Alliance to the group-as-a-whole as a predictor of outcome in psychodynamic group therapy

Abstract Eighteen patients diagnosed with burnout-related depression and receiving short-term psychodynamic group psychotherapy were included in this study. The participants completed the group version of the California Psychotherapy Alliance Scales (CALPAS) five times during treatment and evaluated the relationship positively. Alliance increased significantly as treatment progressed; however, the amount of change was small. Level of alliance to the group-as-a-whole, averaged over time, was predictive of two out of three outcome measures, whereas growth in alliance during the early phase of therapy was not predictive of outcome. Exploratory examination of the alliance at different time points showed that alliance to the group-as-a-whole at mid-phase of treatment was substantially correlated with outcome. Personality features such as dismissing attachment style and being overly nurturant or exploitable were predictive of early growth in alliance.     

Abdominal exercise intensities on firm and compliant surfaces

Muscle activities at 15 sites were compared within a group of healthy young adults to evaluate their relative intensities during six abdominal exercises: partial and full sit-ups on a firm surface (floor) and on an exercise ball that was either stabilized or unstabilized. The most strenuous abdominal exercise overall (i.e., whole body workout) was the full sit-up on a firm surface which included significant muscle activities in the lower extremities. Exercise intensity was also high in the full and partial sit-ups when performed on a ball. The partial sit-up on the floor was the least strenuous of the six exercises. The greatest effect on the abdominal muscles was observed in the partial sit-up on a ball (stabilized and unstabilized). Results suggest that, although abdominal exercises on a ball may be gentler on the hip and lower back, overall exercise intensity is not necessarily lower than that on the floor. Moreover, partial sit-ups, both on the floor and on a ball, also required greater neck muscle activities than full sit-ups. In deciding what type of sit-up to do, exercise surface and different muscular activities between the partial and full sit-ups should be considered.     

The impact of discredited evidence

How do people revise their beliefs when evidence is discredited? In three studies, mock jurors read simplified criminal cases and then judged the probability that a suspect was guilty on the basis of sequentially presented evidence. Study 1 showed an extension effect: When two items of incriminating evidence were presented, a subsequent discrediting of the second item also lessened belief in the first item, irrespective of whether it was directly related to the discredited item. Study 2 showed that this effect depended on the order of evidence presentation: When the discrediting evidence was presented early, rather than late, in the sequence, there was no extension to unrelated items. Study 3 showed that the extension effect held only when items of evidence were both incriminating or both exonerating, but not when they were mixed. To explain these findings, we draw on coherence-based models of juror reasoning and propose that people group evidence according to its direction with respect to the guilt hypothesis.     

Improving the peer-review process for grant applications: reliability, validity, bias, and generalizability

Peer review is a gatekeeper, the final arbiter of what is valued in academia, but it has been criticized in relation to traditional psychological research criteria of reliability, validity, generalizability, and potential biases. Despite a considerable literature, there is surprisingly little sound peer-review research examining these criteria or strategies for improving the process. This article summarizes the authors' research program with the Australian Research Council, which receives thousands of grant proposals from the social science, humanities, and science disciplines and reviews by assessors from all over the world. Using multilevel cross-classified models, the authors critically evaluated peer reviews of grant applications and potential biases associated with applicants, assessors, and their interaction (e.g., age, gender, university, academic rank, research team composition, nationality, experience). Peer reviews lacked reliability, but the only major systematic bias found involved the inflated, unreliable, and invalid ratings of assessors nominated by the applicants themselves. The authors propose a new approach, the reader system, which they evaluated with psychology and education grant proposals and found to be substantially more reliable and strategically advantageous than traditional peer reviews of grant applications.     

