not all — of the background material was described, not nearly as coherently as it is reported in Muriel's letter, but in sufficient detail to make it plain that she was in distress about having to withdraw completely from her parents and that their family was in disarray as a consequence of her distress. The acuteness of the emotional disturbance, against a background of a lifelong adversary relationship between Muriel and her father and a history of ten years of illness on her fathers' part, suggested that the distress was the product of Muriel's anxiety and guilt over a decision to cut herself off completely from her parents. As a consequence, Muriel was urged to visit her family of origin, with the caveat that she might indeed discover them to be malignantly self-centered people indifferent to their effect on her and her family, but that she would at least have the gratification of having tried. The reference to “speaking French” was to the therapist having suggested that, on the other hand, she might find that her parents expressed their feelings in a different modality from her definitions of how feelings should be expressed, much as though their native tongue were French and she were insisting that they must speak to her in English.     

Conceptual memory for picture and prose episodes

In two experiments, subjects decided whether probes were true or false of one of some previously studied picture and prose episodes. The results indicated that response times to probes depicting explicit events were faster when they were in the same modality (picture or prose) as their episodes than when they were in the opposite modality, but response times to probes depicting implicit events were as fast when they were in the opposite modality as when they were in the same modality. These results suggest that the conceptual representations of picture and prose episodes are identical in form. The second experiment indicated that probes could be evaluated as fast from long as from short episodes. This result is consistent with the notion that retrieving information from episodes is done, not by scanning all the events of an episode, but by restricting the search only to the relevant slot in the schema into which the episode is assimilated.     

The Parent's Nazi Past and the Dialogue Between the Generations

This paper considers the impact of the Nazi past on the succeeding generation in Germany and on the dialogue between the two generations, using the theoretical framework of the dynamics of delegation — missions entrusted to parents by their children. Those issues became manifest in the course of conjoint family interviews with adolescents and young adults whose parents had been identified with the Nazi past.     

Material, Myth, and Magic: A Cultural Approach to Family Therapy

This paper presents a model for a therapeutic approach to the cultural systems of families. Using anthropologically derived concepts of material and ideational planes of culture, magic, and ritualistic intervention, the inducement of culture change in frozen familial systems is framed in dialectical terms. Four brief case studies are presented describing the systems engaged, the material-ideational rituals employed, and the cultural transformations induced. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of some of the theoretical and practical implications of this cultural approach to the family in therapy.