The role of encoding strategies in the verbal memory performance in patients with schizophrenia

Background. Verbal learning and memory is often compromised in patients with schizophrenia who prefer encoding words in order of their presentation (serial clustering) rather than using semantic categories (semantic clustering). Method. One hundred and four in‐patients with schizophrenia were assessed twice with the California Verbal Learning Test. Results. Patients showed significantly less semantic than serial clustering at both assessment times. Usage of encoding strategies were not stable over time. An increase in semantic clustering improved recall and recognition performance. Conclusions. Patients with schizophrenia should be taught to use the more effective encoding strategy of semantic clustering in order to improve their memory performance.     

Resilience: A Disability Studies and Community Psychology Approach

This paper contests traditional psychological understandings of resilience through reference to a research project exploring resilience in the lives of disabled people. The paper briefly historically locates individualistic accounts of resilience (which have often been unhelpful in the lives of disabled people) and then moves into more recent social constructionist theories of this phenomenon. This latter perspective necessarily locates resilience in a network of resources including material resources, relationships, identity, bodies and minds, power and control, community participation, community cohesion and social justice. We argue that the recognition of resilience as a relational product is important and in tune with attempts to make psychology less an individualistic encounter and more a community intervention. However, disabled people, their politics and the development of critical disability studies, contest and challenge normative ideas of what it means to live with a resilient network of resources. In this sense disability offers new and exciting ways of addressing resilience.     

Difficulty in implementing a family intervention for bipolar disorder: the predictive role of patient and family attributes

Family affect was examined as a predictor of difficulty implementing a 9-month, manual-based, psychoeducational family therapy for recently manic bipolar patients. Prior to therapy, family members were administered measures to assess both their expressed emotion and affective behavior during a family interaction task. Following family treatment, both therapists and independent observers rated the overall difficulty of treating the family, and therapists also rated each participant's problem behaviors during treatment, in the areas of affect, communication, and resistance. Therapists regarded affective problems among relatives and resistance among patients as central in determining the overall difficulty of treating the family. Relatives' critical behavior toward patients during the pretreatment interaction task predicted both independent observers' ratings of overall treatment difficulty and therapists' perceptions of relatives' affective problems during treatment. Moreover, patients' residual symptoms predicted independent observers' ratings of overall difficulty and therapists' perceptions of patients' resistance to the family intervention. Results suggest that difficulties in conducting a manual-based family intervention can be predicted from systematic, pretreatment family and clinical assessment.     

Call-note discriminations in black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus)

Bioacousticians (M.S. Ficken, S. R. Ficken, & S. R. Witken, 1978) classified black-capped chickadee call notes from the chick-a-dee call complex into 4 note types (A, B, C, and D) identified from sound spectrograms. In Experiment 1, chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) learned operant auditory discriminations both within and between the 4 note types but learned the between note-type discrimination significantly faster. In Experiment 2, when the original, unrewarded between-category exemplars were replaced with novel, rewarded exemplars of these same categories, chickadees showed transfer of inhibitory stimulus control to the novel exemplars. In Experiment 3, when novel exemplars were replaced by the original exemplars, chickadees showed propagation of positive stimulus control back to the original exemplars. This evidence suggests that chickadees and bioacousticians accurately sort conspecific call notes into the same open-ended categories (R. J. Herrnstein, 1990).     

Knowing good from bad: the paradox of neuroticism, negative affect, and evaluative processing

There are pragmatic benefits to trait-consistent mood states, especially when people are evaluating new objects within the environment (M. Tamir, M. D. Robinson, & G. L. Clore, 2002). The present studies, involving both naturally occurring (Studies 1 and 2) and manipulated (Study 3) mood states, demonstrated such trait-consistent interactions within the context of neuroticism and negative mood states. Individuals high in neuroticism were faster to make evaluations when in a negative mood state like sadness. By contrast, individuals low in neuroticism were faster to make evaluations when in a neutral mood state. The present studies demonstrate that although negative mood states are hedonically unpleasant, they can be beneficial in some ways for individuals high in neuroticism.     

The Challenge of Cultural Blindness: Implications for Family-Focused Service Delivery

When dealing with culturally diverse families, special education professionals need to be aware of the challenge of cultural blindness and acknowledge the cultural assumptions imbedded in the services they offer. Using data from qualitative interviews with Native American mothers and participant observations of a parent support group on their reservation, I analyze the implications of cultural blindness for the empowerment of minority families.     

