Mentalism, behavior-behavior relations, and a behavior-analytic view of the purposes of science

In a behavioral view, the purposes of science are primarily prediction and control. To the extent that a scientist embraces both of these as a unified and generally applicable criterion for science, certain philosophical and theoretical practices are counterproductive, including mentalism in both its metaphysical and metatheoretical forms. It is possible and often worthwhile to recast some mentalistic talk into an issue of behavior-behavior relations. When behavior-behavior relations are approached non-mechanistically, however, analysis cannot stop at the level of the relations themselves. Several analytic concepts common in the behavioral community share some of the dangers of mentalism if not employed properly, including such concepts as self-reinforcement, response-produced stimulation, and self-rules.     

Single-gender group psychotherapy: A “women's group” for adolescent inpatients

This paper describes an attempt at forming and conducting a unique single-gender psychotherapy group with severely disturbed female adolescents on a long-term, psychotherapeutically oriented co-ed inpatient unit. The focus of this group was assisting the female patients in negotiating the tasks and conflicts specific to their gender and developmental stage. The therapeutic approach and the role of female coleaders are described, emphasizing particular modifications made to meet the needs of this group. Clinical examples are offered to high-light salient group themes of identity formation and separation and individuation. Finally, group therapeutic factors specifically enhanced by single gender membership are discussed and observations regarding the group/milieu interface are explored.     

In-Service Courses in Human Relations: One Teacher's Learning

Human relations training includes counselling as an important ingredient. This case-study reports the learning of one primary deputy headteacher during a six-day course, and her continuing efforts to use and extend that learning during the following year. She reported an improvement in classroom discipline, and less stressful and more effective relationships with colleagues and pupils, linking these gains with insights and skills developed on the course. The value to course designers of goal-setting structures is illustrated by the study. Such structures provide an opportunity to take part in, and study, counselling interventions which have real problems as their focus.     

Factors Perceived as Helpful by the Members of Self-Help Groups: An Exploratory Study

The factors perceived as helpful by members of three different types of self-help groups are examined, using the 12 factors identified by Yalom as operative in group psychotherapy. Questionnaires were given to 45 members of self-help groups, asking for their views of the most and least helpful aspects of their experiences of their group, and for their judgement of its effectiveness. Results indicated that members of a group concerned with social and personal support in the face of a socially problematic situation (widowhood) found the experience of Universality to be the most helpful factor, while Self-Disclosure was least helpful. Members from a group for the physically sick (asthma sufferers) also reported the least helpful factor to be Self-Disclosure, but said that the most helpful factor was Guidance. By contrast, the group concerned with providing 'therapy' for depressives reported Cohesiveness to be most helpful, and Guidance to be least helpful. Comparison with other studies using similar methodologies with different group populations suggests that the factors likely to be effective in self-help groups for the socially unsupported and physically sick on the one hand, and for the psychologically disturbed on the other, may differ.     

The influence of emotional meaning on the recall of words processed for form or self-reference

Summary How much does the recall of affectively positive, negative, and neutral words that differ in their emotional impact depend on the conceptual processing of these words? To answer this question one group of subjects were requested to rate the pronounceability of these words (formal orienting task), but were later tested for recall. Subsequently, they were asked to judge the intensity of the emotions aroused by the words. Another group of subjects received the latter, self-related task prior to the first exposure to the words. In both conditions the highly affect-arousing words were better recalled than the less emotional words. The affectively positive words were particularly well recalled, but only by those subjects involved in the formal orienting task. It is concluded that words are evaluated for their emotional content at an early stage of information processing as defined by Craik and Lockhart (1972).Extended version of an earlier paper delivered at the 34. Kongreß der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Psychologie in Vienna, 1984     

The role of spatial-frequency channels in the perception of local and global structure

Adaptation and reaction-time techniques were used to examine the role of different spatial-frequency channels in the perception of local and global structure. Subjects were shown figures consisting of a large C composed of smaller Cs and asked to identify the orientation of either the global C or its local elements. Prior to performing the task subjects were adapted to different spatial frequencies and the effect on subsequent performance was assessed. Two main results were found. First, the adapting frequency that most affected the global task was often lower than that most affecting the local task, suggesting that high and low frequencies independently code the structure of an image. Second, reaction time to global figures was often faster than to local figures at all levels of detectability, again suggesting a role of low-frequency channels in global processing.     

Static depiction of movement

A number of pictorial devices were compared in order to assess their relative effectiveness in depicting events. Effectiveness, as measured by a rating task, did not seem to be a function of the classification of a device as natural or metaphorical. Rather, it depended on whether a given device highlighted a distinctive aspect of a particular event (running, jumping, or moving), or simply modified the event. This observation was buttressed by the existence in a forced-choice task of a category boundary for depictions of running (pictures with a certain device were seen as running, those without it were not) but not for moving or jumping. Even preschool children displayed some understanding of metaphorical devices. They chose figures with those devices as running faster than the experimental standard. Results are discussed in the context of Kennedy's characterization of pictorial metaphors and Gibson's framework for understanding the relationship between pictorial and environmental information.     

AN IDIOGRAPHIC APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF WOMEN'S ACHIEVEMENT STRIVING

Biographical interviews with 80 women ranging in age from the late teens to the 80s (Mean Age = 46.8 years; SD = 7.8 years) elicited information concerning personality characteristics that predispose women toward achievement-striving behavior, taking into account the effects of family, friends, and role models. When asked if they had ever been in a situation where they were about to succeed and feared the success, the majority of women (91 %) replied "no". A large percentage of women (96%) did report that they wonder if their achievements are worth it and asked "success at what cost?" In addition, compared to older women, younger women were more concerned with interpersonal relationships and less concerned with competitive achievement. The reality status of the fear of success construct as well as methodological advances in its measurement are discussed.     

Interaction of emotion and cognition in word recall

Summary Previous research has demonstrated that the emotional properties of words and their imaginability affect their recallability and that verbal material is recalled better when it is related to subjects' current concerns. This study investigates the extent to which this effect of emotion on recall varies as a function of cognitively controllable inference processes and examines the relation of the effects of emotion to those of imaginability and concern-relatedness. Forty different words were presented visually under one of six orienting conditions that varied according to what the subject was asked to rate: their length, pronounceability, concreteness, defineability, the strength of emotion elicited by the word, and the relation of the word to personal concerns. Subjects were then asked to write as many words as they could recall. Words that aroused stronger emotion and were easier to represent in imagery were recalled better than emotionally less arousing and imaginally less evocative words, regardless of the nature of the orienting task. The evidence suggests that the emotional properties of words are evaluated automatically in an early processing stage, without requiring subjects to reflect on word content. Emotional arousal appears to mediate the effects of current concerns on recall. It is correlated with but appears to function independently of word imaginability.