On second-order family therapy

If family therapists remain aware of the indivisible and recursive nature of their interactions with families, and if they use this awareness to form a collaborative rather than a hierarchical therapeutic system, and at the same time minimize their attempts to change persons or family structures in strategic or predetermined ways, then they may be said to be practicing a "second-order" family therapy. This article analyzes the development of the second-order position on therapist power and influence, concluding that it is inconsistent and possibly disingenuous.     

The assessment of child abuse potential and the prevention of child abuse and neglect: A policy analysis

A frequently advocated strategy for increasing the efficiency of child abuse prevention programs is to deliver prevention services to "high-risk" populations. This article critically reviews procedures for the reliable and valid assessment of child abuse potential within an ecological perspective. Factors that limit the usefulness of child abuse risk assessment are discussed. These factors include the uncertain criteria of child abuse and neglect, the low base rate of the phenomenon, and the financial and social costs of such procedures. Finally, the prevention implications of the current and future state of the art in child abuse risk assessment are considered and preventive interventions that do not depend on individual case risk screening are advocated.     

A comparison of alternative theoretical approaches to smoking cessation and relapse

Two theoretical approaches to smoking cessation were compared. Participants were randomly assigned either to (a) a traditional treatment program that used contingency contracting and that emphasized the necessity for absolute abstinence (AA) or to (b) a relapse-prevention (RP) treatment that focused on gradual acquisition of nonsmoking skills. It was hypothesized that participants in the RP treatment would be less successful initially but would have better maintenance skills and thus would relapse less during a 1-year follow-up period. Each program was evaluated in two formats: group-based treatment and self-help materials. Results indicated comparable 1-year abstinence rates for all treatments, although more participants dropped out of the self-help formats. Participants in the RP intervention were more likely to lapse sooner after quitting and were more likely to quit again during the 1-year maintenance period. Exploratory analyses of successful participants suggested that women were more successful in the RP program and that men had greater success with the AA approach.     

Spatial coding in the processing of anaphor by good and poor readers: Evidence from eye movement analyses

An experiment that examined the way in which young readers deployed eye movements while reading sentences and while answering questions containing either a pronominal or noun anaphor is reported. To evaluate the possible causal role played by differences in inspection strategies between readers of above- and below-average reading skill, a third“age control” group of younger children was also tested. This group was matched on absolute reading ability with the less skilled group of older children, and on relative reading ability (i.e. reading quotient) with the more skilled group. Differences in inspection strategy were apparent between the groups of good and poor readers. Good readers launched more selective reinspections, whereas the poorer readers were more inclined to engage in“backtracking” and appeared to make less use of the displayed text. In every case there was a marked similarity in the behaviour of the good readers and the“age controls”. These results suggest that the ability to code the spatial location of words in a sentence, and, where necessary, to use this information to launch accurately targetted selective reinspections of previously read text, plays a crucial role in the development of skilled reading performance.     

The distorted room illusion, equivalent configurations, and the specificity of static optic arrays

The distorted room illusion (DRI) and the attendant argument for perceptual ambiguity is critically analyzed from a Gibsonian/ecological point of view. The notions of multiple specification, conflicting information, and perceptual skill are invoked in showing how the ecological approach can accommodate illusion effects that may remain under mobile binocular viewing conditions. Static optic arrays are shown not to be ambiguous. So-called equivalent configurations are found to be analytic artifacts, appearing when the problem of information is treated in geometrical terms without regard for constraints due to physical and ecological regularities. The relative importance of motion-based and motion-independent information is discussed.     

Focused search of semantic cases in question answering

Three experiments tested the hypothesis that people can execute focused searches of semantic cases when answering questions about complex facts, such as “the teacher watered the peas, the corn, and the lettuce with the hose.” In Experiment 1, answer time varied mainly with the number of concepts in the relevant or focused case, supporting the hypothesis. Experiment 2 indicated that the irrelevant case undergoes some processing. Experiment 3 confirmed that search in Experiments 1 and 2 focused on semantic cases rather than on taxonomic categories. It is proposed that focused memory search has a high probability of retrieving the relevant case and a low probability of retrieving the irrelevant case. In the latter event, the irrelevant concepts receive full processing.