Book reviews

The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History. Rodney Stark, 1996 Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press xiv + 247 pp., US$24.95, £16.95 ISBN 0–691–02749–8

Church Watch: Christianity in the Countryside. Leslie J. Francis, 1996 London: SPCK 248 pp., £9.99 ISBN 0–281–04951–3

Strategic Church Leadership. Robin Gill & Derek Burke, 1996 London: SPCK vii + 96 pp., £9.99 ISBN 0–281–04901–7

’Nice When They Are Young’: Contemporary Christianity in Families and Schools. Mairi Levitt, 1996 Aldershot: Avebury viii +171 pp., £32.50 ISBN 1–85972–388–8

Die Sekten‐Kinder. Kurt‐Helmuth Eimuth, 1996 Freiburg: Herder Verlag 239 pp., DM 19.80 (pb) ISBN 3–451–04397–1

The Good Heart: His Holiness the Dalai Lama Explores the Heart of Christianity—and of Humanity. H.H. The Dalai Lama, 1997. London: Rider xiv + 207pp., £9.99 (pb) ISBN 0–7126–7275–3

Scientists as Theologians: A Comparison of the Writings of Ian Barbour, Arthur Peacocke & John Polkinghome. John Polkinghorne, 1996 London: SPCK 95 pp., £9.99 ISBN 0–281–04945–9

Psychiatry and Religion: Context, Consensus and Controversies. Dinesh Bhugra, ed., 1996 London, New York: Routledge 236 pp., £50.00, US$65.00 ISBN 0–415–08955–7 (hb)

Ethical Issues in Six Religious Traditions. Peggy Morgan & Clive Lawton, eds, 1996 Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 278 pp., £14.95 (pb) ISBN 0–7486–0709–9

Religious Institutions and Women's Leadership: New Roles Inside the Mainstream. Catherine Wessinger, ed., 1996 Columbia: University of South Carolina Press x +434 pp., US$24.95 ISBN 1–57003–073–1

Traveller in Space: In Search of Female Identity in Tibetan Buddhism. June Campbell, 1996 London: Athlone Press 225 pp., £17.95 ISBN 0–485–11494–1

Forbidden Revolutions: Pentecostalism in Latin America, Catholicism in Eastern Europe. David Martin, 1996 London: SPCK 96 pp., £7.99 ISBN 0–281–04999–8

The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Soviet State (1939–1950) Bohdan R. Bociurkiw, 1996 Edmonton, Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press 310 pp., Ca$39.95(hb) ISBN 1–895571–12‐X

Qur'an, Liberation & Pluralism: An Islamic Perspective of Interreligious Solidarity against Oppression. Farid Esack, 1997 Oxford: Oneworld Publications xii + 288 pp., 3 Appendices + Glossary + Bibliography; £14.99, US$22.95 ISBN 1–85168–121–3

A Sociological Analysis of the Theology of Quakers: The Silent Revolution Studies in Religion and Society Volume 34 Pink Dandelion, 1996 Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press xxxiv +417 pp., £59.95 ISBN 0–7734–8807–3

Counting the Days to Armageddon: The Jehovah's Witnesses and The Second Presence of Christ Robert Crompton, 1996 Cambridge: James Clarke & Co. 160 pp., £22.50 ISBN 0–2276–7939

Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft. James R. Lewis, ed., 1996 Albany, NY: State of New York University Press vi + 423 pp., US$19.95 (pb) ISBN 0–7914–2890–7

The Divine Versus The Asurian: An Interpretation of Indo‐European Cult and Myth. Michael York, 1995 Bethesda, MD: International Scholars Publications 635 pp., US$94.95 ISBN 1–57309–029–8     

A model theory of induction

Theories of induction in psychology and artificial intelligence assume that the process leads from observation and knowledge to the formulation of linguistic conjectures. This paper proposes instead that the process yields mental models of phenomena. It uses this hypothesis to distinguish between deduction, induction, and creative forms of thought. It shows how models could underlie inductions about specific matters. In the domain of linguistic conjectures, there are many possible inductive generalizations of a conjecture. In the domain of models, however, generalization calls for only a single operation: the addition of information to a model. If the information to be added is inconsistent with the model, then it eliminates the model as false: this operation suffices for all generalizations in a Boolean domain. Otherwise, the information that is added may have effects equivalent (a) to the replacement of an existential quantifier by a universal quantifier, or (b) to the promotion of an existential quantifier from inside to outside the scope of a universal quantifier. The latter operation is novel, and does not seem to have been used in any linguistic theory of induction. Finally, the paper describes a set of constraints on human induction, and outlines the evidence in favor of a model theory of induction.     

Acceleration and suppression of rats' responding to avoid foot shock and tail shock

Signalled response-independent shocks were superimposed on rats' wheel-turn responding to avoid shock administered to their feet through a grid floor or to their tails through fixed electrodes. In Experiment I, a tone paired with response-independent foot shock increased responding in three of four rats; a tone paired with tail shock increased responding in only one of four rats and suppressed responding in two rats. In Experiment II, a tone presented randomly with respect to response-independent shock had no reliable effect on responding to avoid foot shock or tail shock. In Experiment III, tail shock and foot shock were compared in a within-subject design while the temporal pattern of responding during conditioned stimuli was recorded. Responding during the conditioned stimulus preceding foot shock was characterized by initial suppression of responding at tone onset, followed by increased responding just before response-independent shock. Responding was suppressed throughout the conditioned stimulus preceding tail shock. Foot shock elicited bursts of responding, but tail shock did not.