Beliefs and data on the relationship between consistency and accuracy of eyewitness testimony

Two studies concerned with consistency and accuracy of eyewitness testimony were conducted. In Study 1 potential jurors indicated the degree to which they considered that various witness on‐stand behaviours indicated testimonial accuracy. Witness statements that were inconsistent with previous statements were considered to be the strongest indicators of inaccuracy. Study 2 examined the relationship between consistency and accuracy of testimony. Witnesses viewed a film of a robbery and were interviewed twice (2 weeks apart) about the crime in a 4 (interview format)×2 (interview occasion) design. Regardless of whether consistency was operationalised in terms of direct contradictions between interviews, or degree of agreement on detail across interviews, no more than 10% of the variance in overall accuracy rate was explained by any individual measure. Number of contradictions and overall agreement between interviews did, however, make additive contributions to prediction of overall accuracy. Also, higher correlations between contradiction‐based consistency measures and interview two accuracy rate were detected. Neither consistency nor accuracy for specific testimonial dimensions were predictive of accuracy on the other dimensions, or overall accuracy. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Interrelationships between spider fear associations,attentional disengagement and self-reported fear: A preliminary test of a dual-systems model

Recent conceptualisations of anxiety posit that equivocal findings related to the time-course of disengaging from threat-relevant stimuli may be attributable to individual differences in associative and rule-based processing. The current study was designed to test the hypothesis that strength of spider-fear associations would indirectly predict reported spider fear via impaired disengagement. One hundred and thirty-one undergraduate volunteer participants completed the Go/No-go Association Task, a visual search task, and self-report spider fear questionnaires. Stronger spider-fear associations were associated with reduced disengagement accuracy, whereas higher levels of reported spider fear were related to faster engagement with and disengagement from spiders. Bootstrapping multiple mediation analyses demonstrated that stronger-spider fear associations evidenced an indirect relationship with reported spider fear via reduced disengagement accuracy, highlighting the importance of fine-grained analyses of different aspects of cognitive bias. Results are discussed in terms of cognitive models of anxiety.     

Conceptual and perceptual priming and dissociation in chronic posttraumatic stress disorder

Cognitive models of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) assert that memory processes play a significant role in PTSD (see e.g., Ehlers & Clark, 2000). Intrusive reexperiencing in PTSD has been linked to perceptual processing of trauma-related material with a corresponding hypothesized lack of conceptual processing. In an experimental study that included clinical participants with and without PTSD (N = 50), perceptual priming and conceptual priming for trauma-related, general threat, and neutral words were investigated in a population with chronic trauma-induced complaints as a result of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The study used a new version of the word-stem completion task (Michael, Ehlers, & Halligan, 2005) and a word-cue association task. It also assessed the role of dissociation in threat processing. Further evidence of enhanced perceptual priming in PTSD for trauma stimuli was found, along with evidence of lack of conceptual priming for such stimuli. Furthermore, this pattern of priming for trauma-related words was associated with PTSD severity, and state dissociation and PTSD group made significant contributions to predicting perceptual priming for trauma words. The findings shed light on the importance of state dissociation in trauma-related information processing and posttraumatic symptoms.     

Characterizing the Linguistic Chameleon: Personal and Social Correlates of Linguistic Style Accommodation

Linguistic style accommodation between conversationalists is associated with positive social outcomes. We examine social power and personality as factors driving the occurrence of linguistic style accommodation, and the social outcomes of accommodation. Social power was manipulated to create 144 face‐to‐face dyadic interactions between individuals of high versus low power and 64 neutral power interactions. Particular configurations of personality traits (high self‐monitoring, Machiavellianism and leadership, and low self‐consciousness, impression management and agreeableness), combined with a low‐power role, led to an increased likelihood of linguistic style accommodation. Further, greater accommodation by low‐power individuals positively influenced perceptions of subjective rapport and attractiveness. We propose individual differences interact with social context to influence the conditions under which nonconscious communication accommodation occurs.     

Comparison of Suicide Attempters and Decedents in the U.S. Army: A Latent Class Analysis

A clearer understanding of risk factors for suicidal behavior among soldiers is of principal importance to military suicide prevention. It is unclear whether soldiers who attempt suicide and those who die by suicide have different patterns of risk factors. As such, preventive efforts aimed toward reducing suicide attempts and suicides, respectively, may require different strategies. We conducted a latent class analysis (LCA) to examine classes of risk factors among suicide attempters (n = 1,433) and decedents (n = 424). Both groups were represented by three classes: (1) External/Antisocial Risk Factors, (2) Mental Health Risk Factors, and (3) No Pattern. These findings support the conceptualization that military suicide attempters and decedents represent a single population.