Pastoral work,metacommunication and myth

The writer discusses two phenomena the pastoral counselor encounters in work with families and individuals: family survival myths and individual survival myths or fatal statements. Family survival myths are inefficient defense mechanisms, directed at the support of the parental relationship and the maintenance of the family balance. Fatal statements are expressions inherited from the family of origin. They function as myths and are intended to help one survive. From his perspective the pastor can, through a process of metacommunication, open the possibility to discuss the myth and so help people to free themselves from an unhealthy and life inhibiting bondage.     

The treatment of epilepsies with Convulsofin

The testing of Convulsofin carried out in 220 patients at 14 clinics over a period of six months confirms the international experience gained with valproic acid and sodium valproinate. The main field of application of Convulsofin according to the experience gained will again be the treatment of fits in generalised primary epilepsy for which it permits to carry out a monotherapy to a remarkable extent. The favourable effect of the preparation in photosensitivity could be confirmed. Also in generalised secondary epilepsy and in fits of partial epilepsy. Convulsofin is partly effective, so that it can recommended as a co-medication in the treatment of therapy-resistant forms of these epilepsies which are difficult to treat. Decrease in thrombocytes, transient increase in serum transaminases, gastrointestinal disorders, loss of hair and undesired increases in body-weight were the more frequently occurring side-effects.     

The development of handedness and dichotic ear listening asymmetries in relation to school achievement: A longitudinal study

To assess the development of dichotic ear asymmetries and handedness, 208 male school children were evaluated in kindergarten and at Grades 2 and 5 (ages 66, 92, and 130 months of age, respectively) with a dichotic listening task and a hand preference test. The Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT) also was administered at each of the three grade levels. There was significant variability in handedness scores over time only for those subjects whose scores at initial testing, that is, in kindergarten, identified them as non-right-handers. Both right and left handers had a significant increase in dichotic listening scores over time; however, only right handers had a significant right ear advantage at each evaluation. Regression analyses showed that combined hand preference scores and ear recall scores at each probe when combined accounted for almost 44% of the variance in WRAT achievement scores at Grade 5. Ear asymmetry scores, however, were not predictive of school achievement.     

Variations of the Bender-Gestalt Test: implications for training and practice

Although the Bender-Gestalt Visual Motor Test has been a popular and influential clinical assessment instrument for the last half century, authoritative opinion and a substantial research literature are often inconsistent or contradictory. This paper documents variations in designs, administration procedures, forms, and applications to particular populations. A careful review of scoring systems indicates the current status of objective approaches as contrasted with interpretation that is global, intuitive, and subjective. Some implications of these variations and interpretive procedures for training and assessment practice are discussed. The major conclusions of the review are summarized in seven points.     

The roles of self-esteem and self-consciousness in the Wortman-Brehm model of reactance and learned helplessness

The present experiments were designed to study the conditions under which failure would enhance or inhibit subsequent task performance. Based on the theory of Wortman and Brehm (1975), it was expected that small amounts of failure would produce reactance (manifested by improved performance at a subsequent task), whereas large amounts would lead to learned helplessness (i.e., impaired later performance). It was further expected that individual differences in self-esteem and private self-consciousness would serve as moderator variables for the above effects. In Experiment 1, subjects were exposed to either a small amount of failure or no failure before working on an anagrams task. As predicted, subjects high in self-consciousness, who have shown greater reactance arousal in attitude change studies, performed better on the anagrams task than subjects low in self-consciousness in the small-failure condition, but not in the no-failure condition. Further analyses revealed that this Self-Consciousness X Small Failure interaction was attributable to the performance data of the low, but not the high self-esteem subjects. Experiment 2 was designed to replicate and extend these results. Subjects were pretreated with either a small amount of failure, an extended amount of failure, or no failure before working on the anagrams task. A significant Self-Esteem X Helplessness Training interaction emerged. Relative to the no-failure condition, in which the two self-esteem groups did not differ, low self-esteem participants (low SEs) performed marginally better than did high self-esteem individuals (high SEs) in the small-failure condition but significantly worse than high SEs in the extended-failure condition. The effect of private self-consciousness was considerably weaker in this study, possibly because the sample included few low SEs (who are especially influenced by self-focused attention) who were also relatively low in self-consciousness. Questionnaire data from Experiment 2 were consistent with the notion that enhanced performance reflected reactance, whereas impaired performance signified helplessness.     

