The Props are Falling Down and We Want to Make Music: A Narrative Perspective on Organisations in Transition (Violins/Violence in Organisations)

While South African society finds itself in the throes of political changes, therapists working within organisations in transition find themselves challenged by the turbulence of transformation. The authors are a group of therapists attempting to understand, from a narrative perspective, the organisational context within which they work. This paper recounts the processes around the design, implementation, and outcomes of a workshop on this theme. The main body of the paper consists of a letter that was sent to participants after the workshop. The reader is invited to join collaboratively in our reflections so as to continue an open-ended, creative process.     

The genesis and use of exemplar vs. prototype knowledge in abstract category learning

Accurate classification of new exemplars in an abstraction paradigm may be due to their similarity to old exemplars rather than to abstract category (or prototype) knowledge. In the present study, subjects received initial training on a two-category problem before being transferred to a task in which half of the exemplar-response pairs had their responses reversed while the remaining half of the pairs were unchanged. When transfer occurred with no delay and involved old exemplars, more errors occurred for changed than for unchanged pairs. This result implies the use of exemplar-specific rather than abstract category knowledge. However, when transfer was delayed by 24 or 72 h, errors occurred equally often for changed and unchanged pairs. This result suggests that exemplar-specific knowledge is no longer used. Since subjects were still able to accurately classify exemplars prior to the transfer task at these delays, some form of abstract category knowledge is implicated.     

Bioethics in a liberal society--political, not moral

This paper argues for the importance of the political context of a society for bioethics. In particular, I argue that in a liberal constitutional society, such as the one we find ourselves in, no particular moral perspective is granted a privileged position. Rather, individuals are allowed to live their lives according to values they adopt for themselves, and the rights granted to protect this ability "trump" social consensus, and place boundaries on the social application of personal moral beliefs and values.     

Attentional bias in anxiety: selective search or defective filtering?

Two experimental tasks were used to investigate the nature of a previously documented bias in attention associated with anxiety. Results from the first task failed to reveal any differences between anxious and nonanxious subjects, either in attention focusing or selective search for letters. The second task, with words as targets and distractors, suggested that selective search was less efficient in anxious subjects when distractors were present. Currently anxious subjects were slower than controls when required to search for the target among distractors of any type, whereas both currently anxious and recovered subjects were slower when the distractors were threatening words. It was therefore suggested that a bias favoring threat cues during perceptual search is an enduring feature of individuals vulnerable to anxiety, rather than a transient consequence of current mood state alone.     

Test modality affects source monitoring and event-related potentials

Two experiments investigated the effect of test modality (visual or auditory) on source memory and event-related potentials (ERPs). Test modality influenced source monitoring such that source memory was better when the source and test modalities were congruent. Test modality had less of an influence when alternative information (i.e., cognitive operations) could be used to inform source judgments in Experiment 2. Test modality also affected ERP activity. Variation in parietal ERPs suggested that this activity reflects activation of sensory information, which can be attenuated when the sensory information is misleading. Changes in frontal ERPs support the hypothesis that frontal systems are used to evaluate source-specifying information present in the memory trace.     

Keeping an “I” on PRIDE: Measuring Imitation in Parent-Child Interaction Therapy

In parent–child interaction therapy (PCIT), therapists encourage parents to imitate child behaviors in order to convey approval of the child’s actions and promote the development of linguistic and social–cognitive skills. However, the Dyadic Parent-Child Interaction Coding System (DPICS-IV), used to measure skills taught during PCIT, does not include guidelines for coding parent–child imitation, making it difficult to determine how PCIT affects it. The current study addresses this problem by developing guidelines for coding imitation, which were then used to code DPICS-IV segments from 58 Mexican American families that participated in a past clinical trial. Results suggest that these coding guidelines can be used to reliably measure parent and child imitation. A series of additional analyses supported the construct validity of the codes. Specifically, there was a trend for parent imitation, but not child imitation, to increase more from pre–post treatment in PCIT relative to treatment as usual. In addition, parents who imitate their children were found to have children who imitate them more in return. Finally, improvement in parent imitation, but not child imitation, was significantly related to a decrease in child behavior problems. Further study is needed to determine the optimal frequency of imitation, and findings suggest that additional attention to coaching imitation may be warranted.     

Relations of Machiavellian behavior with sales performance of stockbrokers

The hypothesis of a relationship between Machiavellian behavior and sales performance of Christie and Geis was tested with a sample of 110 stockbrokers. Scores on a measure called the Machiavellian Behavior scale were positively and significantly correlated with two self-reported measures of sales performance of the stock-brokers. Present results together with those of two earlier studies supported the hypothesis that salespeople with a Machiavellian orientation are likely to be more sucessful. Analysis of the data also indicated predictive validity and acceptable internal consistency of the Machiavellian Behavior scale. Limitations of the present study and a need for further research are discussed.