Beliefs about stories: Parents' and therapists' explanations of childhood difficulties

Therapists and parents were given vignettes describing the behavioural and emotional difficulties of two nine-year-old children and were asked to rate the importance of a number of possible explanations for such difficulties. Broad agreement was found between parents and therapists, but also there were a number of significant differences. Parents endorsed more child centered explanations and put greater emphasis on physical and developmental factors, while therapists endorsed relationships factors and saw the beliefs of other family members as important. Therapists who were parents showed a pattern of responses that lay between those of parents and non-parent therapists.     

Supervision in rational emotive behavior therapy

This paper deals with the general process of supervision of therapists learning to understand and practice rational emotive behavior therapy. The endeavor of supervision is viewed as one of education, training, and practive with critical and constructive feedback. Major sections discuss and describe Educational Aspects of Supervision, Training Aspects of Supervision, Evaluation of Supervisees Performance, and Preferable Characteristics and Traits for REBT Practitioners.This paper is based on a chapter prepared for a forthcoming book,Handbook of Psychotherapy Supervision, edited by C. Edward Watkins, Jr.Paul J. Woods, Ph.D. is a Fellow of the Institute for Rational-Emotive Therapy, and a former Co-Editor of thisJournal. He is in private practice in Roanoke, VA. Albert Ellis, Ph.D. is the founder of REBT and the President of the Institute for Rational-Emotive Therapy in New York.     

The protestant eruption into modern Brazilian politics

Brazil's fast‐growing Protestantism has contributed to a resacralisation of national politics in recent years. This is largely due to the politics practised by some of the large Pentecostal churches since 1986, using their corporate political power to strengthen internal leaderships and structure Brazil's huge popular Protestant field, as well as to gain resources for religious expansion and dispute space in civil religion. Corporate Protestant politics have been marked by corruption scandals and by politically motivated attempts to create representative organs capable of mediating the increasingly important relationship with the state. One new Pentecostal group (the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God) has established one of the largest media empires in the country and, in the 1994 elections, considerably augmented its political power and polarised the Protestant community with respect to its project of hegemony in the religious field. Thus, while Protestant politics can be considered generally positive for Brazilian democracy, the rise of such a politically powerful hegemonic force within the Protestant field gives a more sinister character to the ever‐present corporatist and triumphalist ambitions.     

Pupillometry system for use in social psychology

It is now relatively easy to implement pupillometry in social psychological research. We describe a system in which a Macintosh computer presents visual and auditory stimuli to subjects while monitoring an infrared pupillometer. The computer records information on subject, task, and pupil diameter into a data file for input into standard statistical analysis programs. Pupil diameter is measured continuously while subjects respond to stimuli that last for several seconds or minutes. A demonstration experiment verifies the usefulness of the system. The ability of the Macintosh computer to easily handle visual and auditory stimuli and to record responses lasting a considerable length of time makes the system well suited for studying pupil responses to complex social stimuli. This system is also well suited for the researcher initiating a research program using pupillometry. Ease of operation makes using a large number of subjects feasible.     

An optical encoder and XY oscilloscope interface for the IBM PC

This paper outlines a prototype dual-purpose interface card for the IBM PC for use in research on motor learning and control. The card enables automatic interfacing for up to four angular optical encoders and presents high-speed visual data on an XY oscilloscope. In addition, it uses two single-chip microcontrollers with minimal external hardware, providing a more powerful instrument than is available in discrete hardware. Two microcontrollers operate independently of the experimental computer (IBM PC), using a common interface allowing the exchange of data. This interface card frees the experimental computer from the workload associated with optical encoders and high-speed XY displays, resulting in less complex experimental setups and data collection programs.     

Further tests of a meta-model of youthful marijuana use

This paper tests a meta-model of youthful marijuana use on students in Grades 11, 12 and 13. Although the specific models for each grade varied in detail, all followed a meta-model making the following assumptions: (1) that use or nonuse of marijuana depends primarily on attitude towards use; (2) that attitude largely reflects the perceived functional and dysfunctional consequences of use; and (3) that what people perceive as functional or dysfunctional depends on relevant personality characteristics. All three models showed satisfactory goodness-of-fit in terms of nonsignificant overidentification tests (minimum P > 0.25) and small discrepancies between observed correlations and the corresponding theoretically implied correlations. A notable feature of the Grade 13 data in contrast to those for Grade 12 and previously reported findings was the seeming unimportance of the perceived value of marijuana use for gaining acceptance from peers. It was suggested that this might reflect the selective survival into Grade 13 in the sampled community of more independently-oriented students.     

Social attitudes of schizophrenics

The Wilson-Patterson Conservatism Scale was given to 34 schizophrenic and 34 non-schizophrenic patients in a Dutch mental hospital. The absence of liberal-scoring schizophrenics was interpreted as consistent with the theory that the social withdrawal seen in chronic schizophrenia represents a strategy for coping with stimulus overload. Internal consistency analysis of C scale performance indicated that this test might be used to assess thought disorder in much the same way as the Bannister and Fransella Grid Test, but a great deal more economically. Furthermore, the questionnaire permits a more detailed examination of the source of inconsistency than does the repertory grid method.