Vicarious traumatisation of counsellors and effects on their workplaces

The literature on therapists' reactions to clients' traumatic material is Critically reviewed. The various attempts within this relatively new literature to conceptualise this phenomenon include countertransference, compassion fatigue and vicarious traumatisation. The limited research evidence is evaluated and found to support anecdotal accounts by trauma therapists. Empathic engagement with trauma survivors is necessary for effective psychotherapeutic intervention. However, empathic engagement also makes therapists vulnerable to the detrimental effects of vicarious trauma, with consequent negative effects on individual counsellor effectiveness and organisational dynamics in the workplace.     

Stimulus-governance and the hyperkinetic syndrome

The hypothesis that hyperkinetic children are stimulusgoverned was tested. In a sample of 39 nonmedicated hyperkinetic boys 26 were found to be stimulus-governed. In a control sample of 20 nonmedicated boys 6 were found to be stimulus-governed. An association was found between the hyperkinetic syndrome and stimulusgovernance. The hypothesis is raised that response to methylphenidate is related to stimulusgovernance. Several issues raised by the research are discussed.This research was supported in part by a grant from Bloemendaal Psychiatric Hospital, The Hague, The Netherlands. The authors wish to thank Mr. E. M. Ockhorst, for constructing the KFA-testing equipment, and Mr. R. Reyneart, for helping with the computer analysis. An earlier draft of the paper was presented at the European Conference of Neuropsychology, sponsored by the International Neuropsychology Society, at Oxford University, England.     

Clues to aural discrimination

Five measures of the items of the Multiple-Choice Intelligibility Test were obtained: apparent aural similarity of the four words available to a listener on hearing a stimulus, interconsonantal differences among the prevocalic portions of these words, phonemic discrepancies among these words, distinctive feature differences among these words, and the pooled discrimination score of the four words that were available to the responder on hearing the stimulus. The last score was made the target in a multiple correlation problem, and the relative contribution, combined and separately, of the four remaining measures to the target measure was determined. These four measures accounted for approximately 45% of the variance among the scores of discrimination. The strongest contributors were apparent aural similarity of the available responses and the phonemic discrepancy among the available responses.     

Authoritarianism among border police officers, career soldiers, and airport security guards at the Israeli border

Several personality theories focusing on specific personality variables involved in career choice and job satisfaction are based on the assumption that individuals choose certain career choices because they believe that they may be able to meet their emotional needs (J. L. Holland, 1977). The author of this study investigated the personality traits of border police officers, career soldiers, and airport security guards in Israel. The participants were 160 men--40 border policemen, 40 career soldiers, 40 airport security guards, and 40 control participants--who filled out a demographic questionnaire and a Hebrew version of the right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) shortened scale (B. Altemeyer, personal communication, February 2000). The present hypothesis predicted that the RWA scores of border police officers would be the highest, followed by those of career soldiers, airport security guards, and control participants, in that order. Statistically significant differences in RWA scores occurred between these groups in the predicted order, with the exception of the career soldiers' RWA scores, which did not significantly differ from those of the airport security guards.     

Cognitive efficiency modes in old age: performance on sequential and coordinative verbal and visuospatial tasks

In an experiment using a large set of verbal and spatial tasks requiring low or high degrees of executive control, 3 distinct age-related effects were found. The smallest effect (no slowing) was tied to lexical tasks with low executive involvement, the largest deficit (age-related slowing factor of 2.2) was tied to visuospatial tasks with high executive involvement, an intermediate level of deficit (slowing factor of 1.7) was found for visuospatial tasks with low executive load and verbal tasks with high executive load. These age-related dissociations were incompatible with any "common cause" formulation. The mechanism responsible for the dissociation between verbal and visual tasks, and between low and high executive load remains to be determined. The latter may reflect capacity limits.     

Executive control of cognitive processes in task switching

In 4 experiments, participants alternated between different tasks or performed the same task repeatedly. The tasks for 2 of the experiments required responding to geometric objects in terms of alternative classification rules, and the tasks for the other 2 experiments required solving arithmetic problems in terms of alternative numerical operations. Performance was measured as a function of whether the tasks were familiar or unfamiliar, the rules were simple or complex, and visual cues were present or absent about which tasks should be performed. Task alternation yielded switching-time costs that increased with rule complexity but decreased with task cuing. These factor effects were additive, supporting a model of executive control that has goal-shifting and rule-activation stages for task switching. It appears that rule activation takes more time for switching from familiar to unfamiliar tasks than for switching in the opposite direction.     

Using segmented linear regression models with unknown change points to analyze strategy shifts in cognitive tasks

Some years ago, Beem (1993, 1995) described a program for fitting two regression lines with an unknown change point (Segcurve). He suggested that such models are useful for the analysis of a variety of phenomena and gave an example of an application to the study of strategy shifts in a mental rotation task. This technique has also proven to be very fruitful for investigating strategy use and strategy shifts in other cognitive tasks. Recently, Beem (1999) developed SegcurvN, which fitsn regression lines with (n - 1) unknown change points. In the present article we present this new technique and demonstrate the usefulness of a three-phase segmented linear regression model for the identification of strategies and strategy shifts in cognitive tasks by applying it to data from a numerosity judgment experiment. The advantages and shortcomings of this technique are evaluated.