From Boulder to Stockholm in 70 Years: Single Case Experimental Designs in Clinical Research

The Psychological Record - With the objective of increasing the magnitude of treatment effects in behavioral health, there is steadily growing interest in tailoring assessments and interventions to...     

The Personality Characteristics of Methodist Ministers: Feminine Men and Masculine Women?

A detailed questionnaire was mailed to every Methodist minister engaged in circuit ministry in Great Britain. Each of the 1,339 respondents completed the Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQR-S). The male ministers recorded lower psychoticism scores than the male population norms. The female ministers recorded lower neuroticism scores than the female population norms. These findings support the view that ministry may appeal particularly to men who value and display the tender-minded personality characteristics associated with femininity and to women who value and display the stable personality characteristics associated with masculinity. Implications of these findings for ministry are discussed.     

Evaluation apprehension,hypothesis awareness,and the weapons effect

The present study was designed to extend Turner and Simons' (1974) investigation of possible experimental artifacts in aggression research. Employing a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design, 60 male subjects were given either a low or high evaluation apprehension treatment, and then were either exposed or not exposed to weapons in an otherwise close replication of the seven shock-unassociated weapons condition of Berkowitz and LePage (1967). Based on an objectively worded postexperimental questionnaire, subjects were classified as being aware or not aware that the procedures were designed to make them give more shock to their partners. The findings, which were consistent with the analysis of Berkowitz (1974) and Turner and Simons (1974), indicated that the weapons-no weapons comparison was significant only for non-apprehensive, nonaware subjects. The results were interpreted as suggesting that evaluation apprehension, hypothesis awareness, and sophistication in aggression experiments may produce inhibitions which can modify the effects of experimental manipulations.     

Psychoanalytic contributions to psychiatric nosology: forms of masochistic behavior

This paper summarizes the major strengths and weaknesses of current psychiatric nosology, and then discusses various forms of masochistic behavior as one illustration of how psychoanalysis can contribute to the continuing evolution of psychiatric nosology. Masochistic behavior is separated into behavior in which there is a predominantly conscious link between pleasure and pain, and behavior in which that link is predominantly unconscious. Both categories are further separated into normal and pathological forms. The current diagnostic category of dysthymic disorder is then discussed, with consideration given to the contribution that psychoanalysis can make toward the clarification and delineation of this heterogeneous diagnostic category.     

The child custody evaluation: Issues and trends

Custody disputes are often the crisis point in the divorcing process and the numbers of contested custody cases are increasing. Mental health professionals are being called upon to provide evaluations of these families more frequently than ever. This article focuses on how to perform child custody evaluations. It touches on the highly troublesome cases where accusations of abuse and alcoholism have been made, and how to convey to attorneys the findings of an evaluation. It begins by reviewing developments in child custody law and concludes by addressing the problems between behavioral sciences and the law in these stressful cases. The presentation of clinical examples provides a view of the decision making process, while addressing the contextual setting for these cases as well.     

Tree proofs for syllogistic

This paper presents a tree method for testing the validity of inferences, including syllogisms, in a simple term logic. The method is given in the form of an algorithm and is shown to be sound and complete with respect to the obvious denotational semantics. The primitive logical constants of the system, which is indebted to the logical works of Jevons, Brentano and Lewis Carroll, are term negation, polyadic term conjunction, and functors affirming and denying existence, and use is also made of a metalinguistic concept of formal synonymy. It is indicated briefly how the method may be extended to other systems.To the memory of Jerzy Supecki     

Social factors and the psychobiology of depression: relations between life stress and rapid eye movement sleep latency.

We examined psychosocial factors (i.e., life stress) and biological factors (i.e., REM sleep latency) that are hypothesized to be of complementary importance for defining depressive subtypes in a sample of 61 nonpsychotic, endogenous major depressives. Subjects were evaluated on several diagnostic scales for life stress, on electroencephalographic sleep data, and on 2 symptom measures for depression. As predicted, persons with severe stress that occurred shortly before depression onset had essentially normal REM latency values; patients without such stress had reduced REM latency values. Both stress and REM latency were also associated with greater severity of self-reported depressive symptoms. Alternative explanations of these findings are discussed, with particular emphasis on different roles of pre-onset and post-onset stressors.     

Intergenerational continuity of parental rejection and depressed affect.

Using survey and observational data from a sample of 451 intact families, this study used structural equation modeling to examine the intergenerational continuity of depressed mood and rejecting parenting. The model partially replicated the intergenerational model of Elder, Caspi, and Downey (1986) that indicates a cyclical transmission process by which parents' personality traits affect parent-child interaction, which, in turn, increases the propensity for developmental problems among offspring. The results indicated a pattern of intergenerational transmission of depressed mood through parental rejection of offspring. Multiple reporters and multiple indicators strengthen previous intergenerational findings by reducing some of the method variance biases that have been problematic in prior studies.