One-session cognitive treatment of dental phobia: preparing dental phobics for treatment by restructuring negative cognitions

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of a single session of cognitive restructuring in a sample of phobic dental patients. Fifty-two patients were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: cognitive restructuring (modification of negative cognitions), provision of information (about oral health and dental treatment), and a waiting list control condition. Both interventions maximally lasted one hour. In comparison with the waiting list control condition and the information intervention condition, the cognitive intervention condition not only showed a large decrease in frequency and believability of negative cognitions, but also exhibited a clear decline in dental trait anxiety. Analysis at a follow-up of one year demonstrated a further, drastic reduction in dental anxiety in both intervention conditions, wherein the difference among these conditions was not maintained. It is concluded that it is possible to obtain substantial reductions of dental trait anxiety through a single session of cognitive restructuring. Nevertheless, repeated exposure to the dental situation seems necessary for a further reduction of anxiety.     

The logics of orthoalgebras

The notion of unsharp orthoalgebra is introduced and it is proved that the category of unsharp orthoalgebras is isomorphic to the category of D-posets. A completeness theorem for some partial logics based on unsharp orthoalgebras, orthoalgebras and orthomodular posets is proved.     

The recollective experience of cross-modality confusion errors

There are at least two qualitatively different types of subjective experience that can accompany accurate recognition memory. Sometimes recognition is accompanied by conscious recollection of the learning episode (i.e., it isremembered), and in other cases it is not (i.e., it is simplyknown that the item is old). In the present study, we assessed the subjective experience that accompanies crossmodality confusion errors (misidentifying words as pictures) by measuring the extent to which subjects claimed toremember versusknow that the item was presented as a picture. The results of two experiments demonstrate that cross-modality confusion errors are often accompanied by conscious recollection, although not to the same extent as accurate memories. The findings also show that there is considerable overlap in the recollective experience that accompanies accurate and erroneous memories. Finally, the results support the contention that recollective experience cannot be directly inferred from test performance.     

The relationship between locus of control and long-term stuttering treatment outcome in adult stutterers

The present study was designed to investigate the extent to which adult stutterers' scores on the Locus of Control of Behaviour (LCB) scale are predictive of their ability to maintain speech fluency immediately following intensive treatment and approximately 2 years later. Twenty-one subjects participated in a 3-week intensive treatment program based on the Precision Fluency Shaping Program. Thirteen subjects could be contacted again 2 years later to participate in a follow-up evaluation. While most subjects showed a significant long-term improvement in fluency, no predictive relationship was found between scores on the LCB scale and the level of fluency, measured in percentage of words stuttered, post-treatment or at follow-up. However, LCB scores were found to be predictive of the subjects' fluency self-evaluation measured post-treatment and at follow-up. Overall, the present study suggests that while the LCB scale may contribute to the prediction of long-term treatment outcome, particularly as perceived by the client, other client and process variables will need to be considered as well.     

Perceptual scaling of synthesized musical timbres: Common dimensions,specificities, and latent subject classes

To study the perceptual structure of musical timbre and the effects of musical training, timbral dissimilarities of synthesized instrument sounds were rated by professional musicians, amateur musicians, and nonmusicians. The data were analyzed with an extended version of the multidimensional scaling algorithm CLASCAL (Winsberg & De Soete, 1993), which estimates the number of latent classes of subjects, the coordinates of each timbre on common Euclidean dimensions, a specificity value of unique attributes for each timbre, and a separate weight for each latent class on each of the common dimensions and the set of specificities. Five latent classes were found for a three-dimensional spatial model with specificities. Common dimensions were quantified psychophysically in terms of log-rise time, spectral centroid, and degree of spectral variation. The results further suggest that musical timbres possess specific attributes not accounted for by these shared perceptual dimensions. Weight patterns indicate that perceptual salience of dimensions and specificities varied across classes. A comparison of class structure with biographical factors associated with degree of musical training and activity was not clearly related to the class structure, though musicians gave more precise and coherent judgments than did nonmusicians or amateurs. The model with latent classes and specificities gave a better fit to the data and made the acoustic correlates of the common dimensions more interpretable.     

Auditory temporal perception deficits in the reading-impaired: A critical review of the evidence

We assess evidence and arguments brought forward by Tallal (e.g., 1980) and by the target paper (Farmer & Klein, 1995) for a general deficit in auditory temporal perception as the source of phonological deficits in impaired readers. We argue that (1) errors in temporal order judgment of both syllables and tones reflect difficulty in identifying similar (and so readily confusable) stimuli rapidly, not in judging their temporal order; (2) difficulty in identifying similar syllables or tones rapidly stem from independent deficits in speech and nonspeech discriminative capacity, not from a general deficit in rate of auditory perception; and (3) the results of dichotic experiments and studies of aphasics purporting to demonstrate left-hemisphere specialization for nonspeech auditory temporal perception are inconclusive. The paper supports its arguments with data from a recent control study. We conclude that, on the available evidence, the phonological deficit of impaired readers cannot be traced to any co-occurring nonspeech deficits so far observed and is phonetic in origin, but that its full nature, origin, and extent remain to be determined.     

My place,your place,and no place: Behavior settings as a risk factor for HIV-related injection practices of drug users in Baltimore,Maryland

Information is sparse on the social context of illicit drug injection behaviors and their relationship to HIV infection. This study examined relationships between injection settings, injecting with others, and HIV risk behaviors of sharing needles and not cleaning contaminated needles in a sample of 630 inner-city injecting drug users in Baltimore, MD. Through open-ended interviews, five primary settings of injection behavior were identified. These settings included one's own, friends' and mother's residence, shooting galleries, and semipublic areas. Most participants reported injecting in their own residence (92%) and friends' residence (86%) in the prior 6 months. In a multiple regression analysis, injecting at friends' residence, in shooting galleries, and in semipublic areas and frequency of injecting with others were significantly associated with frequency of sharing uncleaned needles, “slipping” (i.e., failure to disinfect shared needles), and not always cleaning used needles before injecting. Results suggest that interventions may benefit from targeting settings as well as behaviors to reduce the spread of HIV. This research was supported by grants DA04334, DA05911, DA06313, and DA08985 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.     

Memory impairment and source misattribution in postevent misinformation experiments with short retention intervals

The four experiments reported here provide evidence that (1) misleading postevent suggestions can impair memory for details in a witnessed event and (2) subjects sometimes remember sug-gested details as things seen in the event itself. All four experiments used recall tests in which subjects were warned of the possibility that the postevent information included misleading sug-gestions and were instructed to report both what they witnessed in the event and what was men-tioned in the postevent narrative. Recall of event details was poorer on misled items than on control items, and subjects sometimes misidentified the sources of their recollections. Our re-sults suggest that these findings are not due to guessing or response biases, but rather reflect genuine memory impairment and source monitoring confusions.