Collaborative Empiricism in Cognitive Therapy for Psychosis: A Practice Guide

We outline our understanding of collaborative empiricism (CE) as used in cognitive therapy (CT) for psychosis. We discuss how CE can be thought of as a technique for facilitating cognitive change in the service of a client's goals, but also as an expression of respect for client autonomy, recognizing the ethical imperative to empower clients by involving them in decisions about their care. Taking a CE approach is therefore consistent with user-led conceptualizations of recovery, and the related movements of “shared decision-making” and “evidence-based patient choice.” We discuss how CE can aid with engagement, assessment, formulation, and intervention in CT, illustrating this with case material. We focus on how CE can help with distressing intrusive experiences and beliefs, and also consider its role in helping clients achieve wider life goals. Adaptations to CE for working with people with problems with learning, attention, and memory are discussed, as are considerations for working with high conviction and conceptual disorganization.     

Understanding provoked overt recognition in prosopagnosia

Prosopagnosic patients are unable to recognize overtly the faces of familiar people. However, under specific experimental conditions, overt recognition of faces has been induced in some prosopagnosics. This phenomenon of provoked overt recognition has proved challenging for current theories of face recognition. We first describe clinical demonstrations of provoked overt recognition, before highlighting some critical features that any satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon must accommodate. An account of provoked overt recognition is then put forward, couched within the framework of Burton, Bruce, and Johnston's (1990) IAC model of face recognition. This theory is tested by running computer simulations with the model. Finally, the present explanation of provoked overt recognition is scrutinized to discover whether it has implications for rehabilitation work with prosopagnosic patients.     

Does working memory training work? The promise and challenges of enhancing cognition by training working memory

A growing body of literature shows that one's working memory (WM) capacity can be expanded through targeted training. Given the established relationship between WM and higher cognition, these successful training studies have led to speculation that WM training may yield broad cognitive benefits. This review considers the current state of the emerging WM training literature, and details both its successes and limitations. We identify two distinct approaches to WM training, strategy training and core training, and highlight both the theoretical and practical motivations that guide each approach. Training-related increases in WM capacity have been successfully demonstrated across a wide range of subject populations, but different training techniques seem to produce differential impacts upon the broader landscape of cognitive abilities. In particular, core WM training studies seem to produce more far-reaching transfer effects, likely because they target domain-general mechanisms of WM. The results of individual studies encourage optimism regarding the value of WM training as a tool for general cognitive enhancement. However, we discuss several limitations that should be addressed before the field endorses the value of this approach.     

A computational account of children's analogical reasoning: balancing inhibitory control in working memory and relational representation

Theories accounting for the development of analogical reasoning tend to emphasize either the centrality of relational knowledge accretion or changes in information processing capability. Simulations in LISA (Hummel & Holyoak, 1997, 2003), a neurally inspired computer model of analogical reasoning, allow us to explore how these factors may collaboratively contribute to the development of analogy in young children. Simulations explain systematic variations in United States and Hong Kong children's performance on analogies between familiar scenes (Richland, Morrison & Holyoak, 2006; Richland, Chang, Morrison & Au, 2010). Specifically, changes in inhibition levels in the model's working-memory system explain the developmental progression in US children's ability to handle increases in relational complexity and distraction from object similarity during analogical reasoning. In contrast, changes in how relations are represented in the model best capture cross-cultural differences in performance between children of the same ages (3-4 years) in the United States and Hong Kong. We use these results and simulations to argue that the development of analogical reasoning in children may best be conceptualized as an equilibrium between knowledge accretion and the maturation of information processing capability.     

An evaluation of antecedent exercise on behavior maintained by automatic reinforcement using a three-component multiple schedule

We evaluated antecedent exercise for treating the automatically reinforced problem behavior of 4 individuals with autism. We conducted preference assessments to identify leisure and exercise items that were associated with high levels of engagement and low levels of problem behavior. Next, we conducted three 3-component multiple-schedule sequences: an antecedent-exercise test sequence, a noncontingent leisure-item control sequence, and a social-interaction control sequence. Within each sequence, we used a 3-component multiple schedule to evaluate preintervention, intervention, and postintervention effects. Problem behavior decreased during the postintervention component relative to the preintervention component for 3 of the 4 participants during the exercise-item assessment; however, the effects could not be attributed solely to exercise for 1 of these participants.     

Self-ambivalence and resistance to subtle self-change attempts

Recent research has demonstrated the malleability of self-views to subtle situational influence but has not uncovered features of the self-concept representation that make it susceptible to such change. Using research on attitude ambivalence as a foundation, the current article predicted that the self would be most likely to respond to a subtle change induction when the targeted self-beliefs were objectively ambivalent (e.g., possessed both positive and negative features). Using self-esteem conditioning (Experiment 1) and outgroup stereotype priming (Experiment 2), it was found that people were more susceptible to subtle change inductions as objective self-ambivalence increased. Notably, the consistency between dominant self-views (positive or negative) and the change induction did not influence these results. These effects held for objective ambivalence, but not subjective ambivalence, and only when the objective ambivalence measure was relevant to the change induction. Mechanisms of the observed moderation and the implications of self-ambivalence for understanding self-change are discussed.     

A neurocomputational system for relational reasoning

The representation and manipulation of structured relations is central to human reasoning. Recent work in computational modeling and neuroscience has set the stage for developing more detailed neurocomputational models of these abilities. Several key neural findings appear to dovetail with computational constraints derived from a model of analogical processing, 'Learning and Inference with Schemas and Analogies' (LISA). These include evidence that (i) coherent oscillatory activity in the gamma and theta bands enables long-distance communication between the prefrontal cortex and posterior brain regions where information is stored; (ii) neurons in prefrontal cortex can rapidly learn to represent abstract concepts; (iii) a rostral-caudal abstraction gradient exists in the PFC; and (iv) the inferior frontal gyrus exerts inhibitory control over task-irrelevant information.     

Feedback Seeking Among Developmental Assessment Center Participants

This study examined 189 newly hired supervisors in the transportation industry who completed a developmental assessment center. The results showed that those who performed poorly in the assessment center, particularly on interpersonal dimensions, were less likely to initiate a scheduled feedback telephone call with an assigned coach. Implications and future research ideas are discussed.     

Organizational size and perceptions in a residential treatment program

Centralization of a residential mental health treatment program from three small houses to one large facility provided a naturally occurring opportunity to study the effect of organizational size on the perceptions held by clients and staff. Quantitative data were repeatedly collected on their perceptions of themselves, the organization as a whole, and subgroups within the organization during their involvement in both the small and large social contexts. Results of repeated measures analyses of variance provided considerable support for the theoretically derived hypotheses of heightened anxiety, self-impoverishment, more negative views of the psychosocial environment, and greater psychological distance in the large organizational context.