'Paradox: a pivotal point in therapy'

This paper describes a family who had been known to the professional caring agencies for some five years. At the time of treatment, the family had fifteen-year old twin sons whose frequently aggressive behaviour was the focus of the referred problem. It was agreed that the author would attempt to work with this family should they be re-referred, with a view to offering an alternative mode of treatment. A structural framework of therapy was tried, but very shortly therapeutic attempts to help solve the problems were assimilated by the family and seemed to serve only to ensure their continuation. At this point, a powerful paradoxical intervention was tried in order to free both family and therapists from perpetuating a 'more of the same'. This tactic allowed time for treatment from a more structural base to continue. In this context, consideration is given to the nature of pathological and therapeutic double binding. Some of the difficulties inherent in attempting new methods of treatment from within a traditional casework setting with its statutory responsibilities are also discussed.     

Orthodoxy in family therapy practice as servant or tyrant

This paper considers some of the pitfalls of a single-model approach to family therapy. It does not argue a 'right' way of practising family therapy, but proposes that the therapist needs to have available a range of approaches on which to draw. This also raises certain problems for training in family therapy, which are highlighted. A case is discussed in the light of a number of perspectives, to demonstrate how approaches can be used in complementary fashion. Finally, reference is made to some of the agency constraints which also make it difficult to practise any one model in a 'pure' form.     

Orientational anisotropy in the human visual system

When a target stimulus in a predesignated location is identified by a keypress response, responses are slightly faster if noise stimuli in adjacent locations are identical to the target than if they are a different stimulus assigned to the same response (a repeated-stimulus superiority effect). An exception to this result has been found in experiments that used randomly intermixed letter and digit stimuli. These experiments showed slower responding for identical noise than for nonidentical, response-compatible noise (a repeated-stimulus inferiority effect). The present study investigated these phenomena in three experiments. Experiments 1 and 2 established that both the superiority and inferiority effects can be obtained in the same experiment. They also provided evidence that the repeated-stimulus inferiority effect is a function of the intermixing of letters and digits and not of the larger target-set size that has been used for mixed lists. Experiment 3 demonstrated that, with unmixed presentation, the repeated-stimulus superiority effect is enhanced by an increase in the number of stimuli assigned to each response. The experiments are consistent with accounts that attribute the repeated-stimulus superiority effect to competition that occurs when different internal recognition responses are activated. Moreover, the experiments suggest that the repeated-stimulus inferiority effect has its basis in processes that occur subsequent to feature extraction.     

Recently inhibited responses are avoided for both masked and nonmasked primes in a spatial negative priming task

Responding to the location of a target is delayed when the target arises at a position previously occupied by a distractor (ignored-repetition trial), relative to when it occurs at a formerly unoccupied location (control trial) [i.e., the spatial negative priming (SNP) effect]. Speculation has held that recently inhibited (distractor) responses resist future execution (i.e., execution resistance [ER]), and thus cause SNP. Evidence for ER has been reported for identity-based tasks using masked prime distractor events. The purpose of this study was to examine the potential impact of ER on response selection in an SNP task for both nonmasked (traditional) and masked primes. We employed a modified SNP task that included nonmasked and masked target-only and distractor-only visual primes (first trial), along with forced choice and free choice probes (second trial). On free choice trials, a selection bias against the prime-distractor-assigned response was evident (same-hand competition, for both nonmasked and masked primes). This selection avoidance was held to reflect ER operating with inhibited prime distractor responses. Further, inhibitory aftereffect patterns were the same for nonmasked and masked distractor primes, and masking target primes transformed a positive to a negative aftereffect, as predicted by the self-inhibition model of mask function set out by Schlaghecken and Eimer (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 11, 463-468, 2004).