Experimenting with Family Treatment Approaches to Alcoholism, 1950–1975: A Review

The attention given family therapy approaches to alcoholism has been disproportionately low in relation to the magnitude of alcohol abuse as a clinical problem and its acknowledged impact on family life. Although the literature to date is limited and most studies should be characterized as pilot in nature, preliminary results have enthusiastically endorsed family therapy approaches to alcoholism. This critical review assesses the existing experimental and clinical literature of the past 25 years. It also offers potential explanations for the reluctance of family therapists to engage this problem more actively.     

Task influences on judgemental forecasting

This study investigates the effect of imminence, time duration and subjective desirability on judgemental forecasts. People were found to be more sure of specified events happening in a one-month time period subsequent to an imminent one-month period. The time duration of a forecast period, one month versus two months, had no effect on forecasting response and performance and any effect of the subjective desirability of an event on its perceived likelihood was negligible. Although evidence of the consistency of individual forecasting response and performance was obtained, individual measures of coherence in probability assessment were not related to forecasting performance. A measure of the subjective difficulty of the forecasting task was not related to forecasting performance, indicating that attempts to re-scale forecasting responses to improve forecasting performance on the basis of subjective difficulty are inappropriate.     

On Asking the Right Questions

Despite the vast array of theoretical formulations now available, none is sufficiently well developed. Some of the philosophical questions thrown up by such material are posed. Under the heading of "Discourse," the questions of what constitutes reasonableness and how logical validity is established are raised. Under the heading of "Epistemology," the nature of concept formulation and causality is raised. Under the heading of "Language," the nature of linguistic representation and artificially constructed language or "artificial intelligence" is raised. It is suggested that these and other issues in the philosophy of science require the urgent attention of family therapy theorists.     

The subjective experience of intimacy,passion, and commitment in heterosexual loving relationships

Lovers’responses to open-ended questions concerning the experience and communication of intimacy, passion, and commitment were content- and factor-analyzed. These analyses resulted in six ways of experiencing intimacy (openness, sex, affection, supportiveness, togetherness, and quiet company); two ways of experiencing passion (romance and sexual intimacy); and five ways of experiencing commitment (supportiveness, expressions of love, fidelity, expressions of commitment, and consideration and devotion). These results suggest that love, intimacy, passion, and commitment are best conceived as related, overlapping gestalts in the subjective experiences of actual lovers.     

The Kirton Adaption Innovation Inventory Find Group Problem Solving Success Rates

The findings are the result of a four year study tracking the problem solving success rates of 952 managers comprising 119 different 8-person teams: each team consisting of a 4-member planning team and a 4-member implementing team. Unknown to the participants, each subteam was arranged according to their Kirton Adaption Innovation Inventory (KAI) into homogeneous subteams either similar to or dissimilar from the other subteam. It was found that coordination of subteam role (task) with KAI type significantly increased group success rates, and that placing KAI types outside of role preference resulted in significantly lower success rates. An exception to the subgroup role results occurred when the KAI types were performing tasks outside of their preferred style, and the KAI subgroup means were similar. In this case, significantly elevated success rates were found, probably due to enhanced interteam communication.     

Reply to William R. Ferrell's paper "Calibration of sensory and cognitive judgments: A single model for both"

William R. Ferrell's paper is a reply to our article "Calibration of sensory and cognitive judgments: Two different accounts", 1993, 34, 135–148 in this journal. Ferrell's critique centres around three issues: (1) The model of sensory discrimination proposed by Björkman et al. (1993) and discussed in Winman and Juslin (1993) is not new, (2) this model does not predict underconfidence, (3) there is no need for separate models of calibration of sensory and cognitive judgments. Below we respond to each of the three issues raised by Ferrell.     

Conditioned nausea after cancer chemotherapy and autonomic nervous system conditionability

There are marked individual differences in conditioned nausea after cancer chemotherapy. To examine if part of this variation is associated with individual differences in autonomic nervous system conditionability, the present study addressed whether patients with conditioned nausea acquired conditioned heart rate and electrodermal responses at a different rate than patients without conditioned nausea. Of 28 relapse-free patients who had completed cisplatinum treatment for testicular cancer between 1981 and 1986, 10 reported persistent conditioned nausea, 8 extinguished conditioned nausea and 10 no conditioned nausea. These three groups were subjected to a differential conditioning paradigm with 8 sec pictorial stimuli (circles and triangles) serving as conditioned stimuli for an unconditioned electric shock while heart rate and electrodermal activity was monitored. There were 4 habituation, 8 acquisition and 8 extinction trials with each of the two cues. Analyses of variance using nausea status as the independent variable and physiological responses as the dependent lended some support to the notion that conditioned heart rate deceleration developed in response to the reinforced compared to the nonreinforced cue during acquisition in the two groups with persistent or extinguished conditioned nausea but not in the group with no conditioned nausea. In addition, patients that displayed good, as compared to poor heart rate conditionability during acquisition, were more likely to have persistent conditioned nausea, whereas those who showed poor heart rate conditioning mostly were those without conditioned nausea. Electrodermal variables revealed no systematic differences between groups. This tentatively supports that individual differences in parasympathetic but not sympathetic nervous system conditionability may be associated with individual differences in conditioned nausea resulting from cancer chemotherapy.