Factor analysis of the interpersonal trust scale with a noncollege population

This study tested the invariance of the factorial structure of Rotter's Interpersonal Trust Scale (ITS) in a noncollege population. Exploratory factor analysis of the responses of 214 volunteers yielded three factors interpreted as Exploitation, Sincerity, and Institutional Trust. This factor solution was cross-validated in a confirmation sample of 196 volunteers. Cosines between corresponding factors were high across samples and across sex. The similarity was pointed out between the present factor structure and the results of earlier studies with college students. Implications for possible refinement of the ITS were discussed.     

The development of derived stimulus relations through training in arbitrary-matching sequences

Five-year-old children were taught three-stage sequences of arbitrary matching: A-C, B-C, A-D; A-C, B-D, B-C; or A-C, A-D, B-C. Each stage refers to a sample-comparison relation between stimuli. Unreinforced test probes revealed untrained arbitrary matches (B-D, A-D, and B-D, respectively), derivable by substitution of stimuli with a common sample or comparison function. Additional probes revealed further untrained sample-comparison relations derivable by substitution and identity, including the commuted relations D-B, D-A, and D-B, respectively. These processes may have relevance to conceptual and verbal behavior.     

The microanalysis of fixed-interval responding

The fixed-interval schedule of reinforcement is one of the more widely studied schedules in the experimental analysis of behavior and is also a common baseline for behavior pharmacology. Despite many intensive studies, the controlling variables and the pattern of behavior engendered are not well understood. The present study examined the microstructure and superstructure of the behavior engendered by a fixed-interval 5- and a fixed-interval 15-minute schedule of food reinforcement in the pigeon. Analysis of performance typical of fixed-interval responding indicated that the scalloped pattern does not result from smooth acceleration in responding, but, rather, from renewed pausing early in the interval. Individual interresponse-time (IRT) analyses provided no evidence of acceleration. There was a strong indication of alternation in shorter-longer IRTs, but these shorter-longer IRTs did not occur at random, reflecting instead a sequential dependency in successive IRTs. Furthermore, early in the interval there was a high relative frequency of short IRTs. Such a pattern of early pauses and short IRTs does not suggest behavior typical of reinforced responding as exemplified by the pattern found near the end of the interval. Thus, behavior from clearly scalloped performance can be classified into three states: postreinforcement pause, interim behavior, and terminal behavior.     

Pavlovian processes do mediate control of the “advance” response strategy

Two parallel experiments used pigeons in a transfer of control design to determine the basis of the transfer of the use of the “advance strategy” across successive discriminations (W. K. Honig & H. Lindsay, Learning and Motivation, 1975, 6, 157–178). Pigeons were first trained under instrumental contingencies to use an “advance” response to maximize their exposure to S^D and minimize their exposure to S^Δ. Then orthogonal stimuli (key lights in Experiment 1 and diffuse illuminations in Experiment 2) were independently established through separate discriminative Pavlovian procedures as CS+ and CS? or as CS^o's. Later in special tests, it was demonstrated that the associative values of the Pavlovian CS's were a major factor governing the use of the advance strategy: only pigeons exposed to $\text{CS+}\text{CS?}$ used the advance response to regulate their exposure to either CS. Although these experiments showed that the necessary and sufficient conditions for utilization of the advance strategy are the Pavlovian associative values of the discriminative stimuli, opportunity for differential “operant” responding during the discriminative stimuli seems to be a contributor to the optimal use of the advance response across successive discriminations.