Observations Of Conjointly Hospitalized “Alcoholic Couples” During Sobriety And Intoxication: Implications For Theory and Therapy

This paper presents clinical data from a research study designed to examine the relation between alcohol consumption and interactional behavior in “alcoholic couples.” The central innovative feature of the study was the simultaneous admission to an inpatient setting of up to three couples, one or both members of which was alcoholic. The in-patient experience was part of an intensive, six-week, multiple-couples, group-therapy program. During hospitalization couples were encouraged to reproduce as closely as possible their usual drinking patterns and interactional behavior. Therapists utilized observations of interactional behavior during intoxication and sobriety to formulate central interactional and psychological issues for each couple. The authors utilized these same observations to develop the interactional model of alcoholism in families that is presented in detail in this paper. This model is an extension of earlier work delimiting an interactional theory of alcoholism based on general systems concepts. Two extensive case histories are presented to illustrate both theoretical issues and the treatment process.     

A LONGITUDINAL EXAMINATION OF RATER AND RATEE EFFECTS IN PERFORMANCE RATINGS

The consistency and loci of leniency, halo, and range restriction effects in performance ratings were investigated in a longitudinal study. Ratings were provided by approximately 90 supervisors in a metropolitan police department, who rated approximately 350 police-rank subordinates on five occasions over a three and one-half year period. Rating effects were computed separately as rater-and ratee-based statistics, and intercorrelated among the five rating periods. The nature of the data set made it possible to hold either raters or ratees constant for each analysis, thus permitting inferences regarding the sources of reliable variance in effects as due to raters or ratees. It was concluded that reliable variance in mean ratings is partly attributable to ratees, but mainly introduced by raters. Reliable halo variance is attributable to raters, and range restriction is a product of stable group performance variability within intact ratee groups. Implications of these results for future rating process research are discussed.     

THE JOB COMPONENTS INVENTORY AND THE ANALYSIS OF JOBS REQUIRING LIMITED SKILL

The Job Components Inventory, a new job analysis technique examining the use of tools and equipment, physical and perceptual requirements, mathematical requirements, communication requirements, and decision-making and responsibility requirements, is introduced. Results of a study of 100 job holders demonstrate a high reliability of the technique in terms of supervisor-job holder agreement, and the method is shown by analysis of variance and cluster analysis successfully to discriminate between and within job titles. The technique is proving to be a practical instrument for use in curriculum development, careers guidance and broad-based training, and recommendations for its further use and evaluations are made.     

English,Engineering, and Creativity

An analysis of creativity in English and Engineering Departments in the University, which suggests that the quest for academic respectability has forced the teacher of English in his research to pursue the goal of analysis, a goal which he in fact denies in his teaching. His teaching remains flexible in its attempts to elicit a creative response on the part of the student, while his research (if it is to be publishable) must adhere to a fairly rigid pattern of orthodoxy. The physicist is often driven in his teaching (simply by the demands of the very bulk of physical knowledge) to emphasise the analytical, the instrument-nature of knowledge, while in his research he remains—or tries to remain—essentially creative, far less rigid than in his teaching. The engineer, who has only recently learned to lionise the analytical and essentially rigid aspects of his work (he has only recently, after all, become a member of the University), is perhaps in fact more creative both in his teaching and his research than either of the others, though there is an increasing pressure in the University to make him conform to standards of “respectability”.     

Calibration of sensory and cognitive judgments: Two different accounts

The purpose of this study was to test predictions of two recent theories of realism of confidence. Ecological approaches to realism of confidence in one's general knowledge (Gigerenzer et al. , 1991; Juslin, in press a ; Björkman, in press) predict good calibration or, in the case of poor cognitive adjustment, overconfidence, within the cognitive domain. The subjective distance theory of confidence in sensory discriminations (Björkman et al. , 1992) predicts a pervasive underconfidence bias for sensory discriminations. Empirical data are reported showing that: (a) Calibration for sensory judgments is considerably poorer than calibration for well adapted cognitive judgements, a difference that can be entirely traced to underconfidence in the sensory domain. (b) While an initial overconfidence bias in the cognitive domain is removed by outcome feedback, the bias observed in sensory discriminations is unaffected even by a prolonged feedback session. It is suggested that the nature of confidence in sensory discriminations is different from the nature of confidence in cognitive judgments.     

Model Legislation for Licensed Professional Counselors

State legislated licensure for professional counselors is a critical aspect of the evolution of the counseling profession. Model licensure legislation will help promote a unified view of the profession. Model legislation for licensed professional counselors, along with a rationale for the content of said legislation, is presented.     

Phenomenal Concepts and Higher-Order Experiences

Relying on a range of now-familiar thought-experiments, it has seemed to many philosophers that phenomenal consciousness is beyond the scope of reductive explanation. (Phenomenal consciousness is a form of state-consciousness, which contrasts with creature-consciousness, or perceptual -consciousness. The different forms of state-consciousness include various kinds of access-consciousness, both first-order and higher-order–see Rosenthal, 1986; Block, 1995; Lycan, 1996; Carruthers, 2000. Phenomenal consciousness is the property that mental states have when it is like something to possess them, or when they have subjectively-accessible feels; or as some would say, when they have qualia (see fn. l below).) Others have thought that we can undermine the credibility of those thought-experiments by allowing that we possess purely recognitional concepts for the properties of our conscious mental states. This paper is concerned to explain, and then to meet, the challenge of showing how purely recognitional concepts are possible if there are no such things as qualia –in the strong sense of intrinsic (non relational, non-intentional) properties of experience. It argues that an appeal to higher-order experiences is necessary to meet this challenge, and then deploys a novel form of higher-order thought theory to explain how such experiences are generated.