Counseling Child Sexual Abuse Victims: Myths and Realities

The goal of the authors is to (a) create an awareness among counselors about the nature and prevalence of child sexual abuse, (b) examine myths and realities about the topic, and (c) present recommendations for interviewing suspected victims of child sexual abuse.     

Leadership behavior,group climate and outcome in group psychotherapy: A study of outpatient psychotherapy groups

A recent clinical study of outpatient psychotherapy groups in a community mental health center explored the linkage between group leadership variables, group climate, and outcome. The study involved nine outpatient therapy groups, over 50 group clients, and several group therapists. A repeated measures design involving assessment of clients' outcome and level of functioning, group leadership style, and group climate was used to assess changes over a 6-month period. The findings suggest: 1) a reduction in symptoms and improved functioning for clients; 2) a similarity of perceptions by members and leaders of perceived leadership behaviors and group climate; 3) the presence of direct and indirect influences of group climate and leadership behavior on clients' outcome; and 4) a linkage between leadership behavior and group climate with the theoretical orientation of the group. The findings of the research are discussed in relation to the understanding of specific effects in group psychotherapy and the implications for construction of group psychotherapy theory.The authors would like to thank Robert Dies, Ph.D., for his helpful suggestions in the early phase of this study; Roy MacKenzie, M.D., for permission to use the Group Climate Questionnaire; Diane DePalma, Ph.D., for permission to use the Global Leadership Behavior Index; Chris Boltwood, B.A., for her untiring efforts in administering the instruments and coding and entering the data; and most importantly, the psychotherapy group members and the group therapists for their cooperation in this endeavor—without their help, this clinical study would not have been possible.A version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Group Psychotherapy Association, 1987, New Orleans, Louisiana. Lenore Phipps, R.N., M.S., C.S., was formerly Director, Group Psychotherapy Program at Park Ridge Mental Health Center, Rochester, now in private practice at Guild Medical Center, Norwood, MA 02062.     

An experimental analysis of the civil commitment recommendations of psychologists and psychiatrists

Legal and nonlegal factors influencing the civil commitment recommendations of psychologists and psychiatrists separately and as a whole were investigated using an experimental design. One hundred and seventy-six psychologists and psychiatrists made recommendations for or against commitment for a series of clinical vignettes wherein the five facets of commitment criterion, legal committability, clinical treatability, alternative resources and presence of psychosis were systematically varied. Results revealed that all facets contributed independently and in combination to the commitment decisions of participants as a whole. It was concluded that mental health professionals may utilize a variety of types of information, beyond the relevant legal criteria, in making actual decisions to initiate civil commitments.     

Measurement of activity in small animals using a microcomputer-controlled system

A computer-controlled system that detects spontaneous activity (locomotion and rearing) and diurnal activity rhythms in small animals is described. Automatic recording of subtotals during test periods provides data about habituation (nonassociative learning). The system is relatively inexpensive to construct. Fabricated from highly reliable circuit components, it provides replicable measures that enable comparisons between different experimental treatments to be made using parametric statistics.     

Knowledge in society: anatomy of an emergent field

An emergent social science of knowledge applications, drawing on a substantial multidisciplinary literature published over the past twenty-five years, signals an inversion of typical scholarly reasoning about the knowledge-society nexus. Whereas most scholarly research thus far has concentrated on conditions believed to affect the production of scientific and professional knowledge, we pose a new problematic: What must we examine in order to comprehend and consciously shape applications of scientific and professional knowledge to the manifold problems facing contemporary societies? To date, approaches to this problematic have proceeded on the basis of four broadly accepted if abstract theses about the nature of contemporary knowledge systems: subjectivity, corrigibility, sociality, and complexity. Within the boundaries supplied by these commonly accepted theses are unresolved controversies expressed in competing visions of complexity, alternative perspectives of causation, rival images of progress, and conflicting criteria of application.     

Burden of proof

This paper presents an analysis of the concept of burden of proof in argument. Relationship of burden of proof to three traditional informal fallacies is considered: (i) argumentum ad hominem, (ii) petitio principii, and (iii) argumentum ad ignorantiam. Other topics discussed include persuasive dialoque, pragmatic reasoning, legal burden of proof, plausible reasoning in regulated disputes, rules of dialogue, and the value of reasoned dialogue.     

A high-gain,low-noise amplifier for EEG

This paper describes an amplifier for an electroencephalograph with gain of 1×10⁴ to 1×10⁶ and made entirely of commercially available IC components. The two-stage amplifier has a preamplifier stage with fixed gain of 1000, and a second stage with variable gain from 1 to 100. The final stage, an anti-aliasing filter, adds a gain of 10 to the signal. The circuit has high common mode rejection, low input bias current, very low noise characteristics, low offset voltages, and offset nulling capability built into the circuit.